The EFL is worse than Keir Starmer – Southampton Spygate farce is their fault | Football | Sport

It’s been blown up into the kind of espionage scandal James Bond himself would be proud of. One club spies on another in a bid to get an advantage ahead of a game of football worth more than the wealth of a small nation. Southampton have been caught in the act.

Club analyst William Salt has been photographed hiding behind a tree, using his mobile phone to film footage of a Middlesbrough training session. The act of footballing treason took place in the hours before the two clubs clashed in the Championship play-off semi-final, first leg last weekend. In the end, Southampton won through to the final to face Hull City, in a game said to be worth up to £265million to the winners.

And if the culprit in question proves to have helped Southampton return to the promised land, he will certainly have been worth his Salt. Or will he?

The incident has led to an investigation into the circumstances, which involved Salt fleeing the scene when confronted, running into a nearby golf club and changing clothes in the toilet.

The EFL has charged Southampton with a breach of Championship rules. An independent commission could decide to kick them out of the final. Given the game is a week tomorrow (May 23), let’s hope this particular commission works at a faster pace than the one which has been investigating those 115 charges laid against Manchester City, for allegedly breaching spending rules.

But even the notion Southampton could be thrown out of their own competition for what is nothing more serious than an act of mediocre skullduggery is nothing short of preposterous. Salt is alleged to have used a camera phone from a distance.

And whatever information he took back to his manager Tonda Eckert made no difference whatsoever, given the fact Southampton got battered from start to finish, despite squeezing through in extra time.

But what is wrong with managers seeking marginal gains? Elite coaches in various sports have spent years going to extreme measures to find that winning edge. South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus became the master of it – and his side are back-to-back world champions.

And we’ve been here before, when it comes to English football. Which is the main reason the issue has reared its head again – instead of being stamped out.

Back in 2019 a member of the then Leeds United manager Marcelo Bielsa’s staff was caught spying on rivals Derby County ahead of a league game. Sound familiar?

Bielsa not only held his hands up, he admitted he’d been at it all season with other clubs. The bloke in question was arrested for trespassing. Leeds were fined and Bielsa had his knuckles rapped.

The EFL let Leeds off lightly, then realised their mistake. New rules were introduced, which included clubs “acting in good faith towards other clubs” (whatever that means), while no spying on training was permitted within 72 hours of a fixture taking place.

So instead of getting all clubs together at the time, to make it clear anyone caught spying would be banned from the league, the EFL came up with a new set of regulations more vague than a Keir Starmer speech aimed at saving his job as Prime Minister.

No sanctions for future breaches of the rules were set in stone at the time. So if Middlesbrough are looking for someone to blame for the current scenario engulfing both themselves and Southampton, perhaps chairman Steve Gibson should look no further than the EFL itself.