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Football

16th Jan 2019

Stuart Pearce has an absolutely bats**t solution for the Leeds United spygate row

Wayne Farry

stuart pearce

The incident now formally known as ‘spygate’ continues to rumble on

Since Leeds United manager Marcelo Bielsa admitted last Friday that he did in fact direct a member of his staff to covertly spy on Derby County’s training ground on Thursday.

We have had people describing the act as “cheating”, people saying that Bielsa broke the “moral code of the game” and that, generally, he was a mean man who shouldn’t have done something so dastardly.

In the last few days though things had died down a little bit. It’s 2019, so the news cycle moves like a conveyor belt of shit. Why talk about Bielsa and his hilarious antics when Donald Trump has spelled hamburgers “hamberders”, you know?

Well, it appears Stuart Pearce didn’t get the memo that everyone else had moved onto pastures and stories new.

Appearing on Sky Sports’ The Debate, Pearce was asked by host Geoff Shreeves if people should not just accept the spying as a part of a different football culture.

Pearce response was quite possible the last thing we expected him to say.

“I think if it’s not right and proper, it’s not right and proper – whatever country you come from,” said Pearce in what was a very normal intro, presumably uttered to make what followed even more insane.

“It’ll be interesting to see what the punishment by the FA. As we’ve said, we’ve not seen anything as clear cut as this before.”

All very sensible still, but getting there. Then he said it.

“If it was me – the team that was affected most was Derby – I’d reverse the scoreline,” he said, with his own mouth.

Shreeves responds: “Really?”

” Yep, yep,” he steadfastly replies, although you can see his eyes flicker as he realises that he now has to back this up with something else. “I like ‘let the punishment fit the crime’.”

You can watch the clip in all it’s mindless glory below. Please enjoy responsibly. We’re currently on our 600th viewing this morning.