When news about the Spygate scandal broke, coming less than 48 hours before the first leg of the play-off semi-final, the prospect of Southampton being removed from the play-offs seemed fanciful.<\/p>\n
But with each passing day, and every new development, it has become ever-more realistic.<\/p>\n
The answer is simple: truly, nobody knows and can only guess.<\/p>\n
The independent disciplinary commission has a framework, but no set sanction to apply.<\/p>\n
When it comes to profit and sustainability, clubs who lose money above the three-season \u00a339m limit know straight away how many points they will be deducted.<\/p>\n
But the Southampton hearing will be a more subjective case, weighing up the body of evidence presented.<\/p>\n
As Saints are accused of spying before a crucial play-off match, rather than a standard league game, this could be seen as an aggravating factor. It is for this reason that a sporting sanction seems more appropriate.<\/p>\n
After all, a fine would mean little to Southampton and offer minimal deterrent if the club were to then win promotion, and with it a guaranteed \u00a3110m.<\/p>\n
That leaves a sporting sanction: a points deduction – which the EFL would have to recommend to the Premier League is applied in the top flight – or effectively disqualifying Saints.<\/p>\n
There is no precedent to follow because no club has been charged with breaking rule 127 – the spying clause introduced only after Leeds were fined \u00a3200,000 for trying to covertly send a member of staff to Derby’s training ground in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When news about the Spygate scandal broke, coming less than 48 hours before the first leg of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-672988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}