Here we go then for the second leg. It’s actually a relief that there have only been three days between the first and the second leg, so I haven’t had to keep my head down too much with regards to avoiding hearing all the shite. Some of it has been unavoidable, however.

What people don’t seem to realise is that you’ve actually got to prove things. Middlesbrough’s scouting mission around the other clubs has generated a fair few articles and a whole load of assumptions but not a lot else. Can you prove that you were spied on and you can prove that it was within 72 hours of the kick-off and by the way, why didn’t you mention anything at the time?

Fuck it, it’s game time and all that matters is winning the game. As supporters we can’t do anything about the unsavoury elements of our club that either embarrass, anger or disappoint us. All we can do is support the eleven players in red and white stripes and when the game kicks off, we really aren’t going to suddenly stop supporting them.

The Boro rage has continued unabated since they didn’t get the result they wanted on Saturday, though Kim Hellberg has obviously been told to wind his neck in a little bit because his press conference was a lot more considered than some of his outbursts on Saturday afternoon.

It’s time for a performance, and a fucking big one. Then the game and everything else will play out and we won’t have made it easy for anyone. We have to take the fact that nearly everyone outside the Southampton will be wanting us to lose this game, especially the EFL. and use the almost universal will for us to lose as fuel in order to make sure that we don’t. There are a few with a bit of perspective but for everyone of those, there are ten Troy Deeneys, whose advice on ethics should really be taken with a pinch of salt considering he thinks it’s okay to jump up and down on someone’s head and to threaten to injure all the players of his own club.

I’ve been thinking a little bit about Leicester recently. They got the deducted six points in the Championship this season for basically cheating by overspending in 2023/24 and in 2025/26. They were allowed to be promoted in the first of those two seasons. Did the team finishing third (Leeds) bleat on about it in the press? I don’t think they did. If Middlesbrough beat us on the pitch tonight then fair dos to them but if we beat them, maybe put on a pair of big boy pants and suck it up. We all know that won’t happen

Tonda Eckert has decisions to make tonight with regards to the starting XI, with Charles, Matsuki and Stewart all putting pressure on starters from Saturday. Hellberg has revealed that Hayden Hackney will not be playing, which won’t be a surprise to anyone because he’s been injured for ages.

As I arrive at St Mary’s it’s about 5:45 pm, I make the schoolboy error of driving down Britannia Road heading towards Ocean Village and the police have started blocking roads and the fans are spilling out onto the road that I’m trying to drive down. Having parked the car and got back to the same spot, I’m there in time to see the Saints bus arrive through the clouds of red smoke. It’s a brilliant atmosphere and the players can’t fail to have been lifted. Not long after, the Boro bus arrives with that shit slogan “We shall Be“ on the side which looks like the sort of shitty thing you see on LinkedIn. The welcome for that bus is not as friendly.

After the Boro players scuttle off inside, the team news drops and Tonda has decided to basically go with the team that finished the game the stronger at the Riverside, with Matsuki, Stewart and Charles all coming into the side. It’s a bit of a surprise that Flynn Downs has been left out. Finn Azaz’s name on the team sheet answers that question I had as to whether he would be left out or not. This is his fourth game against Middlesbrough this season and he’s been crap in the other three, so he owes us one this time.

Once in sight of the pitch, you can tell it’s gonna be lively out there. As kickoff approaches, Mark Dennis does his thing and the teams come out and it’s time to go.

Only Saints don’t go. Nothing of the sort. No one in the ground, be it fans or players, seems to know what the fuck we’re doing and what formation we are playing. Matsuki is kind of out on the left with Azaz kind of out on the right it’s weird. Regardless of where the players are playing, no one is getting anywhere near the Boro players or winning any second balls, in an exact carbon copy of the first half at the Riverside.

Matsuki does get on the ball in our own penalty area and slips as he takes a loose touch as he tries to recover he tackles Strelec who goes over. That looks clumsy as fuck and maybe we can be a bit grateful for the fact that Andy Madley is a Premier League referee without his VAR crutch and he’s not used to making decisions.

Down the right go Middlesbrough with Brittain and he plays a low ball across to the middle and there is McGree, who sweeps it first time into the corner of the net, giving Peretz absolutely no chance. Absolute fucking dog shit from us. No one stopping the cross and then once it reaches the middle, four or five players in the vicinity, but no one getting near the player. Five minutes gone, 1-0 down.

