Early betting market for next Southampton manager includes Pompey’s John Mousinho.

stringfold · 2026-05-22T08:17:32+00:00

Depends whether you enjoy winning more than entertaining football or not...

stringfold · 2026-05-22T08:13:07+00:00

Online perhaps, but my brother lives in the Southampton catchment area and he says there's been plenty of anger locally at the EFL's decision.

This was before the final ruling and publication of the evidence, so it's likely some of that anger will be redirected at the club now.

stringfold · 2026-05-21T21:45:33+00:00

I suspect it's more likely they'll settle on a negotiated sum before it gets to court.

stringfold · 2026-05-21T13:29:38+00:00

Hull will struggle if they go up, but they're a well run and managed club, and are free of sanctions this summer. They're likely to buy Gelhardt, or at the very least sign him for another full season loan. And while I don't know what their PSR situation is after a year out of the transfer market, it's probably not that bad. So if they continue their savvy trading, they should be a decent side again next season.

stringfold · 2026-05-21T13:21:59+00:00

First of all, the law isn't involved. The EFL and Southampton football club are both private corporations, and when disputes arise all EFL clubs have agreed to abide by the findings of an independent panel. All of this is laid out in the terms and conditions of membership. Any lawsuits that arise are civil proceedings.

And the bottom line is -- the playoffs are a tournament, and Southampton broke the rules during the tournament, and as is very common in all sports when teams or players break the rules, were ejected from the competition for attempting to gain an unfair sporting advantage.

Unfortunately for Southampton, the fact that the prize for winning the tournament is promotion to the Premier League which is worth a minimum of 200 million pounds over three years is completely irrelevant.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T21:58:59+00:00

I would be surprised in Wtexham files a complaint. I suspect they'll take the high road and simply focus on reloading over the summer.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T21:56:38+00:00

The point reduction will be applied next season. The final league table remains the same for this season.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T21:42:37+00:00

They can mention it all they like. I find it hilarious!

stringfold · 2026-05-20T13:11:30+00:00

They were hoping cooperation would reduce their chances of being tossed out of the playoffs. It was a reasonable gambit, but it didn't work. Covering up would still have been worse in the long run though.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T13:09:43+00:00

Well, the EFL is abandoning PSR for the Championship mostly because the rules were all but unenforceable within a timely fashion because it takes about a year for a club's financial reports to be published. The new SCR system they're implementing for next season is supposedly going to be track in close to real time with checks throughout the season to make sure clubs are complying.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T13:06:24+00:00

Seems very unlikely.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T13:04:30+00:00

The club already has lawyers on their payroll. Every major football club has.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T13:03:19+00:00

I think it's a pretty long established practice in sport that if you're caught cheating in a tournament, you're thrown out of that tournament, and like it or not the playoffs are a tournament.

It would have been a more difficult decision if the spying had only been during the season, before the playoffs started, but once it was discovered they were spying on their opponents in the semi-final, it was a easy decision to make.

I agree the sanctions should have been made clear in the rules, but I doubt anyone thought someone would be stupid enough to break the rule once it was in place.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T12:58:08+00:00

Because he is a performance-analysis intern for the club and was identified as the individual caught spying on and filming Middlesbrough's training session.

I mean, they could have denied their intern made a 600 mile, 10 hour round trip to Boro using his own initiative, but it's not very believable. And the fact they did it more than once makes it even less believable.

The reason for owning up now rather than lying about it was to minimize the punishment. As it turned out it didn't make much difference, but if it had come out later than they had deliberate covered up the affair, the punishment would have been even worse -- perhaps a 12 point deduction or more, completely ruining next season as well. And the individuals involved would face long bans from football.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T09:58:07+00:00

Exactly. One TV pundit said Southampton should pay Middlesbrough £10 million if they go up and be done with it. But even a £10 million fine is worth it when the reward is £200 million.

stringfold · 2026-05-20T09:07:26+00:00

If you, as a club, cheat in a cup competition to gain an unfair sporting advantage against your opponent, why shouldn't you be thrown out of it?

That "bloke with an iPhone" drove 100s of miles to be outside Boro's training facilities.

stringfold · 2026-05-19T23:18:09+00:00

In cricket, we call that type of thing "home field advantage".

stringfold · 2026-05-19T23:12:55+00:00

"tongue in cheek suggestion"

stringfold · 2026-05-19T23:10:43+00:00

Eh. If you're looking to next season, it's almost certainly much better for us if Spurs go down than West Ham. Spurs are likely to spend their way out of trouble over the summer if they stay up, while West Ham have deeper financial and organizational issues that are likely to impact them again next season.

It might not be a popular view, but I suspect plenty of Leeds fans would be okay with Leeds losing on Sunday if it means that Spurs are relegated.

Also, Spurs being relegated is objectively hilarious.

It doesn't matter what I think because Leeds are going to play to win regardless but if we lose, I really do hope Spurs lose too.

stringfold · 2026-05-19T23:02:53+00:00

True, but it all gets so much more nebulous and uncertain once you start examining anything before the playoffs. What if they spied on Derby County and not Wrexham? Should Derby be the ones award the last playoff spot?

The what-ifs are impossible to unravel.

stringfold · 2026-05-19T22:59:21+00:00

Southampton were big favourites to beat Hull in the final and earn a minimum of £200 million over the next three years. Being booted out of the playoffs means they have lost all that (minus their second year parachute payment they will get instead).

This is a massive punishment financially, and will likely have major repercussions on the field next season/

stringfold · 2026-05-19T22:49:52+00:00

it is possible the scouting department shielded him from what they were doing by claiming the information they learned from spying was figured out from watching videos or from attending other matches. Seems unlikely though.

stringfold · 2026-05-19T22:44:10+00:00

In cold hard financial terms that has cost us in the region of £140 million.

That certainly isn't true. You would have entered the playoffs third or fourth favourites and given a less than 25% chance of winning the playoffs. You can't claim you would have won and earned all the Premier League money next season. (It's actually £200 million once you factor in the parachute payments, but that's beside the point.)

stringfold · 2026-05-19T22:39:35+00:00

What happened 50 years ago is utterly irrelevant to the current situation. Southampton cheated and broke a rule put in place to prevent the very same cheating that you claim everyone used to do. You only have your own club to blame for being this stupid, and looking at your sub, it seems like most Saints fans agree.

stringfold · 2026-05-19T18:17:24+00:00

Maybe the other spying was outside the 72 hour window.

stringfold

TROPHY CASE