BlueStar

Is our borehole an illegal hole, or a loop?

So wait, is that a loophole or is it illegal?

Phew.

Does this mean we have to play full strength teams in our remaining games in the hope that we get enough points to absorb any deduction? Or if we're due a 5 point deduction and that wouldn't make a difference to automatic promotion, would they just roll it over to next season?

In terms of the relative peanuts involved (£5m in NI and tax across us and West Ham, and possible others), firstly it's not a small amount to HMRC. If you or I fiddled that much we'd be in a hell of a lot of trouble and, as the statement says, they want to show nobody is above the law on this. Secondly though, stupid as it sounds, tax avoidance isn't always about the money. Obviously both us and West Ham would be crazy to risk our top flight status for a few million quid in saved taxes. If you've done a deal or made a payment you don't want people to know about (either because it relates to an illegal activity, it's against the rules of the sport, it goes against company policy, would appear immoral or it's simply embarrassing) you've got a problem, because even if you wanted to pay the proper taxes on it, you can't. So because you don't want to put "unauthorised payment to player" or "bung to agent" on your tax returns you've got to come up with some way of doing it outside of the system, or explaining it away as something else. And as is often the case "the cover-up is what gets you" because now you've broken the law and you've got some very skilled and driven people backed by the government who will be on your arse once they get a sniff of it. So hopefully the main story is indeed the 'financial irregularities' and not anything they were used to disguise.

Mondial have clients all over the Premier League mind - Coutinho, Matic, Kante, Mahrez among others (https://www.forbes.com/companies/mondial-sports-management/). Would expect more clubs to be implicated if the investigation is linked to them. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/04/26/newcastle-managing-director-lee-charnley-arrested-st-james-park/

That fucking bore hole. Bet there's wads of cash in there.

Strange. That should not be related to any of the current players? Just looking for computers, mobiles etc for info I guess.

Just the kind of things they specifically said they'd deduct points for then, ace.

What's the betting Charnley's defence is that he's woefully under-qualified and didn't understand what was going on.

Surely Charnley doesn't pay £5m in NI and tax in the first place, never mind would he be able to dodge that much. My worry would be if it's something where we've come up with some 'creative' bonus system to avoid our players paying as much tax or NI as they should, so we can give players a bigger take-home wage without having to shell out as much. That would definitely be something which would have given us an on-pitch advantage and be deserving of a sporting penalty as well as a legal one.

Well it's income tax and national insurance, so could be player wages.

They strangely don't seem to be making much of a deal of this on SSN.

Well if we're not allowed to sign any players for next season we won't have any points to deduct.

If they're saying there's a French connection, the first thing that comes to mind is that both us and West Ham have had some unusual dealings with Marseilles in the form of the Payet and Thauvin transfers.

Well if he's been up to anything dodgy it's coming out now Why couldn't this have happened in the absolute pits of the Pardew era, when we'd have been glad of anything that might have forced him out?

He's now acting like he wanted us to go up because it means we'll get beat more often. Everyone had a mate like that in school who'd never admit anything didn't go well for them. "I didn't want to pass maths anyway". If we won the FA Cup it'd be "I'm delighted by this because it gets their hopes up and they'll be absolutely GUTTED that they don't go on to win the Champions League next season."

https://imgur.com/GSOfCpw

Actually concerned he's ill, or hungover, or concussed or something. Sommat's not right with him today at all.

height=700http://i.imgur.com/AXtrWLQ.jpg[/img]

Promised them a relegation battle he couldn't deliver.

It's always been the case that when you and your rival club end up in different leagues fans exaggerate the gap by comparing the best teams you'll be playing against to the worst they'll be playing against. And usually that's either the clubs which have just come down into your new league (Or Man U, Chelsea etc if you're in the premier league) and whoever's coming up from the league below the one they've ended up in. It's not exactly Chaucer, but it's standard fare and not particularly a slight aimed specifically at Fleetwood. There's probably teams which will be glad to be playing in the Championship boasting about the fact they get to play Villa and Sunderland (well, maybe not Sunderland) while their local rivals will be playing Crawley.

My dad's from Jarrow, so I could have easily have ended up a mackem. He ended up following us because his mates supported Newcastle and we'd recently won a load of FA Cups, but it sounds like you could just take your pick back then if you were a jarra lad.

What did Foster say? To be fair, Cram brought it up, saying the pacemakers were in black and white shirts and asking if it was for Foster's benefit. Foster just said north-east football was changing, and mentioned that he still had a text Cram had sent him last year giving him directions to Burton Albion, said he was send it back along with some directions to Fleetwood Town for next year.

Some good-natured ribbing of Steve Cram from Brendan Foster on the London Marathon today