Spying Accusation - EFL Verdict

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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by 1964white »

SG90 wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 3:02 pm I think it's more to do with Jenas being a Forest fan and Collymore a Villa fan, two teams outside the top 6 and hoping we're being docked points to help them.
You won't be far off the truth there SG :tup:

Collymore has always been a bag of wind & Jenas is just trying to make a name for himself
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by billie1 »

The sanctimonious nonsense spouted by the likes of Jenas , Collymore etc is simply laughable . They clearly have some sort of agenda themselves . I actually feel embarrassed for them ( well , maybe not ) .

And Lampard . His stance is utter hypocrisy. Clearly knew he was going to take an absolute pasting on Friday so neatly deflects his own shortcomings as a manager by stirring up this rubbish . And hasn’t the class or the grace to accept Bielsa’s genuine explanation. A truly pathetic individual.
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by SG90 »

Saint Frank Lampard, the nice man with lovely morals, was sent off against Rotherham for swearing at and abusing the referee earlier this season. You wouldn't catch evil forruner Bielsa doing that.
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by becchio bear »

1964white wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 3:58 pm I love this comment

"In a world where players dive, players get opposition sent off or booked, purposely run down the clock, waste time, feign injury.... spying seems pretty tame.

Franky the fatty should just eat a cream puff and he’ll be fine"
Funnily enough this is the comment that stood out for me lol :lol: :bear:
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by whiteswan »

Good point from the Swansea fan. Viewed from public land...
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by Gurj »

Great article in The Times today by Matthew Syed. Its behind a paywall online unfortunately therefore some may not be able to read it but here goes anyway.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mora ... -26rzcfvgm
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by rab_rant »

At Derby Press conference
Mhil Fay: What do you think of Bielsa's behaviour?
Frank the tank: Atrocious, diabolical, immoral,
Mhil Fay: What do you think should be done?
Frank the tank: 15 points deduction, Bielsa banned from English football, possible execution.
Mhil Fay: There are reports coming to light that AVB carried out spying for Jose while you were at Chelsea, could you comment on that?
Frank the tank: Total hog wash we never did anything like that at Chelsea
Mhil Fay: We now have evidence that you pushed the laundry basket with Jose in it so he could give a half time talk even though he was banned... was this justified and were you complicite in breaking the rules of fair play under Section E paragraph 3.4 of the FA rule book?
Frank the tank: What kind of laundry basket are you talking about? I don't want to air dirty laundry be it Chelsea's or Leed's
Mhil Fay: If you believe that sanctions should be made for breaking the rules of fair play, would you be willing to return all the medals you have won, due to the fact that all your victories may have resulted from spying done by AVB?
Frank the tank: You will have to ask John Terry about that.
Mhil Fay: Did Ken Bates put you up to raise this controversy about spying?
Frank the tank: No comment. This is a witch hunt, and no manager in English football should be subjected to such interrogation.
Mhil Fay: Have you received any monies from Ken Bates in the last week?
Frank the tank: No comments
Press conference ends. Frank the tank leaves amidst boos and hisses and cries of hypocrite.
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by Gandalf »

Gurj wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:18 am Great article in The Times today by Matthew Syed. Its behind a paywall online unfortunately therefore some may not be able to read it but here goes anyway.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mora ... -26rzcfvgm
Here you go.

I can understand why Marcelo Bielsa appears to be more than a little bemused. He sent a colleague to watch the training of upcoming opponents on Thursday — in my view, a rather sensible thing to do — and he has found himself in the middle of one of the great moral panics of the season.

The Leeds United head coach has been accused of “cheating”, of “chicanery” and of “bringing the game into disrepute”. Jermaine Jenas, the former Tottenham Hotspur and England midfielder, said: “I’m disgusted . . . It’s obviously common in Argentina and I’d rather it stayed there.” Frank Lampard, the manager whose Derby County side were the subjects of the “spying” and lost 2-0 to Leeds on Friday night, said: “This one is over the line and it’s not just a toe over the line. It’s a hop, skip and a jump over the line.”