Far from being woken up immediately by the shock of conceding a goal, we don’t do that and instead allow Morgan Whittaker to run in from the right hand side, weave his way past the retreating Ryan Manning before firing into the side netting. Manning does better at the other end immediately afterwards as we break out of defence down the left and he gets to the edge of the box before delivering a superb cross into the lunging Ross Stewart at the back post and we all go up…. and we all sit down again as he can’t get his limbs sorted out and it comes off some random part of his outstretched right foot and goes wide at the post from 6 yards. Aaargh.

The first half then becomes very stop-start as Middlesbrough begin to take ages over every throw, every goal kick, every free kick. 25 to 30 seconds at a time and Andy Madley just stands there tapping his watch and somehow magically assuming that it’s all going to get better without handing out a yellow card. Leo Scienza is getting some heavy treatment from Callum Britain and Luke Ayling. Brittain has already had a couple of goes and then Ayling wrestles him to the ground which leaves Leo limping and there’s a confrontation between THB and the ponytail in the middle of the Middlesbrough defence. That doesn’t seem to be any issue but then suddenly it is and the referee marches over to the benches and it all gets a bit silly and then it calms down again and we get on with it.

45 gone and Saints win a throw out on the left and Manning takes it down the line towards Scienza but Callum Brittain, emboldened by his lack of booking so far decides to carry out his clear ‘kick Leo’ game plan and completely ignores the ball and throws the Saints winger over. Madley gives a free kick and yet again forgets where his cards are. Breezy fires it over and it reaches the unmarked Manning at the back post to volley it down and but Brynn reacts well to push it up in the air and when it comes down the 6 foot 3 Loch Ness Drogba gets about 10 foot off the ground to head down and into the net. Get in. There is some delicious irony in the fact we’ve scored after 45 minutes because of all the time wasting and because it came from a very obvious and pointless foul by Callum Brittain.

Second half starts and from Middlesbrough‘s first foray into our box, there’s a ball pinging around which hits Matsuki high on the arm. There’s a few appeals but nothing much, though I can see Kim Hellberg bouncing around in animated fashion in the technical area. It’s probably one of those ones where Andy Madley would’ve been grateful for having his VAR back up.

We get to the hour mark and it begins to look like Middlesbrough are dying on their arse. Suddenly it’s a lot easier for us to get out of the defence and progress the ball. Suddenly we are winning the second balls and now it’s down to the benches and we move first to beef up our midfield with introduction of Flynn Downes for Matsuki.

We are beginning to dominate things with Downes introduction but for me, we’re not playing forward quickly enough and losing the tempo required. When we do move the ball, Boro’s defending gets ever more last ditch. Bree fires over a corner, there’s a brief scramble and then Manning swings at it and it deflects off of Ayling and dribbles wide of the post with Brynn diving the other way.

There are a few players on the Middleborough side still trying to waste time, but of course they’re not doing it because they are winning, they are doing it because they are knackered. Matt Targett goes to take a throw and he has a ball, but he decides that he doesn’t want that ball and wants to waste time by walking over to a ball boy and getting another one. The ball boy is having none of it and points to the ball that Targett has deliberately walked past. It escalates as Aiden Morris comes over and tries to wrestle the ball off the ball boy and our subs, led by Captain Jack, basically tell him to fuck off.

We’re causing them more and more issues upfront and a long ball out of defence should be mopped up easily by Fry, but he doesn’t get to the ball quick enough and Stewart gets a nudge on him to win the ball and lay it off in field to Scienza, who just has Ayiling to beat but Ayling uses all his experience, and possibly some rugby training he did as a child and hands off Leo with a straight arm. Leo goes down, Andy Madley is waiting for that voice in his ear that never comes so does nothing. It looks like a foul but Leo‘s reputation for going to ground a bit easily probably counted against him.

Into the 80th minute and Leo Scienza and Ross Stewart‘s races are run. We’ve clearly left the substitutions late because we feel that there’s going to go be extra time and Cyle Larin and Sam Edozie are on. Larin’s first contribution happens when Ayiling tries to run the ball out of defence and gets tackled in the middle of the park by the ever diligent Caspar Jander. He drives forward before sliding Larin through and his side footed effort is beaten away by Brynn.

