leading to the south coast club being charged with a breach of EFL regulations<\/a>.<\/p>\nMiddlesbrough flew out the blocks fuelled by a sense of injustice, with Tommy Conway going agonisingly close on three occasions as Kim Hellberg\u2019s hosts racked up 17 first-half shots at Riverside Stadium.<\/p>\n
Tonda Eckert\u2019s distracted side looked like they could be on the receiving end of a 4-0 hiding like on January\u2019s trip to Teesside, but Saints improved after the break, having taken the sting out of proceedings.<\/p>\n
The visitors, unbeaten in the Championship since January, were far from their best but came close to snatching victory, with Taylor Harwood-Bellis seeing a six-yard header crash back off the crossbar.<\/p>\n
The goalless first leg, and continuing brouhaha around \u2018spygate\u2019, sets things up fascinatingly for Tuesday\u2019s St Mary\u2019s shootout for a place at Wembley.<\/p>\n
Binoculars and branches were among the props brought by Boro fans to a game that saw the team bus welcomed by thousands of supporters lining the streets.<\/p>\n
That spectacular welcome left Conway “ready to run through a brick wall” and Hellberg\u2019s team matched the intensity from the stands as they peppered the visitors throughout a one-sided first half.<\/p>\n
David Strelec headed over from an early corner after Harwood-Bellis threw himself in front of a Riley McGree shot, with Saints needing to dig deep to keep the score level.<\/p>\n
Morgan Whittaker whistled narrowly over from the edge of the box and McGree prodded across the face of goal.<\/p>\n
Luke Ayling was allowed to burst forward and strike wide against uncharacteristically-ragged Saints, with a crucial James Bree block preventing Conway from opening the scoring from a deflected cross.<\/p>\n
Further frustration soon followed for the forward. Middlesbrough broke after some foolish play by Cyle Larin and unmarshalled Conway slammed a low first-time strike off the post in the 34th minute.<\/p>\n
Half-time could not come quick enough for Southampton, with Daniel Peretz just getting a hand to Conway\u2019s close-range shot into the ground during a scramble at a corner.<\/p>\n
Further opportunities followed before a break that Saints returned from with renewed purpose.<\/p>\n
Galway native Manning fizzed across a tantalising cross that Ayling cut out and there was a collective intake of breath when Larin rose to meet a Tom Fellows cross with a close header.<\/p>\n
Southampton had swung momentum and were starting to pose problems, partly due to Leo Scienza\u2019s unusually-ineffective display.<\/p>\n
Both sides made changes in a bid to force a winner – Ireland midfielder Alan Browne coming on for the hosts – with Eckert\u2019s team going closest in the 84th minute when Manning whipped over a free-kick and Harwood-Bellis\u2019 close-range header rattled the crossbar.<\/p>\n
Substitute Samuel Edozie made space to strike across the face of goal but there was to be no first-leg breakthrough as defiant Saints fans chanted “we\u2019ll spy when we want”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland duo Ryan Manning and Finn Azaz started as Southampton parked ‘spygate’ and survived an early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-440453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}