'My gut instinct is' - Tonda Eckert ban prediction made as Southampton decision looms | OneFootball

It's expected that a verdict will be announced regarding Tonda Eckert's future by the Football Association over the forthcoming international break.

The FA's verdict over the Southampton head coach Tonda Eckert is expected to be revealed over the course of the international break, and here's what FLW's Saints pundit believes will happen.

Southampton may have started the 2026-27 season slowly, with a 2-1 defeat at Watford on the opening weekend, but they've burst to life since then, with a six-match unbeaten run having hoisted them up to 13th place in the Championship table.

Their position would be higher, were it not for the four-point deduction that they incurred over their involvement in the Spygate drama which blighted the end of the 2025-26 Championship season, but there could be worse to follow for them, should head coach Tonda Eckert receive a ban from involvement in football over his role in the story.

It was found that Southampton had sent staff to three matches - against Oxford United, Ipswich Town and Middlesbrough - during the 2025-26 season to spy on opposing training sessions. Eckert himself has played down the significance of these charges, but it does remain the case that the Saints' head coach could find himself on the receiving end of a hefty ban.

"It's nuts that it's still dragging on" - prediction made that Eckert will escape an FA ban

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Football League World have spoken to our resident Southampton fan pundit Louis Harris about what his gut instinct is telling him about the upcoming announcement, and Louis believes that Eckert will escape the FA's ultimate sanction: "Very difficult to say. My gut instinct is that he won't receive a ban. I feel that there'll be a big financial punishment, but wouldn't be surprised if we see a suspended ban."

Louis feels that one of the biggest issues at play in this case is that it shouldn't have been allowed to drag out into the 2026-27 season: "To me, it also makes no sense for the FA to announce a ban when we're six games into the season. I feel like that should have happened before the season started, and in my eyes it's nuts that it's still dragging on."

So our Southampton correspondent believes that the Southampton head coach will not end up with a ban, though he does warn that this entire process has been somewhat unpredictable so far: "My initial instinct is no ban and no-one suspended, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a big one on the way, because this has been unpredictable the whole way."

The unpredictability of the Spygate sanctions is driven by their unprecedented nature

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The big issue that anyone faces when trying to assess what verdict the FA will reach over Spygate is that we are in such uncharted territory. This is the first breach of the rules, which were introduced by the EFL after a similar case involving Leeds United spying on a Derby County training session in 2019.

Leeds were fined £200,000, but it's highly unlikely that the FA will be that lenient again. For one thing, the Leeds vs Derby match was just a common or garden Championship match played near the middle of the season. The fact that what happened at St Mary's last season involved three different matches throughout the season may make a difference, as might the fact that one of them was a play-off semi-final with a minimum of £200 million at stake for the play-off winners.

And then, of course, there's the fact that Leeds were sanctioned under the rules that existed at the time. Leeds were charged under catch-all rules regarding acting in good faith towards opposing teams, but the fact that a specific rule was introduced by the EFL after this in itself suggests how seriously spying is taken and that it not having its own separate sanction was considered an oversight on their part.

The uncharted nature of the territory into which the FA are stepping is what makes this unpredictable. When the Canadian Olympic team were found to have flown drones over opponents' training sessions, the Canada coaching staff, including head coach Bev Priestman, were disgraced and issued one-year bans by FIFA. It's clear that the issue of spying on opposing training sessions is taken very seriously by the game's governing bodies, and it's unlikely that Southampton will escape with a slap on the wrists, though whether the FA will go as far as banning Eckert remains to be seen.