Think we only get ‘kicked out’ of the play offs via a ‘3-0 loss’ from the first leg. Can’t just kick us out, as that’s a very case specific punishment, what if the next team to get caught doing this is just mid table or it’s not this late in the season? Then what is the equivalent punishment to being kicked out the play offs? Thats too messy. Losing the offending game 3-0, big fine, maybe a ban from football for 6 months for the people directly involved seems plausible. We’d still launch an appeal that we’d approach the second game differently or whatever, but given how close the games have been between us, it’s a jump to think we could have overturned that deficit regardless.
The punishment will change again if other clubs have evidence against us too though, and it just gets more complex and messy.
Really no idea how it’ll go, and still think it’s massively blown out of proportion but we are exactly the type of club that they’d love to punish severely to put off other clubs doing the same. I also don’t think the massive overreaction, pile in on the witch hunt in the media will help us. They only piss off Southampton if they kick us out, if they don’t, the frenzied pile in from the narrative built up by Boro and their media outlets will be far bigger.