Perhaps the most pithy perspective, and the one most in keeping with the general tone, was offered by Martin Keown. The former Arsenal captain looked outraged when he said that Bielsa had, wait for it, “broken the moral code”.

Young Leeds fans bring some much-needed levity to the situation during Leeds’s victory over DerbySIMON COOPER/PA

Isn’t that a wonderful phrase, “The moral code”? It is a very English expression, bringing with it the idea that morality is not only about rules, but a deeper sensitivity to form and etiquette. A code is, by definition, about the translation of covert information. The point, one imagines, is that Bielsa may not have broken any laws or rules but he violated something much deeper: the unwritten principle of British fair play.

It is this sentiment, I suspect, that underpins Bielsa’s bemusement. For what is this unwritten code that he has so egregiously transgressed? How can the poor Argentinian bring himself up to speed with its covert meaning, its underlying imperatives? He has probably watched English football hoping to gain a few clues. But what sits within this code and what doesn’t?

Diving? Well, that seems to be pretty well integrated into the English game; indeed, many regular observers think that English clubs now deploy this tactic with greater scope and sophistication than any comparable league. Surrounding the referee after decisions? The English game doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with this, either, a point that Keown could himself expound upon.

Pulling the shirt of an attacker breaking free on goal? We are in the midst of an epidemic of this kind of rule-breaking right now, a point made superbly by Matt Dickinson in The Times last week. Tax avoidance and transfer window chicanery? It would take a PhD thesis to fully expose what English clubs get up to, yet few of the pundits and former players seem terribly bothered.

Bielsa has been a breath of fresh air and has Leeds playing with verve and beliefANTHONY DEVLIN/PA

Bielsa may also notice that when it comes to broader moral issues, like greedily accepting the flow of money from foreign individuals of — how shall we put this? — questionable repute, the English game has become extremely adept. I am not sure the last time I heard a single TV pundit offer an opinion, solemn faced or otherwise, about any of this. Is this also within the “moral code”?

Or perhaps Bielsa has come to the conclusion — and I wouldn’t blame him — that the term “moral code” is English football’s answer to the Bermuda Triangle: a set of ethical instructions that seem entirely real to the person asserting them but which seem to shimmer and shift, and then disappear altogether, whenever you try to find them, or define them, or pin them down in any way. The moral code, one may almost say, is the cryptographical equivalent of hypocrisy.

Leaving this to one side, however, can we at least agree that, stripped of the jealousy and intrigue, Bielsa has been a breath of fresh air in English football? Few could dispute that Leeds are playing with verve and belief, leading the Championship by four points. And this transformation has taken place, it is worth emphasising, without a significant change in personnel, constructed instead upon a deep understanding of tactics and a marvellously idiosyncratic willingness to exploit tiny advantages.

Players are reportedly weighed every morning to discover lean mass, fat mass and bone mass. The length of the grass at the training ground is measured regularly. The intensity of the training sessions, and the meticulousness of the video analysis, often individualised for each player, is becoming the stuff of legend. Bielsa has his own bed at the training ground and a personal kitchen; clearly a man who regards coaching as not only a profession but as a vocation.

Perhaps my favourite story of the season so far was Leeds’s trip to Norwich City in August, where they found that the away dressing room had been painted “deep pink”. The Norwich coaching staff had apparently learnt that pink has the effect of lowering testosterone and hoped to blunt the ambition of Leeds. Bielsa, for his part, offered some cryptic comments on the concept of desire — “Men can’t say that women are not a source of stimulation” — and then led his team to a 3-0 victory. Best of all, he then insisted that his own players clean the dressing room until it was spotless. “He wants to change this mentality — that we are [now] clean,” Ezgjan Alioski, the Leeds winger, said.

But let us finish with what has inevitably become known as “Spygate”. I can sympathise with the view that the English game may, at some point, wish to change the rules to specifically prohibit teams from watching each other’s training sessions.