Andy Madley does manage to perform one of the core functions of a referee and blows his whistle for the end of 90 minutes. Extra time we go. Well, we of course now I have half an hour to score the goal to stop it going to penalties. Middlesbrough are on their collective arses and will clearly be looking just to get through to penalties.

As is often in the case, the first half of extra time doesn’t produce too much. Saints are still not playing quickly enough for my liking and are allowing Boro to defend in numbers and not be stretched. Some of them look like those very wobbly guys you see at the end of marathons but they survive and so we get to the last 15 minutes.

Tension is rising as Sam Edozie fires a shot through the crowd in the penalty area and it flicks off of someone and Brynn makes an excellent save, making a mockery of my pre-1st leg prediction that he would be a bit of a weakness. Dael Fry in defence is running in treacle and a ball gets played down the channel for Larin to run onto and the Saints man gets the touch first as Fry goes to clear it and he quite clearly boots Larin within the confines of the penalty area. Andy Madley is once again, fucking useless without his VAR.

Another attack, another ball across the top of the penalty area, Larin takes too long to get a shot away and it’s cleared out to the right wing where Charles picks it up. He works it onto his left foot and swings a cross over towards the back post Fry goes up to head away but he’s missed it and the ball bounces and Brynn can only watch as it nestles just inside the far post. Charles reaction is indicative of a man who knows he was crossing the ball and not shooting but it all goes mental, Northam End, limbs, random people who’ve never met, hugging each other and all that.

There are five minutes to go but Boro are absolutely done. We have to contend with a couple of free kicks that get pumped into the box where we have the usual thing of the goalkeeper coming up, but as we have done all day, someone gets their head to it, usually THB and after five minutes of extras, Andy Madley remembers once again that he can do things on his own and blows the final whistle without anyone telling him to. Well done, Andy.

And breathe. This team does not know how to lose games and it does know how to battle through endless shite and get the job done no matter how. You’ve got to be proud of those in the red and white shirts tonight. Everyone is going mental with THB, Daniel Peretz and Ross Stewart leading the way. Shea Charles has grabbed for interviews and no doubt to receive the Man of the Match award from people who give it to the winning goal scorer, no matter what. Actually, you can’t argue because the boy was absolutely everywhere tonight.

There were times when that game felt like having all my fingernails pulled out one by one, but we got there in the end and over the whole of the 120 minutes tonight, we deserved to win, though it did take a bit of a fluke goal to break the Middleborough stubborn resistance. Shea Charles is some boy with his knack this season of coming up with important goals and now he’s added scoring even when he doesn’t fucking mean to, to his list. From more or less the start of the second half, it was just a case of whether we could break them down and avoid going to penalties. That was the only way we were not going to win this game as like in the first game, Boro blew themselves out in the first half.

Is it that that they simply weren’t fit enough and they didn’t have enough to come on for the bench? We brought Flynn Downes on which changed the game in our favour and they didn’t bring on anybody who didn’t make the team worse. That’s the key difference between the two sides and we saw it in reverse many time ourselves in the Premier League last year where we had about ten players who were good enough and we had to choice of flogging them every game or bringing on subs that made the level of the team go down.

The first half featured another fucking terrible start by us as Middlesbrough, once again were running, whilst we were walking. Our strange midfield set up didn’t help and no one seem to know what they were doing out of possession and this time Middlesbrough took advantage with the early goal by Riley McGree. We have to snap out of this starting poorly bullshit. Middlesbrough of course then went into time wasting and Andy Madley generally did absolutely fuck all about it. Why on earth referees can’t throw in an early booking for time wasting is completely beyond me. Maybe he was trying to diffuse the situation and the tension around the game, but I don’t want give him any possible credit. He was fucking useless throughout the entire game and illustrating that classic problem. We noticed it two years ago when we got Premier League referees who were used to be VAR, in a Championship game – they don’t make decisions and they end up losing control of the game. As time goes by, Premier League referees will get worse and worse as they forget how to referee without VAR.

Anyway, we worked our way back to the game as the first half went on and the attacking threat from Middlesbrough dropped off. Ironically, given all the time wasting, it was after the 45 minutes were up that we got the equalising goal through Ross Stewart. It must’ve been a relief to Ross having missed a great chance not long after Boro took the lead when he slid in on Ryan Manning’s cross and instead of putting it into the big fucking white thing with the net on it, managed to divert it wide.

