Iron Bru › Forums › Blast Furnace › Saints › Reply To: Saints
Southampton broke the following EFL regulations (note: #127 was brought in specifically following the previous Leeds United / Marcelo Bielsa spying debacle).
EFL Regulation 3.4: the duty for clubs to act towards each other with ‘utmost good faith’.
EFL Regulation 127: the rule that prohibits a club from observing, or attempting to observe, another club’s training session within 72 hours of a scheduled match between the two clubs.
These are both very serious things to breach.
It’s not just the knock-out bit (the play offs), though, that they’ve sullied. They’ve made a mockery of the final Championship table. It is highly improbable that their spying (and therefore also their shitting on the idea of ‘utmost good faith’ towards other clubs) was restricted to the Oxford and Ipswich league matches. There’s just no way you can give them reasonable benefit of the doubt bearing in mind the admitted breaches.
In my opinion, they should finish this particular season on a punitive 0 points (as Sheffield Wednesday did), and everyone else moves up a place in the final table. Therefore Wrexham should be allowed their shot in the play offs, however that could work logistically.
There would even be a case to say that Southampton should be put out of the whole EFL, imho. You can’t have clubs doing this and getting away with a little slap on the wrist. Make them sit on the naughty step and think about what they’ve done, and then start again / try again / rebuild trust with the wider football community (the sum of which, in their case, would mean taking the punishment as a cleaning of the slate, and attempting in good faith to attain EFL status).
Some would say that would unduly punish the fans – but would it? The fanbase would generally take care of itself, I think. There would be those who would be angry and bitter, but any drop off in Southampton supporter numbers would be the club’s fault, and their issue to address. You support whatever happens – you don’t care less because your team is in a lower league (as we very well know).