We learn from the Bundesliga that a drone was sent by Werder Bremen to observe a Hoffenheim training session last December. I am guessing few people would wish to see an escalating arms race of surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies in the English professional divisions.

For the time being, however, I can’t help shrugging my shoulders at an attempt to legally gain intelligence upon opponents, sending a colleague to a public space to take notes. And I rather admire Bielsa’s honesty for fronting up when questioned.

If it turns out that fences were smashed, or computers hacked, that would obviously change things. In the meantime, the real mystery — to me, anyway — is why the Derbyshire constabulary felt it was an appropriate use of police time to send officers to the “scene”.

Don’t the police, and indeed English football, have more serious issues to address?
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by Genghers »

Spot on. Would love to see Lampard questioned about the AVB comments regarding his time at Chelsea.

Wonder if Derby are covering the fences this week?
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by Gandalf »

Another article from the Telegraph.

The “spygate” episode between Leeds United and Derby County that has provoked such frenzied debate will doubtless have raised one or two wry smiles at Manchester City.

For years at their old Carrington training ground before the move to the maximum-security, £200 million City Football Academy in 2014, City’s nemesis was a public footpath from which just about anyone could enjoy a reasonable view of first-team training sessions.

Some budding City bloggers would take the opportunity to provide daily fitness updates among other revealing bulletins, although, in truth, tactics being divulged became much less of a problem than images of fights and fisticuffs, usually involving Mario Balotelli it must be said, being plastered all over the back pages of newspapers.

City lobbied the local council to help, only to be met with a shrug of the shoulders and laborious lectures about public rights of way. In their desperation, they ended up erecting several large white screens but the photographers started bringing stepladders and were invariably rewarded for their ingenuity with more juicy shots as the club’s power brokers banged collective heads in frustration.

No laws were broken. Private property was not trespassed on. The problem was not prying eyes but a lack of privacy at Carrington, and, ultimately, is that not also pretty much the issue at Derby’s Moor Farm training ground?

Lampard was unimpressed by Bielsa's admission CREDIT: CAMERASPORT

Leeds have apologised to their Championship counterparts and said that they will be having a quiet word with their manager, Marcelo Bielsa, about his decision to send a scout to spy on Derby’s training at Moor Farm last Thursday, 24 hours before the clubs played each other at Elland Road.

But what, honestly, has he done wrong?

For all the righteous anger of Derby’s manager, Frank Lampard, would the club not be better channelling their efforts into rethinking security around the perimeter fence where Bielsa’s subordinate was standing, given that the trees and bushes that run along Morley Road obviously offer inadequate protection from unwanted observers?

The spy apparently came equipped with pliers, but, contrary to reports, Derbyshire Police confirmed there was no damage to the fence. There was nothing illegal here, no arrest was made. The Football Association is investigating, but what could it possibly charge Bielsa with – using his initiative and imagination?

Ah, but a line was crossed, it broke the code of sporting etiquette, say English football’s morality police.

Well, this is where we really do venture into uncomfortable territory and the realms of hypocrisy. Lampard, for one, might want to choose his words carefully. He suggested after Derby’s 2-0 defeat by Leeds that Bielsa’s actions were tantamount to “cheating” and was very clear in his own mind that they were “wrong” and it was not the way to go about trying to gain “a sporting advantage”.

Lampard played under Jose Mourinho, who was not averse to bending the rules CREDIT: AP

In light of that, it would be particularly interesting to know if Lampard ever challenged Andre Villas Boas when they were at Chelsea together over the “incognito” spying missions to opposition training grounds that the Portuguese has admitted to being sent on as a member of Jose Mourinho’s backroom staff at Stamford Bridge. Or when Lampard talks about “sporting advantage”, did he raise the alarm and scream “immorality” when Mourinho flouted a Uefa stadium ban when the manager was smuggled in and out of Chelsea’s dressing room in a laundry basket during a Champions League tie against Bayern Munich in April 2005? Lampard scored twice that day in a 4-2 win.

