Every pundit has an opinion. Every former executive has a take. Every football website has published its verdict.
The noise surrounding Tonda Eckert's future at Southampton has reached a level that generates far more heat than light.
This week, former Everton chief executive Keith Wyness weighed in. He told Football Insider that if reports of messages linking Eckert directly to the spying operation were true, then the manager should be gone.
Wyness acknowledged the cultural argument around European football, presented in Saints Marching, but dismissed it, stating plainly that such behaviour is not accepted in the English game.
Fine. He is entitled to his narrow and out-of-date view.
But Wyness has not been inside a football club for some time. He has no connection to Southampton. And his contribution to this debate, like so many others, tells us nothing we did not already know.
A debate with too many voices
The list of people telling Southampton what to do grows longer by the day.
Former executives, ex-players with no link to the club, pundits filling airtime and websites chasing clicks have all decided they know what is best for a club they have never worked for and whose dressing room they have never entered.
Lawrence Ostlere at The Independent has decided that a scout from FC Koln attending Hamburg's training camp in Dubai back in 2015 somehow tells us something meaningful about Tonda Eckert today. It does not.
Eckert was at Koln at the time. That is the entire connection. By that logic, every manager who ever worked at a club involved in any controversy is guilty by association, which is not journalism. It is a reach dressed up as context.
Ostlere is not alone in whipping up the anti-Eckert sentiment this week, but as chief sports writer at The Independent he carries more influence than most.
The piece builds a narrative brick by brick, each one carefully chosen to make the conclusion feel inevitable. It reads less like analysis and more like a verdict written before the evidence was fully examined.
Southampton fans deserve coverage that asks hard questions rather than columns that simply confirm what the writer already decided before sitting down to type.
The voices that actually matter
By contrast, The Southern Daily Echo reported this week that the Southampton dressing room itself is divided. Alfie House's reportage is both accurate and important.
Some players are furious with Eckert. Others still respect his ability and recognise what he built during that remarkable 19-game unbeaten run at the end of the season.
The views of the people close to and inside that dressing room carry far more weight than anything Keith Wyness, Lawrence Ostlere, or any other outside voice has to say.
Eckert took Southampton on a 19-game unbeaten run in the Championship. He guided them to an FA Cup semi-final, losing only to eventual winners Manchester City. His last league defeat came 21 games before the season ended.
Those are not the numbers of a manager who has lost the dressing room or run out of ideas. They are the numbers of someone who, despite everything, knows how to get results at this level.
None of that erases what happened with Spygate. Eckert authorised the spying missions. That is on record and cannot be undone.
Sport Republic are in a genuinely difficult position and they deserve the space to work through it without a running commentary from people with no skin in the game.
The FA investigation is ongoing. Individual bans remain a possibility. The club's own players are split. The fanbase is divided. Southampton's owners have a lot to weigh up.
Outside voices are inevitable in situations like this. Social media guarantees it and the 24-hour news cycle demands it.
But inevitable does not mean welcome. Southampton will make this decision based on what is right for the club, not on the hot takes of people who have never set foot in Staplewood.
The rest of us should probably let them get on with it.
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