Matty said:
"Dropping a bollock" suggests it was something we could have avoided and we didn't, so it was our own fault.
Think of it this way, you're asked to go to the shop with a shopping list, one item on which is a shirt. Prior to leaving the house you're told that where the list says "shirt" what is meant is a red shirt, with short sleeves, with a 16 inch neck. You go to the shops, find the right shirtm buy it, and go home. When you arrive, you find that the guidance on the shirt has changed, now the shirt has to be blue, have long sleeves, and a 15 inch neck. Your wife is pissed off and won't cook your tea for the next week, as you got it wrong. Whose fault is this? You did everything you could do, and followed the guidance exactly. Did you "drop a bollock"?
That's a very simplified version of what happened here. The rules stayed the same (buy a shirt), however the guidance before buying the shirt is not the same guidance being used to assess whether the purchase meets the requirements.
Imagine a scenario when you score a perfectly good goal, but the linesman for whatever reason rules it offside, video technology shows that it was onside and should have stood, but nevertheless the goal is not given, the game is lost, and as a consequence we lose the league by one point, the manager is sacked, and after spending a year or so grubbing around for another club ends up managing a bunch of no hopers, relegation follows followed by heavy drinking, divorce and an early death.
You, the player, are sold at the end of the season, after unsuccessful spells at lower league clubs your career ends prematurely and a combination of substance abuse and gambling debts see you declared bankrupt.
The outcomes are there for all to see.
Nobody remembers or cares about the dodgy offside goal and even if you held their hand and led them back to it, seeing how it all joined up they'd not be bothered, what matters in business as in sport are the results of actions.
We failed to anticipate a change in the rules (if change there was), it's not our fault, no reasonable person could expect that! So what? That no reaonable person could expect that! It is what they did, and our guys in the Armani suits with their flow charts failed to predict it, that possibility passed them by.
In the end It does not matter who's fault it was. The outcome is we were fined under FFP, the only Premier League Club to be so fined and we not only suffered the financial consequences of it and the depleted CL squad, but it gave ammunition to our enemies to use it against us, however eroneously, in perpetuity as and when they choose, it is a monstrous bollock.