Integrity in sport is important, and it stands to reason that if you give people an inch, they will often end up taking a mile, but it is necessary to establish what constitutes cheating and what is fair game and, equally, to strive for a little perspective.

In a week when the crisis at Bolton Wanderers deepened, Blackpool continue to be put through the ringer and some damning accusations were levelled at the FA by former Leeds employee, Lucy Ward, about the sexual discrimination case she won against her former club in 2016, perhaps the moral outrage that has greeted “spygate” would be better directed elsewhere.
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by Gurj »

Gandalf wrote: Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:41 am Here you go.

I can understand why Marcelo Bielsa appears to be more than a little bemused. He sent a colleague to watch the training of upcoming opponents on Thursday — in my view, a rather sensible thing to do — and he has found himself in the middle of one of the great moral panics of the season.

The Leeds United head coach has been accused of “cheating”, of “chicanery” and of “bringing the game into disrepute”. Jermaine Jenas, the former Tottenham Hotspur and England midfielder, said: “I’m disgusted . . . It’s obviously common in Argentina and I’d rather it stayed there.” Frank Lampard, the manager whose Derby County side were the subjects of the “spying” and lost 2-0 to Leeds on Friday night, said: “This one is over the line and it’s not just a toe over the line. It’s a hop, skip and a jump over the line.”

Perhaps the most pithy perspective, and the one most in keeping with the general tone, was offered by Martin Keown. The former Arsenal captain looked outraged when he said that Bielsa had, wait for it, “broken the moral code”.

Young Leeds fans bring some much-needed levity to the situation during Leeds’s victory over DerbySIMON COOPER/PA

Isn’t that a wonderful phrase, “The moral code”? It is a very English expression, bringing with it the idea that morality is not only about rules, but a deeper sensitivity to form and etiquette. A code is, by definition, about the translation of covert information. The point, one imagines, is that Bielsa may not have broken any laws or rules but he violated something much deeper: the unwritten principle of British fair play.

It is this sentiment, I suspect, that underpins Bielsa’s bemusement. For what is this unwritten code that he has so egregiously transgressed? How can the poor Argentinian bring himself up to speed with its covert meaning, its underlying imperatives? He has probably watched English football hoping to gain a few clues. But what sits within this code and what doesn’t?

Diving? Well, that seems to be pretty well integrated into the English game; indeed, many regular observers think that English clubs now deploy this tactic with greater scope and sophistication than any comparable league. Surrounding the referee after decisions? The English game doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with this, either, a point that Keown could himself expound upon.

Pulling the shirt of an attacker breaking free on goal? We are in the midst of an epidemic of this kind of rule-breaking right now, a point made superbly by Matt Dickinson in The Times last week. Tax avoidance and transfer window chicanery? It would take a PhD thesis to fully expose what English clubs get up to, yet few of the pundits and former players seem terribly bothered.

Bielsa has been a breath of fresh air and has Leeds playing with verve and beliefANTHONY DEVLIN/PA

Bielsa may also notice that when it comes to broader moral issues, like greedily accepting the flow of money from foreign individuals of — how shall we put this? — questionable repute, the English game has become extremely adept. I am not sure the last time I heard a single TV pundit offer an opinion, solemn faced or otherwise, about any of this. Is this also within the “moral code”?

Or perhaps Bielsa has come to the conclusion — and I wouldn’t blame him — that the term “moral code” is English football’s answer to the Bermuda Triangle: a set of ethical instructions that seem entirely real to the person asserting them but which seem to shimmer and shift, and then disappear altogether, whenever you try to find them, or define them, or pin them down in any way. The moral code, one may almost say, is the cryptographical equivalent of hypocrisy.

Leaving this to one side, however, can we at least agree that, stripped of the jealousy and intrigue, Bielsa has been a breath of fresh air in English football? Few could dispute that Leeds are playing with verve and belief, leading the Championship by four points. And this transformation has taken place, it is worth emphasising, without a significant change in personnel, constructed instead upon a deep understanding of tactics and a marvellously idiosyncratic willingness to exploit tiny advantages.

