Shortly after Tonda Eckert had hightailed it out of the tetchiest of post-match press conferences, staring fixedly at the floor, Kim Hellberg made his anger plain. A playoff semi-final first leg dominated largely by the sweet-passing Middlesbrough was always likely to be overshadowed by the espionage scandal that preceded it and so it proved.
Southampton are enveloped in a thoroughly unedifying episode with Middlesbrough accusing one of their analysts of spying on a training session that has resulted in a misconduct charge from the English Football League.
