Southampton must not let spy scandal get to them like Leeds

The 46-game marathon of the regular season in the Championship is now wrapped up, which means there's only one more item left on the menu.

Indeed, the drama of the Championship playoffs kicks off on Saturday lunchtime, as Southampton fans - who will be setting very early alarms - make the mammoth journey up to Middlesbrough to cheer on their beloved side in the first of two nerve-wracking legs.

Unfortunately, while we should all be talking about how entertaining these two games are likely to be, as Boro manager Kim Hellberg noted, we have instead been hit by the shocking news that the South Coast side allegedly had an analyst spying on Boro training ground sessions.

With this added spice thrown in, these playoff games are going to definitely be feisty...

The brand-new spying incident

This sensational news first broke from Daily Mail Sport journalist Craig Hope, who has stated that the Teesside outfit have alleged that an analyst from the Saints had been spying on training sessions, from a nearby bush.

The secretive individual in question was then questioned and told to remove any pictures or videos he had on his person, with the EFL also aware of the surreal incident.

Amazingly, this isn't the first time a spying incident has made a set of playoff games in the Championship even more intriguing, as Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds were also caught in the act when spying on Derby County during the 2018/19 season, which made their two-legged encounter with the Rams in the playoffs particularly interesting to watch.

Leeds' punishment was a £200k fine, so it will be fascinating to see what Southampton's punishment will be, six years on from the original Spygate scandal.

One journalist has even suggested that Southampton should be made to play the second leg at St. Mary's behind closed doors, as the melodramatic reactions begin to flood in.

Ultimately, though, the Whites' hardship with this scandal didn't stop with this fine, as they went on to lose to the Frank Lampard-led Rams in a heartbreaking way, killing their promotion chances in the process.

Southampton must learn from Leeds' errors

Undoubtedly, all the fallout from Bielsa's camp spying on Derby that season revitalised the Rams in their attempts to win promotion.

It all came to a head on one fateful night in May 2019, when Derby rocked up to Elland Road and won a back-and-forth second-leg clash, with the hero of the night being Rams striker Jack Marriott, who scored twice off the bench to win the contest 4-2.

In the crazy celebrations that followed, the Derby players held imaginary binoculars up to their eyes to signal the Spygate incident, with Southampton not wanting to be on the receiving end of such ridicule themselves if Middlesbrough reign supreme in the here and now.

Hellberg is hardly going to have to gee up his players in the build-up to the first leg contest at the Riverside, as all these pre-match theatrics will make Boro want to win even more, in a battle that arguably now hinges - based on the media reaction - on wrong versus right.

For Eckert's sake, he will hope his players can cut through all this talk off the pitch with a disciplined showing at the Riverside, instead of falling victim to a defeat over the two legs of the same magntitude as Bielsa's disappointing collapse.

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