Southampton will not sack ‘spygate’ manager Tonda Eckert, club owner Dragan Solak has announced.
After leaked WhatsApp messages revealed the shamed German boss showing his ‘love’ of cheating piled even more pressure on Saints to dismiss the architect of their play-off spying scandal, they have opted to stick with Eckert.
‘I think he deserves a second chance and I would give it to him,’ Solak told BBC Sport.
‘My full support would be behind him actually, because I think he’s a super-talented manager. I believe Tonda that he didn’t know that it was the rule that he was breaking.’
In damning revelations from the written reasons into the club’s failed appeal against their expulsion from the Championship play-offs, the extent of the spying operation and the involvement of Eckert was exposed on Monday.
So, too, were Southampton’s attempts to cover up their cheating after Daily Mail Sport broke the story of intern William Salt being caught recording Middlesbrough’s training session from behind a tree ahead of their play-off semi-final.
Tonda Eckert is set to keep his job as Southampton boss, announced the owner
WhatsApp messages obtained during the subsequent EFL investigation reveal how Salt was told, ‘You legend. Manager loved it’ after a spying mission on Oxford United in December.
However, both Salt and another analyst had reservations about carrying out the instructions. In evidence to the independent disciplinary commission, Salt said: ‘I didn’t really have an option and wasn’t provided an opportunity to say no. I was an intern and was doing what I was told.
Solak went on to claim that spying in other leagues that Eckert worked in was ‘common practice’ but said he told the 33-year-old he had ‘broken his heart’.
‘I will obviously seek advice from the team. I will seek advice from the players, from the fans. But yes, if it’s ultimately my decision, he stays,’ he added.
‘In Italy or in Germany, where Tonda was working, this is basically common practice that nobody cares about.
‘I told him: “You almost broke my heart. You do it again, you’ll kill me. The next time I see you in July, if you don’t know the EFL book of rules by heart, you can’t work for me. Because, we can’t have another mistake”.’
Reflecting on how the whole incident played out, the intern told the independent disciplinary commission in his evidence: ‘I didn’t really have an option and wasn’t provided an opportunity to say no. I was an intern and was doing what I was told.’
The appeal panel noted: ‘There was evidence from the intern and (another analyst) that an analyst had lost his job earlier in the season, and there was a concern that they might lose theirs too. They felt pressurised to do the observations that Mr Eckert and the senior coaches wished them to do.’
A Southampton analyst hiding behind a tree to spy on Middlesbrough’s training session
After Salt was caught at Middlesbrough, another analyst sent him a WhatsApp and said: ‘I said all along I was never happy about it all & it wasn’t right but no one listened to me!
The full report details the staggering practice of Southampton’s spying, which the panel states was ‘a contrived and determined plan from the top down’.
Regarding the Oxford incident, the report says Eckert wanted to know whether their opponents’ caretaker boss Craig Short would play with a back four or back five in their Boxing Day clash and if Cameron Brannagan was fit to play, which resulted in Salt being asked to watch Saints’ opponents train.
The Middlesbrough incident records how Salt felt ‘under extreme pressure due to the importance of the game for the club’ after Eckert proposed spying on their session.
The report notes: ‘He felt bound to take videos on his phone because (as he said in a message to another analyst after he was caught), he felt pressurised by the coaches: “With them all telling me they want more out of it than what I got at Oxford as got it wrong etc they clearly don’t think my word is good enough so wallop there’s your footage”.’
The analyst even suggested to Salt that he should not go to Middlesbrough and simply report back that the security was too tight and that ‘Eckert would be none the wiser’.
But the club booked flights and two nights in a hotel for Salt and he was shown drone footage of where he could stand to observe training. He was told that Eckert was unhappy that he had not travelled up 24 hours earlier to observe an extra day of training.
It was then, on Thursday May 7, that the intern was confronted by Middlesbrough staff and fled the area. Salt was on a train back to Southampton when Daily Mail Sport exclusively revealed that he had been caught ‘spying’, as the commission recorded. Even so, Eckert was still presented by another analyst with a breakdown of Boro’s potential tactics from Salt’s videos.
Attempts to cover up the spying then began and Salt removed his picture from LinkedIn. It was also suggested internally that the media team should remove his presence on Manager of the Month pictures with Eckert. However, Daily Mail Sport had already obtained these pictures and later revealed the strong links between the intern and the manager.
