Adam P

A hotel owner is adamant that his clients shag hookers in his hotel? Sounds legit.

Just speculating on how the management will view his performance as one of their highest paid non-playing staff. They may see this as a failure of due diligence given that his playing colleagues were aware of his illegal gambling before he signed.

Was going to say the same thing, might be his reputation and position with management is not great after spending the majority of our money on a player with a gambling problem.

I think you misunderstood, the timing is one piece of evidence, cultural connections between police and institutions is another. The timing piece is important. The Tonali investigation was announced on 18th October and he was banned on 26th October. The part that you probably didnt pay attention to was that Investgations in Italy come after confidential pre-investigations. The Fagioli story broke by some Italian paparrazi figure on Aug 2nd, before it was official. The police pre-investigation of Fagioli was therefore underway well before August 2nd. If Tonali's name was part of that pre-investigation, then it was already underway before Aug 2nd.

Did you have a drink over lunch? It might have been a complicated sentence but you're not that daft.

If there was evidence that Milan knew, there would be court cases. The timing and circumstantial evidence suggests that consistent with Italian culture, back office relationships amongst institutions and authorities and the extremely odd nature of Milan selling a talismanic player one month before the investigation became public, all points in one direction. Presuming their innocence is very noble of you.

Hotel hairdryers too mate.

Of course there is no evidence Milan knew but i am convinced they did. All it takes is for the police to have a relationship with the football club for that information to be shared.

I am aware of that information, the police knew about the illegal gambling before August 2nd. Juventus denying they knew about Fagioli is basically stating that the police in Turin didnt tell them. Of course they did, this is Italy. The official investigation only starts after a period of time of evidence collection. That period is confidential and can last 18 months before an investigation starts. If the Public Prosecutor thinks the 'accusation' can stand up in court, an investigation is officially launched. So the police turning up to arrest the players marks the end of the first phase, not the start.

As soon as the information was in the hands of the police, the police will have told AC Milan what was happening. That's the 'working in Italy' insight.

Why would they say that? The argument put forward to me by them was that they had a choice of players to sell for similar money, there was no financial need to sell Tonali. Exactly what Milanista said on here. Italian investigations only start after a confidential pre-investigation period. The charges and accusations are consistent with a timeline well before the start of August, which was the date references in the Italian press as the start of the 'investigation'. You can add 3 months to that for when information was passed to the police for a potential official investigation.

Difficult to prove but absolutely nailed on. I was in a 'Milan pub' in Brussels for our Dortmund away game and spoke to loads of their fans. Every single one of them when asked laughed and said 'of course we knew'. Having worked in Milan and Rome in the 2010s regularly, there is nothing anyone can say to me that would convince me otherwise. Even a cursory knowledge of criminal investigation timelines and processes under Italian law pushes back the start of the 'pre-investigation' phase into the early summer.

Then we would have to sell Pope after he recovers or put an England international on the bench and spend 40m at the same time. Sure, when the time is right we need to invest in the next keeper but its not now.

Only a loan for a keeper makes any sense, spending money to cover Pope's injury make little footballing or financial sense.

Last night was a great result under difficult circumstances. Keeps us alive in the group. Got to be happy today even after the stinging pain last night.