Graffito

They didn’t want to be associated with a big fat bird and frankly who does?

Agreed. Calling what TE did “morally repugnant” probably wasn’t a good career move.

Seymour Salt.

Those are my principles and if you don’t like them, well I have others.

Yeah quite a turnaround in 7 years (and not just the Guardian of course)which can’t be explained simply by the introduction post Bielsa of rule 127. The media onslaught instigated by Boro probably helped set the tone. Incidentally, the author of the second article says “The EFL regulation [127] refers to “sporting sanction”. It is hard to see what that could amount to and still be meaningful if it were not to award the game to Middlesbrough.” Does it? Perhaps I’m misreading it the regulation. This is one of the issues. Had the EFL introduced a clear sporting sanction with regulation 127 none of this would have happened. As it was, we know at least one club was stupid enough to think it could observe opposition training during the 72 hour prohibition and simply pay a £200,000 fine.

The Mostyn KC article. Worth a read. He calls the tribunal decision a travesty of justice. https://www.insideworldfootball.com/2026/05/26/op-ed-sir-nicholas-mostyn-kc-soutampton-fc-admiral-byng-is-shot-again/

You can fake intelligence but you can’t fake wit.

I could post a response so blindingly obvious that it might almost insult even someone of your intelligence but I really can’t be bothered.

The club obviously needs a manager that will get promotion next season but it also needs to change what is now widely perceived to be a rotten culture, it needs to get players, fans, sponsors, and the wider community back on board and give the likes of the saints trust opportunities to benefit from association with the club. Gareth Southgate would be well suited to the role. Good leader. Understands the bigger picture. Former England manager. Saints connection. Well connected in world football and highly regarded by the FA. Squeaky clean. And a neat irony, strong Middlesborough connections. I suspect Saints would have little or no chance of getting him and I dunno what he’s doing now, probably fannying around playing golf. Just saying, he fits.

An alternative take on Middlesborough fans, and granted it’s a tiny sample. There were say 15 or 20 in the bar of the hotel we were staying in after the semi final second leg in Southampton. They sat chatting football and drinking lots of beer, the kind of thing I do. One said Saints deserved to win on the night. Another wished us well in the final. Seemed a sound bunch to me, especially compared to some of the head bangers and head the balls we’ve seen at st Mary’s over the years.

From the information in the public domain his position is untenable. I’m surprised he’s still there. You wonder whether that’s more indecision and dithering by SR or whether there’s something else holding it up. Nonetheless, this article for me adds to the sense that we may be losing an excellent coach. (I read the article in the newspaper. This is behind a paywall so can’t help if you don’t have a subscription). https://www.thetimes.com/sport/football/article/tonda-eckert-southampton-spygate-play-offs-dn722kv26

Absolutely. It’s a poor and inflexible rule. Add to that the fact that no penalties were introduced with the rule, the process issues, and the way in which the panel applied the rule (vis apparently treating the play offs as a separate competition from the league) and you get the mess we find ourselves in. They could have just beefed up the penalties for the existing good faith rule, added them to the rule book after Leeds and left it at that.

Southampton Football Club take note - this is how you do humility.

A precedent has been set. Spying in the Play Offs means expulsion from the competition. Spying during the course of a regular season means a deduction of three points, subject to mitigation. Had the EFL thought this all through and made these draconian penalties explicit in the rules when they introduced Regulation 127 none of this spying would have happened, none of the valid questions about process would have occurred and they would not have thoroughly pissed off everyone associated with the play offs except Middlesborough. They have also left themselves open to legal action from the likes of Hull, Wrexham, about which I care not a jot. And while I’m moaning about the EFL, could they not have agreed a proper reciprocal arrangement with the Premier League to the effect that points deductions applied to the following season are applied automatically in whichever league the penalised team finds itself. Sporting sanction seems to be used synonymously with expulsion. Unless sporting sanction is so defined in the EFL rules, then what are points deductions if not sporting sanctions. This might have given the panel a bit more flexibility in applying a sanction that was both punishment and deterrent without applying the disproportionate sanction of expulsion.