Championship and EFL Football

tommysvr said:

Playing devil’s advocate, does filming a training session on your phone really matter that much? Especially in the modern era where everything is tracked and every match is available? I get the idea of working on something specific to counter Southampton…but we’re not talking some big operation to spy. It’s a 23 year bloke with a phone.

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Storm in a teacup for me, not sure what big advantage they were getting from some guy videoing a training session from far away. However, after the Leeds Vs Derby spygate where Leeds were fined £200,000 a rule was put in place you can't view opposition training 72 hours before a game so they have broken the rules.

I would expect a big fine, throwing them out of the play offs seems a bit much considering the minor at best advantage but who knows. They were stupid to do it considering the risk/reward of it - they know each others game, there wasn't going to be any big surprises on match day....

tommysvr said:

Playing devil’s advocate, does filming a training session on your phone really matter that much? Especially in the modern era where everything is tracked and every match is available? I get the idea of working on something specific to counter Southampton…but we’re not talking some big operation to spy. It’s a 23 year bloke with a phone.

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For me, it matters. I've never been a fan of technology driving ahead of legislation in any walk of life. You can't just let things become OK as tech changes. That needs control. It's why Mark Zuckerberg had to address the senate a few years back.

Example, just because my house overlooks next door's garden is it OK for me to film them from my bedroom window. What's the difference?

My other perspective is that football has no class nowadays and definitely doesn't represent what you could call the spirit of the game.

I hope the EFL throw the book at Saints. They consciously cheated and tried to steal an advantage. Football is not set up for the opposition to study what happens on a private training ground. It never should be.

Muttley said:

For me, it matters. I've never been a fan of technology driving ahead of legislation in any walk of life. You can't just let things become OK as tech changes. That needs control. It's why Mark Zuckerberg had to address the senate a few years back.

Example, just because my house overlooks next door's garden is it OK for me to film them from my bedroom window. What's the difference?

My other perspective is that football has no class nowadays and definitely doesn't represent what you could call the spirit of the game.

I hope the EFL throw the book at Saints. They consciously cheated and tried to steal an advantage. Football is not set up for the opposition to study what happens on a private training ground. It never should be.

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We’re not talking about perverts who wear Meta glasses to film women. Or weirdos who’d film their neighbours. How is that even a comparison to make?

Would love to know what secrets they got that helped them achieve their 2-1 win after extra time.

tommysvr said:

We’re not talking about perverts who wear Meta glasses to film women. Or weirdos who’d film their neighbours. How is that even a comparison to make?

Would love to know what secrets they got that helped them achieve their 2-1 win after extra time.

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You said that first part. Not me. I wasn't even going that deep. I actually have Ring security cameras front and back on my house. I made sure the back garden one only looks into my garden. Of course, security cameras would be in a different category to filming from a camera from a bedroom window. At least, you'd hope. The Meta example is almost a new category. Personally, as a musician and avid music watcher, I'd love to be able to film certain songs played by my mates on Meta glasses rather than hold my phone up. Most of the time we have a Go Pro filming anyway. I'd like to think legislation supports all of these use cases.

Back to football. I can imagine studying formations, seeing which 11 players are "first team" in the training matches, seeing which side penalties are going, whose missing from training etc could give you that couple of extra percentage points. My point is that is morally wrong for a sport. It's cheating.

Football needs to get some class back and I'm all for OTT punishment on these things.