I would love

[chumba]

All the teams in the league to conspire to ensure the bottom placed team finish on 45 points to relegate cheating Sarries......

[josskaman]

I was thinking this the other day... last game of the season, glos are playing the team in 11th place, who are just ahead of sarries. Glos need a win for the top 4, bit if we loose then sarries get relegated .........

[Steve M]

I was thinking this the other day... last game of the season, glos are playing the team in 11th place, who are just ahead of sarries. Glos need a win for the top 4, bit if we loose then sarries get relegated .........

a 65 v 65 draw with both teams getting a try scoring bonus point turns out to be just enough and everyone's happy ...

[Mark Dudley]

I was thinking this the other day... last game of the season, glos are playing the team in 11th place, who are just ahead of sarries. Glos need a win for the top 4, bit if we loose then sarries get relegated .........

I seem to remember that last time Saracens should have been relegated after the last game of the season the rules were changed...

[MattChelt]

Currently Sarries are on -18 with 17 games left, so a possible 85 more points available, therefore a potential maximum of 67 points. Last season this would have put them in 4th place...

In reality they aren't going to gain maximum points - last season they got 78 points from their 22 games, so 3.55 points per game. Multiplied by 17 remaining games means 60 more points, therefore finish on 42 (10th last year).

Newks relegated last season with 31 points - they were also relegated in 2011/12 with 32 points. With the squad Sarries have (.....) surely they will comfortably get well beyond 30-odd points, but looking at the teams currently towards the bottom of the table, not everybody else will. Has any team been relegated with more than 32 points in a 22-game season???

Much as we don't / won't like it, I can't see Sarries being relegated at the end of the season - it's going to be a case of how far up the table they can get, to possibly get into the Champions Cup again.

[Paul Simmons]

Every game that they play in (outside of Europe) is a farce. Barely worth discussing.

Their squad is as strong and costly as it was in the period that they have been punished for (twice).

FT: you can believe it's just an admin error. I don't. They have proven themselves to be competent in the extreme in their organisation and attention to detail. Strange that they repeatedly seem to get adding up player's salaries and benefits so wrong.

[CMGC]

Yes it was an admin error. Some idiot left info on sites open to journo's who were then able to use it as evidence. If they had done their admin work properly no one would have found the evidence to condem them !!!

[Lebowski]

Every game that they play in (outside of Europe) is a farce. Barely worth discussing.

Their squad is as strong and costly as it was in the period that they have been punished for (twice).

FT: you can believe it's just an admin error. I don't. They have proven themselves to be competent in the extreme in their organisation and attention to detail. Strange that they repeatedly seem to get adding up player's salaries and benefits so wrong.

This. They are cheats and they are still cheating. Because of their systemic and carefully orchestrated cheating:

Other clubs have not achieved what they otherwise might have;
Clubs have lost significant income;
Players have had their dreams and ambitions dashed;
We, the fans, have had our dreams dashed.

People have talked about Exeter, but what about Gloucester? What if our away semi-final last year was against a team with the same resources as us rather than packed to the brim with superstars of the like we could never, ever match? We might have won. We might have gone to Twickenham and won the final. Our profile and income would be massively bigger. We would all be in a very different place. The same could be said of other clubs over the last few years too.

Of course none of this did happen because of a tiny administrative error. An error that has enabled Saracens to stockpile more B&I Lions than all the other Premiership clubs combined. That’s some error!

[simple84]

Great post Lebowski. The whole thing stinks and has tainted the game for me.

There has to be a mid-season review to either restore some trust or expose further cheating.

For me I just can’t see how they are now under the cap and it’s up to us as a collective group of fans from all other clubs to keep raising it, rather than just accepting it. They’ve proven they don’t learn from ‘mistakes’, so they shouldn’t be trusted and must be subject to increased and more regular scrutiny.

[paigntoner]

So as Sarries squad is unchanged. Are we to assume they have taken appropriate salary cuts in order to comply with the cap?