Saint86

A bunch of fans going up and streaming it live for public access on the internet would be brilliant...

Hellberg likely gone by Christmas. Absolute joke of a manager, and he's already played his crying card.

Get what you deserve boro, get ready for next season because the saints will be gunning for you.

I only know one Leeds fan, he messaged me immediately to say it was a harsh punishment and extend sympathies for it. Never had an issue with Leeds fans tbh, they were classy on the tube coming back from the 23/24 play off final as well.

I have wondered this. It's the Ipswich game at Eastleigh that makes me suspicious.

I don't disagree overly. Boro getting promoted opens up the EFL to more potential legal challenges. Next year in the prem will be brutal to survive in. Spurs won't be the mess they are again under de zerbi, forest won't have a European distraction and are likely to make some mega money on players like MGW and Anderson - and those 2 players show their recruitment is solid. Palace maybe will struggle? But then equally, they've had mateta out half the season, guehi left them in Jan, they've been distracted by Europe, and glasner has already announced he's checked out... The league was a mere distraction for them. Promotion could really be a mixed blessing this season. But we do absolutely have to get promoted next year. Could this be a bit like Leeds getting beaten by us, having a great year in the champ, and then getting promoted and staying up?

Southgate is probably the perfect opposite of tonda, son in law choir boy off the pitch, tactically inept on it, and a bottler to boot. No thanks.

Should Leeds have sacked bielsa?

The players can't really be that angry with him in truth. Not if they engage their brains. Before he came in they were staring at relegation... So they can't really blame him for fluffing up a promotion chance they wouldn't have had without him 🤷 . In summary, they were shit without him, incredible with him, and then he shit the bed and we went full circle... They make a fitting group I'd say.

👆👆👆 This in spades. As an aside, is guan still itk? If so, his comments about tonda the other day were interesting I thought.

Not sure that's true. Without Eckert we were nowhere near the playoffs and potentially facing a relegation scrap 🥲. Eckert almost got autos.

Son in law approach is a good summation. Having cocked up the handling of the entire thing, we now seem to have allowed Blackmore to become our public face and conscience... Which sadly is another error as he's just running around attacking the club, condemning Eckert for bullying (with no actual evidence as yet), and calling the club morally repugnant in seemingly every interview / peice he does. None of which is helping the club and is in fact doing the opposite - we need to stop feeding the media scrum and try to stabilise the club and take our own action. The media has already had more than it's pound of flesh, and the club's BBC correspondent doesn't need to keep feeding it with more negative takes about the club.

Mate, are you serious? He has 46 games to watch players etc., by the end of the season - all the data in the world. You've just highlighted his impressive attention to detail and analytical skills to counter players... But apparently you think that's happened without any credit given to his analytical skills 🤦‍♂️ There are some seriously gaslit people at this point tbh. For the love of god, would you lot snap out of the media blitz and realise how out of proportion this has all got, and how warped your perspectives have got. Southampton is your club!!! We broke the rules and scouted opposition training inside an arbitrary window that doesn't exist anywhere else in major European football. A bit naughty, cheating for the EFL rules sure, but fairly minor in significance to many offences that go on inside football, and absolutely amateur hour by the club re execution and handling... but then equally Woop de bloody do - bielsa did it for an entire season (rule or no rule) and he got a 200k fine and no ban. Nothing has significantly changed in terms of the advantage gained in 7years - we have just been stitched up horrendously and given a ludicrous punishment. We should have received a fine and small points deduction and the whole world knows it. But outside this, Eckert remains a class coach on the pitch. And how anyone can dismiss his analytical skills, attention to detail, and his drilling of the side is beyond me. Some people are making out like analysis of players and team tactics offers zero useful evidence until it's the last training day before the game, and then that's the only data that matters... And then trying to say that tonda's run was due to that? So what - hes a superb analyst for that last training session, but then completely useless for the other 99% of data available? (I.e. the actual matches) 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ I guess it was a bloody good job those last sessions showed that all the teams we scouted suffered against 4-2-3-1 formations with target men centre forwards! That was a close call, we'd have been stuck doing 5 at the back with AA up top for the rest of the season if it wasn't for these secret spying sessions - tonda far to clueless to have figured that out without cheating right? 😵 If he is guilty of bullying it's a separate issue. 100% not acceptable. But telling staff to buck up the quality of their work is not bullying. I am yet to see actual evidence of bullying, just more media blitz against the club and further trial by media that our own fans are quite happy to jump onto the bandwagon of. What I've seen is a reference to salt expressing morale uncertainty, and an unrelated reference to Eckert saying to improve the quality of the scouting reports. And ultimately, even now, everyone involved is due a fair hearing on what's actually happened - even parsons 🌚😐. Besides, with this media shit storm, the fa will ban him, almost certainly. The EFL and the fa have to look tough on smaller and vulnerable clubs because they do absolutely sod all to the real cheats.

You'll have to bear with Lighthouse I fear, reading his earlier post I can only assume he's on his way to fratton to grovel for an apology from the fans of our fishy friends over what some of you rapscallions have been writing on here. After that he's likely heading to Wembley to repeat the feat to Boro and Hull fans tomorrow. 😛😝 Said in jest lighthouse, please don't ban me for committing acts of bad banter on the forum (I think we've all had enough of Draconian sanctions this past week 🥲)

I agree with your overall sentiment. Although I am struggling to read 3 and 4 and wonder how on earth parsons is still here.

