CSA96

Eckert walked out of the press conference apparently. Kept getting loads of questions on the spying investigation even after he'd addressed some previous questions. Club press officer told the media there's not much more to be said, Tonda has already addressed it, there's a club statement out and to move on and talk about today's game and Tuesday's game or they'd be leaving. Someone tried again and Tonda and the press officer left

Thought Hellberg came across well there tbf. Said that it's not a motivation because PL status is on the line and that's enough for the players. Then said he has no issue with the Saints fans or players because they didn't know what was happening and it wasn't them doing it. Said if anything he feels a bit sorry for them being caught up in the middle of everything and that our club shouldn't put its players and fans in this position

He has a speech impediment. Fair play to him for actually accepting interviews rather than refusing them (and he was actually quite reasonable with his response to the spygate baiting from Sky!)

First leg summary: Better performance? Boro Better result? Saints All that domination and they couldn't even score a goal One game shootout at St. Mary's now, win our home game and we're back at Wembley

Shea Charles getting ready

Well, complete and utter domination for Boro All over us on the possession stats. All over us on touches in the box. Had the most shots of any team this season in a single half ...and yet, they still are not winning. Disappointing for them

Boro fans booing our players already, sounds like Saints fans responding with 'We are Southampton, we'll spy where we want'

Classic BBC stuff. Lewis Coombes doing the same last night, bleating on about Saints damaging their goodwill and public perception as a result of employee misconduct. Err, you work for the BBC mate, you would know...

Matchday. Woke up at 5am here in Philadelphia and now anxiously awaiting team news and trying to find a way to watch the game On 'spygate' - I am disappointed we've been caught doing this but I really do feel some of the pearl-clutching is overblown. Is it cheating? Yes it is, but so is diving, so is pretending to have a head injury so the referee doesn't let the opponent keep coming up the field, so is selling your women's team to another company controlled by your owner to skirt the financial rules, so are a litany of other blatant financial doping methods Saints have not introduced skullduggery and cheating to football. Somebody went and stood on a hill in a public place and tried to find out what formation the other team was playing because they were told to (presumably) and they felt it would aid their career and their employer's performance. It's not the crime of the century. Clubs are at this stuff all of the time, we were just daft enough to get caught and not use a third party to create a larger grey area around what was going on and give ourselves more of a margin for error We've cheated, we'll be dealt with and rightly so, but I find it so hard to reconcile with the 'I can't get excited for these games' and 'our unbeaten run feels hollow' sentiments. This is small fry in the grand scheme of things and it'll all blow over Now, I hope we beat Boro and beat them comprehensively. I hope Finn Azaz scores a goal and goads their fans. I hope our supporters are giving them the binoculars celebration by the time the tie is over. It's certainly made the game more emotionally charged on the Boro side and, provided it's channelled in the right ways, I have no issue with that. These ties are meant to be spicy and this one no doubt will be UTS

My first reaction when the story broke was to laugh because 'Saints staff caught hiding in bush' is so silly. Yes, I do think it's poor form and the club shouldn't have done it, but I'm not going to clutch pearls over it. It will fire their crowd up a bit more, I don't think it makes a big difference to the mindset of either group of players to be honest That aside, I hope that we beat Middlesbrough over the two legs fair and square on the pitch, as our fans give Boro's away following the binoculars celebration as their season comes to an end at St Mary's while our support can sing about a second trip to Wembley this season A lot of the fallout / reaction online is pretty amusing and it's added some pantomime and spice to the fixture, which I really don't mind

Leeds got a £200k fine in 2019 for the same behaviour before their playoff semi-final and a formal warning to not do it again

Daily Mail: Middlesbrough have caught what is thought to be a Southampton first-team analyst allegedly recording their training session from a bush, in a sensational repeat of the Marcelo Bielsa ‘spygate’ furore. Daily Mail Sport can reveal that an individual was spotted and approached by club staff on Thursday morning at Boro’s Rockliffe Park training centre, 48 hours before Kim Hellberg’s side host Tonda Eckert's Saints in the Championship play-off semi-final first leg. It is claimed the male deleted video and pictures from his mobile phone and refused to identify himself. He then left the site of the training ground and made his way into the nearby Rockliffe Hall Hotel, owned by Boro chairman Steve Gibson, before changing clothes in a toilet and leaving the area. It is understood Boro have contacted the EFL, given spying on opposition training would breach the League’s rules. We are aware of the individual allegedly involved and his public profile pages identify him as a current employee of Southampton.

Yeah, sounds that way. Ties in with the reports of an unnamed club captain going to his chairman to tell him the players were concerned about the coaching they were receiving. Alfie House has also shared those thoughts too, saying that from what he knows, the players didn't feel like they knew exactly what he wanted, subs going into games not understanding what's expected of them when they come onto the pitch etc. And then when Tonda came in, I remember THB and many others saying that Tonda's coaching had 'clarified things' for them and given them direction. So can only conclude that they all felt a bit lost and unsure of themselves with his coaching and lack of direction, which led to the kind of directionless football that we were all watching where they'd default back to old habits, before Tonda told them 'I don't want you doing that, I want you doing this' and trained it into them more tightly

55:39 onwards is Southampton reflections for the last 25 minutes. He's very honest Basically saying he was too loose with the coaching and style of play and the players defaulted back to Russell Martin coaching principles and he wanted them to leave that in the past. Sounds like he tried to encourage them to have freedom but didn't give enough direction Interestingly also says he struggled with the size of the squad and the amount of activity during the transfer windows, as well as admitting that he should've used Jack Stephens - and others - differently to how he did

Really? People around us were commenting on how he was getting up close to Stewart when we had the ball and working hard to get back in between Bragg and Jander when we didn't have the ball. He won a bunch of little flicks and 50/50s by getting stuck in. Didn't think he was a passenger at all today, to be honest (although he does have days where the game passes him by, but I think that's most No. 10s apart from the very, very elite ones)

Rolf Bogli is into his 60s now and has also stepped back from his role in the MALI Group (ML’s umbrella for his various companies and investments) Sounds like he’s just choosing to wind down his working life and she’s chosen to take the opportunity to represent herself now as far as Saints is concerned Echo the above, it’ll be a sad day when Markus Liebherr’s children and grandchildren are fully out of the picture. Not overly common to have people around for the best part of two decades nowadays, especially foreign owners and those who appear to be decent people at that Always think it’s nice that his name still gets sung despite it being 17 years on from the takeover

Still can't embed tweets here for some reason, so sharing this from football finance expert Kieran Maguire The biggest concern for Leicester is that they have already cashed in on future instalments from Premier League parachute payments and player sale instalments by selling those sums to MacQuarie bank. Borrowed a net £85m in the last two seasons, and wage bill of over £100m in the Championship last time they were there. At end of 2017/18 Leicester had accumulated profits of £25 million, by end of 2024/25 that had turned into an accumulated loss of £375 million.

Looked leggy from the first whistle. It’s ok, it happens. They’ve put plenty of credit in the bank with a 20 game unbeaten run to salvage what looked like a lost season in January As said earlier, give me some disappointment now over a crushing final day disappointment that means the manager has to spend all week picking them up for a playoff game

2,400 extra tickets going on sale at 16:30 UK today in case anyone missed out

All Boro, aren't we?

Adam Blackmore: This is now Southampton's best winning run in 130 years