Saint86

I like him, he's very enthusiastic, he's a nice guy, but he's also shown a start lack of independent critical thinking. Let alone the basics of "innocent until proven guilty" re defending the club and fans he makes his living from. Its possible to be both a fan of the club and hold the club to account, but fundamentally he isn't a saints fan, its shown these past couple of weeks, and he's failed the club/fans re spygate imo. He swallowed the media hype and started acting like this was the crime of the century frankly, called the club morally repugnant all over social media and podcasts etc, and acted like Eckert had gone out and shot the pope or something. He completely lost perspective, and rather than do his part as a journalist (dig into facts/dates) or at least try to temper the media storm, he essentially went along with the herd / mob mentality and just started pouring gasoline on the fire. Back in the real world, its fundamentally the same offence as Bielsa (who kept his job and won a fair play award), the club/fans/players/staff have collectively been egregiously punished (I.e., more than enough). And to date, there is still no evidence of Eckert bullying staff... despite Blackmore being incredibly negative about Eckert and basically saying he had to go / position was untenable etc. Maybe he was delirious with the whole Villa thing and took his eye of the ball, but his job relates to Southampton Football club and covering it for the fans. Throughout this time he's failed on journalistic integrity, and failed at impartially protecting the club and fans that deliver him his livelihood. Should Blackmore acknowledge his erroneous handling of the whole affair? Everyone else is apologising and Blackmore has fundamentally jumped on the bandwagon - I do think he's damage his position with the club and with a portion of the fanbase.

It is unfortunately part and parcel of match preparation on the continent / abroad, and is quite literally the work environment he developed within - i.e., its the sort of coach he is 🤷‍♂️. Its only the EFL that has this ridiculous rule - and just look at the Arsenal comments crying about the GKs having penalty taker "cheat sheets"... you start making these stupid rules and all of a sudden people want new rules and start saying things are unfair. The reality is that clubs should be allowed to use these routes if they think they can gleam a benefit out of it - its a competitive sport - Tonda is a winner who was going after any information that he can gleam from analytical work. All these rules should be stripped away imo - Otherwise where do you draw the line? Should we just ban analysts outright, not allow keepers to study past penalties or keep notes, or stop clubs monitoring real time health data? Not all clubs can afford those resources or implement it equally right? so must impact the integrity of the game...

As @James G posted in the spygate thread, if we keep Tonda we will move past this and it will largely be forgotten. Boro, though, will aways be remembered as the side that spent circa 270days in the top 2, lost the semi final, and lost the final of the playoffs. Thats a forever pub quiz question that will be attached to them forever 😄

There is actually a post on there attacking both Eckert and Solak's grasp of the English language 😄

I think that fundamentally, their problem is that they're from Middlesborough. A terminal condition. Will be funny when we smash their promotion hopes to pieces next season.

Obviously Boro have a thread on this, apparently he's a psychopath 😄 Tonda speaks | FMTTM

Yeah, but if he backs Tonda (and fights for / saves his career in England with the FA), then he's potentially got an elite manager with a huge debt to him. That's a fairly unique occurrence in football. A lot of ifs and maybes to come, but this could be the start of something special for saints for the next few years - one part of that is the fans rallying together and being behind the manager and club.

I mean, I'd re-sign him for the money. Ballard, Larin,, Stewart is a decent from 3 for this level. Value for money, Ballard has his whole career ahead of him, is home grown, and we have a sell on fee discount.

Solak doing his part to say the right words to try and galvanise the fanbase and club there... There is a way forward where everyone pulls together... Who knows, get promoted next season and it may even carry in into the prem and repair the bond between SR and the fans. As a club and fans, we have been guilty of trying to be media darlings and everyone's favourite underdogs for years - that isn't an option for us anymore. May do us some good.

Because our CEO had already admitted to everything.

Any legal case against the EFL is not going to start with "we accept everything, and we acknowledge the panel's right to award the punishment". If anything, i would read it as us trying to mitigate any further damage, draw a line under it, keep Tonda and the coaching/analyst teams in place, and discourage the FA from bringing in external oversight of first team coaching/scouting departments. I.e., we could make this very messy for the EFL, lets all just move on.

The biggest surprise i get with social media, is its repeated ability to surprise me with just how thick most of the population are.

It's a pretty shit opening to a legal response. Basically accepting everything that matters and saying the panel was entitled to reach the punishment it did. Everything else in there is just bitter last words that carry no weight after the fact.