There appears to be a Phill parsons sized hole at the top of the club. Funnily enough, I'm not even sure that sacking him would change it... We might even be in the territory of "no leadership is better than bad leadership"... Regardless, we need someone serious in at top level, be it as CEO or elsewhere.

The EFL, media, and other clubs smell blood and will want saints to be as weak as possible so that they can keep making hay themselves. So obviously to appease all of those parties, our parsons-esq section of fans will happily prostrate themselves before all an sundry in the hope that they'll stop saying hurty words and start being nice to saints again (albeit when we're in turmoil and plummeting down the football league).

I was pretty proud of our 2nd division side knocking out the champions elect of England, premier league Fulham, and being 82min and a deflected shot away from knocking out man city at wembley - none of which were influenced by any illegal scouting... Did you not enjoy that, were you not proud of it? Those results weren't fake. This was a fantastic team and tonda is a superb footballing coach. We're being hammered in the court of public opinion for scouting opposition training inside an arbitrary window that doesn't exist in any major leagues. Yes it's a bit naughty, yes it's beyond stupid and amateur, but it's not the big deal the press have made it out to be. Bielsa did the exact same thing and didn't get banned by the FA... Let's see what happens in today's world of social media echo chambers and people that struggle more and more to think for themselves rather than doing what they're pressured to do/think. If Boro can gaslight our own fans into comparing Eckert to mason greenwood, i dread to think what the FA will feel empowered to do. The whole thing is a superb example of how readily most people can be manipulated by the media and social media, and the dangers of echo chambers.

I'm not wanting to go down the rabbit hole too far, but I do think labelling it as just "suspicions" is being very very kind to Boro. According to the official report. The same day they first encountered and caught/snapped salt, they also had evidence of him (someone the were yet to encounter) being at Oxford united months earlier in December. So for this to be fully innocent and as it seems - boro had evidence of a junior intern/analyst (that they were yet to encounter, didn't know, and had to go through a process of id'ing) being at another clubs training ground on the very same day that they encountered him, (and before they even knew who he was). See points 15-17 of the report. This is before they allegedly tracked his banking card, before parsons went to Gibson and admitted anything etc. To be true, they would have had to have id'd salt first themselves, then written to all clubs including Oxford, gotten Oxford to track back through their own CCTV from 4months earlier to find someone that looked like salt from the Boro image, and successfully identified Salt and provided that evidence back to Boro for them to present the evidence to the efl - all in a matter of hours on the afternoon / evening of the Thursday 7th. All of which was before this story broke and was in the media etc. I would say that sequence of dates/timings is very unlikely and looks like a smoking gun which hull could potentially use - i.e., would it stand up to a legal scrutiny if Boro were required to supply evidence / messages etc. (in the same way that saints were as part of this charge). It effectively implies that Boro knew who he was and that he'd be there (presumably from from the "whistleblower" (presumably Jason Taylor?)), and that their "media team" was there, ready and waiting with high powered photography equipment to get a snap of him. Which means we were never gaining anything from scouting that training session, and that Boro weren't therefore disadvantaged in the semi final - i.e., result should stand. Hull should be promoted or we should have played the final - but with a hefty fine and -4 points. Sadly, I think Boro will get away with all of this and likely get promoted. But the reality is they really do look to have used saints' indiscretions as their own extra life in the playoffs. Nothing in that excuses us for being idiots and illegally scouting clubs training sessions for an advantage, but the punishment we've received is well OTT... sadly Parsons and co. have committed suicide for the club after the fact on that front. You can probably make the case that Boro being pre-prepared for all of this is part of why their media campaign was so effective as well. They have absolutely hammered saints off the pitch. Parson heading us up was like sending a lamb into the lions dens.

Surely heads start rolling soon..

Don't think they can seriously do that before any legal proceedings with saints are closed. But the rule should obviously be scrapped. If boro are in the league next season, we should do surveillance on their next opponents before every fixture. See if we can catch them at it.

Isn't he one of the ones on here that always starts Character assassination rumours when stuff starts going wrong? Take it with a pinch of salt if i were you. THB was basically ready to have Eckert's babies he was so impressed with him. Players absolutely loved playing under him - you don't go 20unbeaten in the league and beat Arsenal/Fulham if you hate your manager.

Any ban the FA give him will be for England only. If SR let him go, he will be in budesliga next season. He looks to be a top top manager in the making.

Has merits tbf.

Why detonate the club entirely over what is in reality a common place occurrence in the world of football, and for which (in this case) we were set up for, and which we've been trialled in a kangaroo court. The damage has been done to saints regardless of whether we get rid of Eckert and Spors - but our chances of having a good summer transfer window will be a hell of a lot worse without spors, ditto our chances of hiring a good new manager. And similarly, the only reason we were even in the playoffs is because of Eckert and 20 game unbeaten run in the league. The FA may ban Eckert, the players may not want to play for him after this... But the whole league will be desperate for us to sack the best manager in the league for only one reason - because it means we are weaker and will take us out of the picture - What Guan has said on this is absolutely spot on. If we can keep him employed and conduct a reasonable disciplinary process, it should be considered. It is not the time to detonate the entire club because emotions are still raw and the media are saying hurty words.