Southampton fans are right to sing about spying and here is why

As far as football songs go, "We are Southampton, we spy when we want" is hardly the most inventive or tuneful. But it's taken hold in the Northam End of St Mary's as a tongue-in-cheek, yet united stance against the condemnation of an embarrassing chapter in recent Saints history.

But are Saints fans right to sing the song at all?

Fifty seconds. That is how long the Bristol City support waited before calling Southampton cheats, and every away following at St Mary's has been doing the same since Stoke City got turned over on the 22nd August.

Sarcastic applause has always been the first response, then enough noise from the home stands to bury the away end. Then, on the hour, a chorus of resistance "We spy when we want", which Sam Cunningham described in the Guardian.

Sixty seconds later, Cyle Larin had the ball in the net, and Southampton were 2-0 up, well on their way to a comfortable 4-1 home win over Bristol City, who are no slouches by this division's standards.

Fury, embarrassment, and defiance

For Saints fans, singing the song is all part of the healing process after a significant (by football's standards) trauma.

The first reaction back in May was fury, with plenty of embarrassment sitting beneath. Like a scene from an Ealing comedy, footage of a bloke on a hill by a tree with a phone, trying to gather intelligence about the opposition, could only be read as farcical.

The vitriol with which the football fraternity attacked Southampton, though, was completely out of proportion. The EfL were spooked enough to overreact, and then the young Saints boss was hounded by the very fans who had chanted his name only a few weeks before.

One Saints fan, talking to the Guardian outside the stadium before kick-off, described working through disappointment and anger and all the stages in between before landing somewhere close to acceptance. He added that the mood now is simply that the FA has to decide something, one way or the other.

Now, Saints fans have accepted all of that. They acknowledge that the club spied to gain an advantage. Saints did nothing with that advantage, of course, but that is beside the point. They understand, but do not agree with the punishment handed out by the EfL, who were egged on by the media and disgruntled former players with skin in the game.

That is precisely why the singing works. A Southampton fanbase that denied any of it had happened would have been laughed out of every ground in the division. Owning it and setting it to a tune takes the weapon off the away fans entirely.

Attendances say the same thing. St Mary's has been a shade under 30,000 for league games all season and Saturday brought 30,132 through the turnstiles, the biggest crowd yet and close enough to a sell-out.

Spygate will become a footnote to a forgotten season

Saints fans' use of humour is all part of the healing process, of course, as Spygate (2.0) becomes a footnote at the bottom of a season that fans will forget in time.

Middlesbrough proved that promotion was never guaranteed anyway when they lost a forgettable play-off final to Hull City. Spygate or not, Saints would probably still be in the Championship this season.

The additional four-point deduction was merely petulance on the part of the EfL, and there is no doubt that an FA ban for Tonda Eckert will follow.

The Saints fans will deal with that in the same way that they have dealt with the aftermath of the Spygate saga. First with fury, then with acceptance, and finally in song.

"He sits in the stands, he sits in the stands. Tonda Eckert, he sits in the stands."