trousers

It turns out that University of Derby article was published over a year ago (January 2025) and so it would appear that he returned to Saints after his stint at Villa (given he appears in Tonda's February 2026 manager of the month group photo). That said, it doesn't rule out him leave Saints again between March 2026 and 'now' of course (he didn't appear in the March and April MotM group photos... )

Only about a dozen times... 😁

Yep, the only difference then was that we wore white shorts rather than black, to avoid a clash with Hull's black shorts. One assumes Hull will switch from black to orange shorts if they're the designated away side at Wembley.

Seems a bit odd to me that the EFL require clubs to coordinate pre-ticket sales info. All we publicised was our own ticket sales timetable (which will inevitably be different to Hull's anyway)... Just a bit of admin info really. I can understand why the EFL would want to coordinate the actual sale of tickets, but cannot see any reason to need to align the publication of practical / logistical info in the lead up to that. Probably nothing in it but still a tad bizarre IMO.

If the colours of the 'special' playoff final merch on the OS is anything to go by, we'll be in our home kit... https://store.southamptonfc.com/play-off-final/play-off-final/

Yep, good points. I'd even go as far as suggesting that @SaintlyAnd puts his ex-analyst friend in touch with the club as it sounds like he has some relevant intel that could be used in our defence 👍🏻

Cheers for the insights... Tallies with what some of us are suspecting... i.e. that these junior analysts are, to a certain degree, operating to their own 'rules' and timetables with half an eye on impressing those further up the chain of command.

FFS... I was nailed on to win the sweepstake!

Can I have 19 bites in the sweepstake please? Cracking effort so far to be fair 👍🏻

You're assuming he's not faking the "guess" bit...

When I'm away on business I use my own bank card and claim it back via expenses

I was wondering if this is one of those "I have some inside info but I can't post it as fact, so I'll phrase it as a hypothesis so it doesn't look like I know something" type posts...

The point is, they shouldn't need to be "bothered" about it if all clubs follow the EFL rules...

Most unlike us to be that amateurish, especially when it comes to getting timings right... Bit like training surveillance embargo windows....

I'm still holding onto the theory that we routinely send these junior staff out to do this kinda thing, and tell them to not encroach on the 72 hour embargo period, but, on this occasion, he either unwittingly got his timings mixed up or knowingly visited during the embargo period without the club knowing. I can't believe we'd tell a lad to go and record a training session in relatively plain sight during the embargo period. If we did, then we deserved a proportionate punishment....

The cropped photo in the Mail looks like it's from the club's the February MotM photo to me...? https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/eckert-wins-manager-of-the-month-award

Ah, fair enough... so looks like he returned to Saints after his stint at Villa... bang goes the "he wasn't employed by us anymore" theory then.... hey ho...!

I intially thought when I found and posted this Derby University article a few days ago that it indicated that Salt was now with Villa, having been at Saints previously, but, on reflection, given Salt is in the Februray manager of the month group photo with Tonda, it does indeed seem that he has since returned to Saints. That said, I guess this article could have been written in, say, March, having potentially left Saints for Villa shortly after the February photo, given Salt reportedly doesn't appear in the subsequent March and April manager of the month group photos....? Is it possible to deduce the first publication date of a webpage?

As others have pointed out, the league rule says: "You're not allowed to do it. Full stop"... The rule doesn't say: "You're not allowed to do it, unless you're on public land"... i.e. it doesn't matter what the legal entitlement is, the league rules trump that, don't they...?

If Middlesbrough are still attempting to pervert the course of justice and/or unduly influence the independent panel (as reported in this article) then why no announcement from the EFL that they are launching an investigation into their obviously breach of the 'acting in good faith' regulation...?

Why would we need to spy on Pompey? Surely we'd already know how shite they are?

😂 That probably sums up the severity of our misdemeanor quite accurately!

😂😂😂