Most of the second half was spent watching us frustrate and not move the ball around quickly enough but one thing that was clear is that Boro were absolutely knackered and and barring a catastrophe, we weren’t going to concede again. It was frustrating that we went to extra time, but if one team was going to win it it was always going to be us and so it happened in a slightly strange way as Shea went to put a left foot cross into the box. If you look at this tie over 210 minutes, Boro probably lost it by not going in front in the first half at the Riverside.

It wasn’t a vintage performance by Saints. There were some decidedly weird shit going on with the formation from the first whistle. At times it looked like a bit of a throwback to Ralph Hasenhuttl 4-2-2-2 formation. If you remember with that formation, it never works if the distances between the players are not right and that’s what we got with their goal.

Personally I would’ve left Finn Azaz out but we were all waiting for that moment that was supposedly written in the stars where he would come back and bite Middlesbrough in the ass, but it didn’t happen or look like happening at any point as he completed four sets of 90 minutes and a half hour of extra time, not adding very much at all against Middlesbrough. Luckily, others carried him through.

There was nothing much going on down the right hand side unless James Bree did it. Matt Targett, like a majority of the Boro players was absolutely blowing out of his arse from about 60 minutes onwards and I certainly felt that this was an opportunity for Tom Fellows to help get the job done earlier. The end justifies the means (a dangerous phrase to use around this game)

The manager interviews after the game were completely predictable and that Kim Hellberg spoke well about the pride in his players and got visibly emotional about it all before turning his guns on Tonda Eckert, which was of course prompted by the questioning. Tonda’s interviews went exactly the way that they did at the Riverside. A few cursory questions about the game and then some knobhead from the North East asking him if he was a cheat, which was a question clearly designed to make him walk out of the room. I would’ve thought that journalist would be better served by keeping the subject of the interview in the room but what do I know?

We are going to continue to get the headlines because of course, everyone is out to get us right now but we don’t make life easier for ourselves. Tonight we had the ballboy incident, we had the discriminatory language incident and we had the bus incident. In chronological order, the bus incident outside the ground when Middlesbrough arrived – I was there and saw the whole thing and it was reported as bottles being thrown. Absolute shite. I am not condoning throwing things at buses because it’s a dick move but the vast majority of the projectiles were plastic ends of spent smoke canisters that would not have even caused a scratch on the bus. It was certainly not a patch on what was thrown at the Saints bus when they arrived at the Riverside on Saturday.

The ball boy. Apparently, they are not allowed to hand a ball directly to a player so he’d done his job – Targett had a ball. In fact, maybe he should’ve given him a second, third, fourth or fifth ball so Targett could fuck around and waste more time. Matt is known for not being the sharpest tool in the box so maybe he didn’t realise that you only need one ball.

On the day after the game, the THB incident went away with Luke Ayling not wishing to take it any further. Fair play to him and a lot of people had to climb down off of their outrage.

It was a weird feeling after the game. I didn’t really enjoy the game and didn’t really enjoy our performance. I’m all about winning games but the whole spying episode has undoubtably cast a bit of a shadow. I’ve thought a various times that we need to be a little bit more ‘win’ focused and less focused on being nice little inoffensive Southampton, proud guardians of the right way to do things and the Southampton Way and all that. I will never be “win at all costs“ and I don’t think it’s in the nature of most Southampton people to be like that. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age.

The incoming tsunami of boiling piss on the internet has started straight away. There are still a huge proportion of Boro fans calling for us to be kicked out and a decent enough chunk of other media outlets calling for the same. There’s going to have to be a decision bloody quickly because you would expect tickets for the final to start being sold in the next couple of days. In amongst it all is the odd sensible Middlesbrough fan who are pointing to their own shortcomings and not relying on the baked in excuse that they’ve got. Most of it points towards their January recruitment and the fact that they can’t hit a barn door and haven’t got a squad to compete in the second half of games. They know they didn’t lose this game because of whatever happened last Thursday outside the Middlesbrough training ground.

And so we move on and wait to see what the repercussions are for everything that’s going on. As it stands, we are off to Wembley on May 23rd to play Hull City, a team who have beaten us twice this year already. Are we the underdogs? Somehow I don’t think so.

Up the fucking Saints players and fans.