Leeds United and the topic of Spygate needs no introduction and neither do the baseless fabrications coming from Derby County about bolt cutters, and those who called for a points deduction, despite no actual law or rule being broken by our decision to stand on public ground and let our eyes wander.
With the issue of Spygate now closed following the EFL’s inventive decision to fine up £200,000 – which we accepted to bring the matter to an end – Leeds’ managing director, Angus Kinnear, has finally hit out about the treatment we received from fellow (I believe the phrase these days would be ‘snowflake’) clubs in the division.
Quoted by the Yorkshire Evening Post about our apparent breach of Regulation 3.4 which concerns all dealings must take place with the ‘utmost good faith’, Kinnear blasted those with big mouths for falling foul of the very same regulation they wished to rely on.
“The fact that other clubs chose to publicly make and leak more serious and completely false allegations was ironic when our ultimate charge fell under ‘treating member clubs with the utmost good faith’. The EFL pro-actively asked us whether we wanted to make formal complaints but we decided it was better to be the bigger person, despite clear breaches of the ‘utmost good faith’ standard. While a specific rule on training ground observation will undoubtedly be introduced this summer, it will be interesting to see whether regulation 3.4 becomes more literally applied to matters on the pitch or to the dark arts of the transfer market.”
I made a point of ‘good faith’ myself on this website and suggested the actions of other clubs with the blatant lies they propagated would, in fact, be a 3.4 issue, and plenty of other fans made the same point and made further references to the Daniel James saga when Swansea presumably stopped answering the phone on deadline day despite the lad being with us, and there are plenty of things 3.4 could go to…not least on pitch behaviour.
Image courtesy of Renos – @ItsRenos
https://twitter.com/ItsRenos/status/1089974173722705920
So it’s good to see Kinnear bang that point home, raising transfers in the process, but I completely disagree with the thought of being the bigger club here. If the EFL asked the question, that shows the merit of a complaint and one should’ve been made – even if the only outcome was a soft apology from some soft people.