Category: Championship League

• 33-year-old German could be hit with one-year ban

• South-coast club denied chance to win promotion

Southampton’s manager, Tonda Eckert, is facing the possibility of a lengthy suspension from all football activity in England, and perhaps beyond, after being charged with three counts of misconduct by the Football Association.

All three relate to the ‘Spygate’ scandal and involve breaching FA rules during covert missions to illicitly observe Championship training sessions involving Middlesbrough, Ipswich and Oxford last season. The 33-year-old has until Tuesday to respond to the charges and may well fear the precedent set by Fifa when it banned Bev Priestman, the English-born former Canada women’s head coach and assistant England women coach, from football worldwide for 12 months. In 2024 Priestman, then in charge of Canada, was found to have authorised a spying mission involving the use of a drone to monitor New Zealand’s training during the Paris Olympics.

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• Captain says promotion would bring ‘the most happiness’

• He visited largest shareholder Daniel Křetínský in Prague

Jarrod Bowen has said he intends to remain with West Ham after the club’s relegation to the Championship. The forward has attracted interest from Premier League teams but has spelled out his desire to stay after a summer during which he travelled to Prague for talks with the largest shareholder, Daniel Křetínský.

“I feel like we’re moving in the right direction as a club,” Bowen told West Ham’s media channels. “There’s a lot of thinking time over the summer and a lot of things that go in your head. But I look in years and years to come of when I retire, what’s going to bring me the most happiness. For me now that’s getting this club back into the Premier League.”

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• FA could follow Fifa precedent with 12-month suspension

• Manager to face media on Saturday in pre-season friendly

The future of Southampton’s manager, Tonda Eckert, remains shrouded in uncertainty as he waits to learn the outcome of a lengthy and detailed Football Association investigation into last season’s spygate scandal.

In May the English Football League expelled Southampton from the Championship playoff final against Hull after finding that a club intern engaged as a first-team analyst had spied on a key Middlesbrough training session before the semi-final first leg at the Riverside.

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• League One: Notts Co v Leicester, Barnsley v Bromley

• York return to League Two with visit of Bristol Rovers

Wolves will launch the Championship season at home to Blackburn, while West Ham head to Burnley in a meeting of the other two relegated sides in one of the more eye-catching fixtures on the opening weekend.

The EFL fixture list was released on Thursday and Wolves will play their first Championship fixture since 2018 under their new head coach, César Peixoto, at Molineux at 8pm on Friday 14 August, with the former West Brom manager Tony Mowbray back for a second spell in charge of Blackburn.

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• Head coach failed to save club from relegation

• Peixoto led Gil Vicente to sixth in Primera Liga

Wolves have sacked Rob Edwards and are poised to appoint the Portuguese head coach César Peixoto as his replacement. The 46-year-old Peixoto was most recently in charge of Gil Vicente, who finished sixth in the Portuguese top flight last season.

The news came as a huge shock to Edwards, who was alerted to rumours on social media of a deal for Peixito. Edwards, who is abroad on holiday, was informed in a phone call that his tenure was over after seven months, leaving even senior club staff stunned.

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• Saints head coach issues apology in club video message

• Dragan Solak wants to ‘close the chapter and look ahead’

Tonda Eckert has apologised for orchestrating the Spygate scandal that culminated in Southampton being kicked out of the Championship playoff final. Southampton, who observed training sessions of three opponents last season, were denied the chance to win promotion after an independent disciplinary commission found the club “seriously violated” the integrity of the competition.

Eckert, publicly addressing the six charges made by the English Football League for the first time in a video message released by the club, said he accepted “full responsibility”, adding: “I apologise to all of the clubs that have been involved and mostly I apologise to our supporters.” In a similar address, the Southampton owner, Dragan Solak, said he wants the German head coach who is under investigation from the Football Association, to lead the club into the Premier League next season.

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Hull City are back in the Premier League after Oli McBurnie’s stoppage-time strike settled the playoff final at Wembley

Pre-match postbag: Courtroom Chat edition. “I worry about Hull stating before the final that they will take legal action if they lose. Firstly, because it might take away from their motivation and determination if they think they could still go up even if they’re defeated. Second, because I don’t think Hull have a case” – Daniel King

“Hull announcing they will take legal action if they don’t go up today is confirmation that this whole sorry mess is just going to roll on. Surely the best way out of the situation is for the appropriate authorities to announce tonight that both teams are promoted and four go down from the Premier League. That should keep everyone happy” – John Davis

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Bruno Fernandes wins PL Player of the Season as teams across the continent gear up for massive games.

I enjoyed this piece from Barry yesterday.

