Southampton Face Middlesbrough Amidst Spying Allegations

What a week it’s been in the world of association football. Fisticuffs at Real Madrid and a seismic VAR decision involving Premier League-chasing Arsenal and relegation-threatened West Ham feature in the highlights (or lowlights). But juiciest of all? The spying allegations levelled at Southampton by Middlesbrough before their Championship playoff first leg last week. Southampton were charged with misconduct last Friday, after an individual was allegedly discovered creeping around in the bushes at Boro’s training ground, and this morning Southampton confirmed that an internal investigation has been launched. The English Football League intend to convene a hearing “at the earliest opportunity”, but clearly it is a situation that could get extremely messy, depending on the result tonight. Middlesbrough are confident they have compelling evidence of a Southampton employee filming and making audio recordings of that all-important training session last Thursday before the goalless first leg on Friday. A “rogue analyst” theory has been bandied about by Southampton fans, essentially and probably foolishly hoping to claim that there is nothing to see here. We’ll discover what the independent disciplinary committee, chaired by a barrister, makes of all that in due course but first there is a football match to play. Are Southampton heavy favourites to progress having drawn their away leg 0-0? Not on the basis of Millwall 0-2 Hull City last night. Playoff semi-finals are never less than highly-charged, but Spygate is going to crank the highly-charged-ness right up to 11 tonight. Kick-off: 8pm BST