‘Manager loved it’: Tonda Eckert found to have initiated Southampton’s spying

Southampton’s head coach, Tonda Eckert, initiated the practice of spying on opponents, according to new documents which also show that an intern tasked with recording rival training sessions was assured the “manager loved it”. Southampton were expelled from the Championship playoffs last month after they were found to have spied on Oxford United, Ipswich and Middlesbrough . Eckert is under investigation by the Football Association and newly published remarks from the panel which rejected the club’s appeal against their expulsion lend credence to the belief he was central to the project. According to the written reasons of an English Football League arbitration panel, the first instance of spying took place before Southampton’s Boxing Day fixture against Oxford and was prompted by the head coach. “Mr Eckert asked if someone could go to observe the Oxford training session to see how they were lining up and whether a particular player [Cameron Brannagan] was fit to play,” the panel notes. Eckert told a disciplinary commission he had been surprised to find such actions were against the rules. Eckert made his suggestion in a meeting of Southampton’s analysis team, the panel writes, and an analyst identified an intern to undertake the job. In written evidence to the commission, the intern said he “didn’t really have an option” over accepting the instruction and “wasn’t provided an opportunity to say no”. …