It’s all noise and bluster and guff, innit? I mean, not for the guys who missed our or were selected, but the outrage and hot takes really are a lot.

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Saints’ self-destruction has left Kim Hellberg and Sergej Jakirovic tantalisingly close to fulfilling their dream in Saturday’s Wembley trip

When the television cameras zoomed in for a closeup it became clear Hayden Hackney was crying.

Middlesbrough’s best player had just watched his teammates lose the second leg of the Championship playoff semi-final 2-1 in extra time at Southampton. As he left his seat behind the away dugout and wandered across the pitch, the Redcar-born midfield playmaker looked utterly heartbroken.

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The ‘Turkish Simon Cowell’ says sealing promotion to the Premier League via Saturday’s playoff final would ‘finish the miracle’

“I love the city – for me, it’s therapy,” the Hull owner, Acun Ilicali, says of his second home. Running a football club is not particularly therapeutic but after almost four-and-a-half-years at the helm, the Turkish media mogul will have his day at Wembley on Saturday when the Tigers face Middlesbrough for a place in the Premier League.

Life is rarely quiet for the globetrotting Ilicali, regarded as Turkey’s answer to Simon Cowell. He produces some of the world’s most popular television shows in numerous countries, having started out as a sports reporter. The entertainment theme has continued at Hull, creating a tumultuous and gripping reality that has featured head coaches coming and going, and playoff and relegation battles. Everything aligned this season, the team securing sixth place on the final day before defeating third-placed Millwall over two legs. Hull have even been victims of Southampton’s removal from the playoff final amid “spygate”. It is never dull in Hull.

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• Saints believe penalty is ‘manifestly disproportionate’

• Hull and Middlesbrough will meet in final on Saturday

Southampton’s appeal against their expulsion from the Championship playoff final for spying on opponents’ training sessions has been dismissed by an English Football League arbitration panel, leaving Middlesbrough to contest Saturday’s Wembley showpiece with Hull. The panel also confirmed the original decision of an independent disciplinary commission to deduct four Championship points from Southampton next season.

It is a verdict that leaves the position of Tonda Eckert, the south coast club’s manager, seemingly untenable. While the 33-year-old German faces the sack, Southampton directors are facing the wrath of players furious at missing out on potential promotion bonuses and wage hikes.

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• Saints are appealing against expulsion and deduction

• Windass: story ‘one of the maddest I’ve seen’

The Wrexham forward Josh Windass has called for the Championship playoffs to be started again, with his team involved, after Southampton’s expulsion on Tuesday. Saints were removed from the post-season competition by an independent commission after admitting to three spying offences, including against Middlesbrough, their playoff semi-final opponents.

Southampton have confirmed they will appeal against the sanctions imposed, with a league arbitration panel being convened on Thursday. The panel could uphold the original decision or reinstate Saints, who also had four points docked for next season.

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There needs to be a zero-tolerance approach to stealing other clubs’ secrets – Kim Hellberg’s emotional response shows just how deep this goes

Kim Hellberg was clearly upset and his press conference after Middlesbrough’s defeat at Southampton in the Championship semi‑final playoff second leg became unexpectedly moving as a result. In football, the Boro manager said, you accept that some teams have greater resources than others but where the coach of the less well-off team can gain an advantage is in the “tactical element”; it is in effect the only weapon he has. And if that weapon is made less effective by an opponent cheating, it is understandable that Hellberg should feel that his profession, the skillset he has developed to test himself against his peers, has been betrayed.

That disgust is, no doubt, genuine enough, and it is perhaps difficult for those of us who do not work in that world fully to grasp how frustrating it must be if strategies and ploys carefully conceived and practised are rendered ineffective, not by the in-game acuity of an opponent, but by espionage. But it is admittedly hard to square that righteous anger with the image published in the Mail this week of a sheepish young man lurking behind a tree with a phone.

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• Boro say move is ‘only appropriate response’ to scandal

• Australian Hull fan angry over possible postponement

Middlesbrough have demanded that the English Football League expel Southampton from the Championship playoff final against Hull and are furious at being denied a chance to argue their case at an independent disciplinary hearing.

Southampton, who beat Middlesbrough 2-1 on aggregate in the semi-final, are facing EFL misconduct charges after Boro said they had been the victims of training-ground spying.

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• Hearing over spying allegations on or before Tuesday

• Fans warned before booking travel and accommodation

The English Football League has indicated that Southampton could be kicked out of the playoffs and that the date of the Championship playoff final may be delayed if the club are found guilty of breaching regulations.

Southampton have been charged by the EFL for allegedly spying on Middlesbrough’s training within 72 hours of their first-leg meeting and for not acting “with the utmost good faith”.

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