Spygate 2.0 continuing to rumble on is hardly ideal preparation for Southampton's Championship playoff final.
In an alternate reality, the week leading into a big showdown final at Wembley would be full of excited anticipation for the Saints, alongside some butterflies appearing.
Instead, the preparation for the tense final with Hull City has been marred by constant Spygate chatter, but Southampton will hope they can just get the job done, if they aren't removed from the competition at the last minute.
Tonda Eckert will pray his team can get the job done
Tonda Eckert will have a lot of faith in his camp to get the job done, if the playoff final does go ahead as scheduled on the 23rd of May.
After all, his Saints troops went out against Middlesbrough across two legs, with Spygate being talked about in the background, and were professional and composed across both matches, even when the pressure was ramped up.
The 0-0 draw on the road at the Riverside showed the gutsy side of his team, as they stood strong against waves of pressure from the hosts, before Shea Charles would curl home a memorable winner in the second leg, as they took the game the full distance after Boro broke the deadlock with an early Riley McGree goal.
Southampton just never know when they're down and out, and with the backdrop of all this Spygate talk making Hull the neutral's darling to win the upcoming playoff final, the hope will be - on the Saints' end - that they thrive again to silence their critics.
Amid all this constant chat about the South Coast outfit's unsportsmanlike conduct, it has been forgotten about that the Saints entered the playoffs in blistering form, going 19 games unbeaten in the Championship.
Southampton royalty Francis Benali believes this stunning run of form has been disregarded, now, as the Saints continue to bat away vitriol...
Benali's comments about Spygate
Benali is synonymous with Southampton, as he only played for the Saints, Nottingham Forest, and Eastleigh during a career that was dominated by the South Coast.
Indeed, the now retired full-back would line up for the Saints a colossal 364 times in total, often putting in unseflish shifts, as seen in him only ever scoring one goal for his boyhood employers.
Still closely connected to the promotion candidates, the 57-year-old made the point, when discussing the Spygate scandal recently, that all of Eckert and Co's achievements to break into the top six have now been overlooked.
Writing a column in the Daily Echo, the beloved Saints servant wrote: "It has detracted from what has been the most incredible turnaround by the players and so many people's efforts to make this a successful season.
"When you look back on where we were after that 2-1 defeat to Hull City at St. Mary's in the middle of January, I think we were in 15th place.
"We were a million miles off the playoffs at that stage, and to turn things around as they have done has just been the most incredible achievement.
"That's the disappointment and sadness, as it has not been recognised now because instead of celebrating, we are talking about litigation."
As Benali so eloquently puts it, all of Southampton's hard work to get where they are, after they once loitered in mid-table, has been discarded for talk about a ludicrous spying incident.
Noting at the end of his impassioned piece that he hopes "it's Wembley again" for the Saints, after they secured promotion at the home of football in 2024, Southampton's fate now rests on the final outcome of the disciplinary panel, as the last twist in the tale is shortly unveiled.
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