Think it's really important to remember Parsons and co were on half time and very little has moved on since last week. He works really hard and loves the club don't forget. That's all that matters when overseeing a total business and sporting calamity of this scale.

Salt and Taylor, surely?

Reads like the club have just browsed the spygate thread on here and rehashed a few points into a statement... They haven't done that right?

Yeah, very telling that they've now released the evidence and there still isn't any hard evidence of Eckert either instructing the scouting or of him bullying staff members.

Great minds... 😆😅

Reminiscent of Southgate Vs Italy. Fully bottled it. Failed to step up second half when psg were tiring, yielded the entire pitch and possession to psg. If arsenal had won it would have been a travesty.

They are a weird crowd, quite why they're still going on about us I don't know. They're fools as well, all they are doing is adding spice on our favour for the next match - they got out of the whole affair with everything they wanted from us - whereas us as fans (and the players), and indeed the whole squad will be going for them all guns blazing. You think they'd stop feeding that fire at some points but no 😅

Sadly my friend, it's more likely than not that the FA will use this chance to go in two footed on saints (and therefore look like they are doing something to protect the game), because they won't tackle serious offenders (due to corruption or cowardice). Smaller and less connected clubs have always been easy pickings in the UK, and saints have never been that well liked by the establishment. I have been one of the most vocal for tonda to stay, but even I expect deep down for us to get bent over... And with that, I fully expect the FA to drag it out as long as possible and blow up our summer / pre season plans. Wouldn't be that surprised if they go after spors, or even try to install an external over sight committee of our scouting/analytics departments to boot. Blood is in the water, saints look weak and vulnerable, people will take us for all they can in any aspect of the footballing world. It's on the club to be robust and stand up to that, and so far there have been precious few signs of that happening (at least that we can publically see). (I'm a cheerful soul aren't I 🤣🫣)

Maguire is interesting to listen to, and he's good at headlining certain data... but equally, he specifically headlines the worst data because that's what gets him air time and money. Re Saints, he's neglected to mention potential incoming fee instalments seemingly (or the media that are quoting him have), and instead just highlighted what saints owe... In reality, i'd suggest any team that's spent tens to hundreds of millions on transfers in the past 3years owes similar amounts. It becomes an issue when there is no money coming in... Like Leicester or west ham, both of which have reportedly cashed in on future transfer instalments. I think i am right in saying this interview took place with Blackmore / solent? in which case its another example of them jumping on a negative outlook and not doing even a basic 30min bit of research to look at saints liabilities and incomings, and either put proper questions to Maguire, or challenge Maguire for a more balanced outlook.

Maybe he can repeat his playing career by joining us in league 1 on -10points in a couple of years and then carrying us to back to back promotions... 😄

Surely that would only emphasis the need to keep the best manager we've had in years and who had us on course for 113points (if our form post switching to a 4-2-3-1 was extrapolated over a season). Also, the clubs finances (and owing £100M in fee installments as a second tier side) is not the fault of the 32year old mananger we appointed halfway through the most recent season. And don't forget, we don't owe all that money this year. We presumably also have other installments coming in from player sales (such as TD and MF last summer). For info, I have made no effort all to fact check this... Incoming fees: The 2025 accounts show a £108M debt on outgoings installments. So Maguire's figure of £99M uses other data. But equally, the MF and TD sales (and others), plus last summer's incoming purchases will all have impacted the numbers. But regardless, I doubt it's as bad as Maguire suggests. Just looking at those numbers: June 25: Outgoing transfer instalments = £108.3M (total) Outgoing transfer instalments = £63.1M (1 year - i.e., now cleared) Incoming transfer instalments = £72.9M (total) Incoming transfer instalments = £44.2M (1 year - i.e., now cleared) Outstanding instalments = -£16.5M (money owed based on historic transfers). Player trading profit last summer = between £60M and £80M. So, re player transfers, we should be in the black when this years accounts get published? Just as important as sorting out transfer liabilities, will be getting wages to a level that is sensible and sustainable for our situation as a parachute team.

The EFL rules are discretionary re cup expulsions. I believe you are referring specifically to ineligible players here? Grimsby for example fielded an ineligible player vs man united in the EFL cup, their result (win) stood, but they were fined. Swindon got kicked out of the EFL trophy for starting a player who was suspended for 7games and using a substitute that wasn't named on their team sheet. This one had a clear impact on the result (from kick off, and from the substitution), the game even had stoppage time when the officials realised - the multiple breaches and clear impact were the deciding factors. Neither case is directly relatable to ours.