The Press Association understands Ayling had flagged to referee Andrew Madley that Harwood-Bellis made reference to his stammer, with the official halting proceedings and speaking to both teams\u2019 coaches.<\/p>\n
The FA is understood to have spoken to Boro on Wednesday after reviewing Madley\u2019s report, but was told Ayling did not wish to pursue the allegation, and is now treating the matter as closed.<\/p>\n
The incident added further drama to an already highly-charged affair, with Southampton facing EFL charges after allegedly spying on a Boro training session last week.<\/p>\n
The news on Harwood-Bellis will be a small relief to Southampton, who face a far more serious disciplinary issue as they await their fate over the \u2018Spygate\u2019 scandal.<\/p>\n
The timing of the independent commission hearing to examine the spying charges has not been confirmed, but the EFL made a point of requesting that the commission convened at the earliest opportunity when announcing the charges against the club last Friday.<\/p>\n
Southampton chief executive Phil Parsons issued a statement on Tuesday morning asking for adequate time to respond to the charges properly.<\/p>\n
The commission\u2019s sanctioning powers range from a warning to expulsion. If a points penalty is recommended, the Premier League board can apply the sanction to next season\u2019s table if the south-coast club are promoted.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the Daily Mail published photos of the man alleged to have been caught filming Boro\u2019s training session last Thursday and identified him as William Salt, a first-team performance-analysis intern who is part of head coach Tonda Eckert\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n
Southampton are preparing as normal for the play-off final and have announced ticket sales will commence on Friday morning, having initially indicated they would go on sale on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The club have also launched a play-off final merchandise range, offering fans the chance to pre-order items from flags to beer steins and scarves to bucket hats.<\/p>\n
Saints owner Dragan Solak attended Tuesday\u2019s match, and it is understood he spent Wednesday in meetings with other club officials.<\/p>\n
Boro players were travelling north on Wednesday and will go in for a debrief on Thursday. It is understood that even if the Teesside club had won, they would have been given Friday and Saturday off, so their schedule has so far not been altered by the uncertainty around \u2018Spygate\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Press Association understands Ayling had flagged to referee Andrew Madley that Harwood-Bellis made reference to his stammer,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,36767,112],"class_list":["post-447857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-southampton-fc","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447857","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=447857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}