Players are reportedly weighed every morning to discover lean mass, fat mass and bone mass. The length of the grass at the training ground is measured regularly. The intensity of the training sessions, and the meticulousness of the video analysis, often individualised for each player, is becoming the stuff of legend. Bielsa has his own bed at the training ground and a personal kitchen; clearly a man who regards coaching as not only a profession but as a vocation.

Perhaps my favourite story of the season so far was Leeds’s trip to Norwich City in August, where they found that the away dressing room had been painted “deep pink”. The Norwich coaching staff had apparently learnt that pink has the effect of lowering testosterone and hoped to blunt the ambition of Leeds. Bielsa, for his part, offered some cryptic comments on the concept of desire — “Men can’t say that women are not a source of stimulation” — and then led his team to a 3-0 victory. Best of all, he then insisted that his own players clean the dressing room until it was spotless. “He wants to change this mentality — that we are [now] clean,” Ezgjan Alioski, the Leeds winger, said.

But let us finish with what has inevitably become known as “Spygate”. I can sympathise with the view that the English game may, at some point, wish to change the rules to specifically prohibit teams from watching each other’s training sessions.

We learn from the Bundesliga that a drone was sent by Werder Bremen to observe a Hoffenheim training session last December. I am guessing few people would wish to see an escalating arms race of surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies in the English professional divisions.

For the time being, however, I can’t help shrugging my shoulders at an attempt to legally gain intelligence upon opponents, sending a colleague to a public space to take notes. And I rather admire Bielsa’s honesty for fronting up when questioned.

If it turns out that fences were smashed, or computers hacked, that would obviously change things. In the meantime, the real mystery — to me, anyway — is why the Derbyshire constabulary felt it was an appropriate use of police time to send officers to the “scene”.

Don’t the police, and indeed English football, have more serious issues to address?
Thank you Gandi.
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by weasel »

Certainly interesting to see that all the managers that have come out against it are managers that have achieved nothing. Being a little unethical to give their side a potential edge is possibly what separates the winners from the also-rans
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by SG90 »

I saw Fat Frank on ssn earlier still speaking about it at the press conference. I wonder if anyone asked about Chelsea and AVB? :duno:
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by SG90 »

Fat Frank still lying, Bielsa open and honest. And that is why he is the bigger and better man. :tup:
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by Cjay »

Starting to get pathetic now, you lost Frank, you could have had the whole Derby team and coaching staff at our training and youd still have lost.

The fact that you, a man whose father, Uncle, cousin were all professional players before you yet you claim not to know about all the dirty grubby things that go on in football is nonsense, your Uncle is hardly squeaky clean (and i like Arry).

And players who you played with at International level like Michael Owen knew all about it but you didnt?

Despite your family connections, despite AVB having it as public knowledge in papers , he even wrote a book about it when he was at Spurs, but you didnt know that? Bollocks.

AVB was always Joses spy, that was well publicized in Portugal before he even got to Chelsea, what did you think he was going to do when he came to Chelsea? make the tea?

Dont like hypocrisy, dont like lying, if Frank didnt know then he must walk around with his eyes shut and his fingers in his ears.

Give it up Frank, your an international footballer whose actually quite liked, you got schooled in the dark arts by a football genius, learn from it, dont try and take the moral high ground, lord knows a simple google of your name makes that laughable.
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by weasel »

The thing is opponents would have known AVB was there spying but they would have simply expected it. At the most they would have simply escorted him out of their training facilities but probably quite likely they would have simply ignored him and simply got on with doing what they were doing. They certainly wouldn't have made themselves a laughing stock by reporting it to the police and then claiming it affected them after they lost.
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Re: Spying Accusation !!!

Post by gessa »

In that , he says about the Chelsea spying "I certainly wasn't aware of it and I don't believe it at all,

then adds "Certainly not in the form that it happened this time."

Well , if you don't believe it happened, how would you know what form it happened.
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