Southampton FC manager news: Tonda Eckert 'allies' claim, Gary O'Neil, Tony Mowbray revelation | OneFootball

Southampton go into the international break still on the hunt for a new manager. Here's the latest on the managerial search at St Mary's.

Southampton go into the third international break of the season still searching for a new manager. Here's a round-up of the latest from St Mary's on how that search is progressing.

With two straight wins since the departure of Will Still, Southampton have started to show life since the former head coach left the building. The Saints followed up their 2-1 win at Queens Park Rangers with a convincing 3-1 home win against Sheffield Wednesday last Saturday which lifted them to 17th place in the Championship table. This was their first home league win since the opening weekend of the season.

They remain seven points short of a play-off place, but these two wins have offered a glimpse of the potential within the squad that was revamped over the summer. With a two-week break before they're next in action, Southampton now have an opportunity to get their new man in place, and three candidates have pulled clear as favourites for the position.

So, with all that in mind, here's a round-up of the latest news from St Mary's as the Saints continue the search for their next new manager.

Eckert impresses in caretaker role and has "key allies"

Journalist Alan Nixon reported last week that Tonda Eckert, who's stepped into the breach at St Mary's since Still's departure, could be a contender despite his tender age and relative lack of experience. 32-year-old Eckert was appointed as the Southampton under-21 coach in July.

Eckert had no playing career, starting his time in the game with spells as a youth team coach in his native Germany with 1. FC Koln, before taking similar positions with RB Salzburg in Austria and the German giants Bayern Munich. Moving into a slightly different position, he was the assistant to Gerhard Struber at Barnsley between August 2020 and January 2022, before moving on to become the assistant to Alexander Blessin at Genoa.

Eckert has had a strong start, managing two straight wins in his first two matches in charge of the Saints; a record that eluded Will Still over his brief time in charge of the team. Nixon also reports that he has "key allies at the club", and his position will have been further strengthened by that second straight win against Sheffield Wednesday last Saturday.

Former Wolverhampton Wanderers and Bournemouth manager Gary O'Neil has emerged as a potential front-runner for the Southampton job over the weekend. O'Neil found himself back in the headlines after withdrawing from talks to return to Molineux to manage Premier League Wolves, and Football Insider reported over the weekend that talks between the club and the manager were "advancing quickly."

Having turned down the Wolves job, whether O'Neil would want to step down to the Championship with a quick return to the Premier League for Southampton looking very much up in their air could be open to question, and he has no experience of managing in the Championship, with his two previous positions at Bournemouth and Wolves having both been in the Premier League.

But he's among the bookmakers' favourites for the position and has to be considered among the leading contenders to be offered the job.

Tony Mowbray appointment looking increasingly unlikely

One name that had been thrown into the ring by Alan Nixon was that of the veteran manager Tony Mowbray, who had reportedly also been of interest to Middlesbrough, who in turn seem set to lose Rob Edwards to Wolves.

However, Nixon reported on Sunday that Mowbray's imminent return to the Championship seems unlikely because the former Blackburn, Sunderland and Birmingham manager needs a double hernia operation. The recovery time for such an operation can be up to six weeks, which would seem to rule out any form of immediate return to the touchline anywhere.

If Mowbray was intended as a "short-term fix" of an appointment, being unavailable for a period of weeks - possibly until the new year - would seem to rule him out of contention for the Southampton job. After recovering from bowel cancer, Mowbray may well be hesitant about jumping straight back into management following any form of operation, although he did tell BBC Radio Tees in November 2024, following that recovery, that, "I do want to go back to work because football is in my blood, it's what I do."