Tonda Eckert enjoys a book metaphor. That much became apparent last Thursday, when this most unsaintly of managers was presented to around 100 Southampton fans at St Mary’s Stadium.It was a supporters’ forum, so there was the usual array of questions on season tickets and the like, but a single topic dominated the hour-long session.And there was no surprise in that, because you cannot talk about Southampton’s forthcoming season in the Championship without discussing how the previous campaign ended – Spygate won’t be forgotten in a hurry.For Eckert, the 33-year-old German at the heart of a scandal, the espionage drama that saw his side expelled in disgrace from the play-offs three months ago and deducted four points from the upcoming campaign is one he cannot outrun; it cannot be disguised by an Eastleigh tracksuit or parked behind an intern in the trees.Indeed, his job might still be lost in the coming weeks amid the ongoing aftershocks of a remarkable story broken by Craig Hope in the Daily Mail last May.But last week, in front of those supporters, Eckert sought refuge in the promises of a brighter future. That’s where the metaphors came into it. There is a cloud still hanging over the future of Southampton boss Tonda Eckert You cannot talk about Southampton’s forthcoming season in the Championship without discussing how the previous campaign ended – with intern William Salt caught spying‘I understand that it feels like there’s a page that’s been ripped out of the book,’ he said. ‘I do believe there are many chapters of memories and as much as we want them all to be positive, I think that it’s one of the toughest that the football club has had.‘But it’s not written to the last page yet. For me, there’s much more to come. I just hope I will be sitting here in 12 months and talking about the Premier League.’It is not known if Eckert is a Bond fan. Likewise, we can only speculate facetiously if memoirs might one day emerge from players who were robbed of their shot at the top flight. Working title: The Spy Who Screwed Me.For the time being, Southampton are a club desperate to move on, starting with their Championship opener at Watford on Sunday. Even factoring in the burden of starting on minus four points, Eckert’s squad is sufficiently strong for a run at promotion. They are ranked fifth or sixth with most bookmakers to go up.But they are also trapped in limbo, because Eckert remains the subject of a serious FA misconduct charge over his role in the deployment of analysts to spy on Middlesbrough, Ipswich and Oxford United last season. Having already admitted his complicity in the Middlesbrough and Oxford capers to the EFL enquiries, he exists on perilous terrain.Daily Mail Sport understands a verdict is highly unlikely to be issued prior to the weekend and sources at Southampton believe it could be as far off as September.But the key point would be the length of any sanction and whether the club’s owner, Serbian billionaire media mogul Dragan Solak, can maintain his robust backing of Eckert in the event he is hit with a huge suspension.In June, Solak accepted his loyalty to a talented, tainted manager does have limits, and told the Southern Daily Echo: ‘If they ban him, we will appeal. If we lose the appeal, and it’s such a long ban, we’ll have to take a new manager. We can’t leave the club unmanaged.’ Southampton were booted out of the play-offs, hit with a four-point deduction this season and became the laughing stock of English football when the Daily Mail broke the Spygate story The key point for Eckert would be the length of any sanction and whether the club’s owner Dragan Solak (pictured) maintains his robust backing if the boss is hit with a lengthy ban Led by the likes of midfielder Finn Azaz (right), Southampton are confident they can reach the Premier League this seasonFor Eckert, there is little comfort to be found in the precedents for this kind of scenario – FIFA handed a one-year ban to the former coach of Canada women, Bev Priestman, after a drone was flown over a New Zealand training session at the 2024 Olympics.We might add here that Eckert did apologise earlier in the summer, albeit belatedly. There is also some merit to be found in Southampton’s view that they have been severely punished already by the EFL.But the flipside to any leniency was graphically spelled out within the EFL’s written reasonings – piecing together the accounts of witnesses, they painted a deplorable picture of the pressures placed on Eckert’s analysts to perform nefarious tasks.Eckert, for his part, has alluded to hitherto undisclosed contexts, which presumably go beyond the thin excuse that spying is common on the continent. On Thursday, he spoke of ‘an image created that I think is very far away from the truth’, but only time will tell if his version of reality offers a convincing mitigation to the FA.Either way, Eckert has been preparing for a period away from the technical area. When Southampton played Preussen-Munster in a friendly earlier this month, Eckert watched from the stands and trialled the feasibility of transmitting his instructions to the bench. As a solution, it might suffice for a handful of games, but surely not the bulk of a 46-match league season with the riches of the Premier League at stake.Ostensibly, there is less concern around the health of Eckert’s squad, to which Manchester City striker Divin Mubama was added on loan on Tuesday. Despite the loss of last season’s joint-top scorer Ross Stewart to Swansea and the £30million sale of influential midfielder Shea Charles to Fulham, Southampton have the nucleus of the group that finished fourth last season with a 21-game unbeaten run, including the two play-off ties against Middlesbrough. They also knocked Arsenal out of the FA Cup.An unknown at this stage is whether any internal resentment will hang over from how the campaign ended, because in those initial days, post-expulsion, the dressing room anger was real.We have previously reported that there was a consideration of legal action from some players towards their club over lost bonuses, but Daily Mail Sport understands that never materialised into action. All public noises from the squad claim there is no ill-feeling towards the manager. Captain Jack Stephens said this month they are ‘fully behind’ Eckert Eckert has even been preparing for a period away from the technical area, using friendlies to sit in the stands and trial the feasibility of transmitting his instructions to the benchContrary to a rumour among some agents, multiple figures around the first team also insisted to us that there was never a sweetener offered by the club to settle the bonuses that would have been paid for promotion. Some players would have been due as much as £250,000 had they reached the Premier League.It is unclear whether any enhanced compensation will be worked into this season’s bonus structure – Daily Mail Sport has been told elements of those conversations with the club have been deferred until next month – but all public noises from the squad claim there is no ill-feeling towards the manager. Captain Jack Stephens said this month they are ‘fully behind’ Eckert.The robustness of those alliances will be tested in due course, and ditto the party line repeated by many club sources that the squad has been galvanised through the turmoil. It is theoretically plausible, of course.They wouldn’t be the first outfit to benefit from a siege mentality, which seemed to be the message of club CEO Phil Parsons when speaking at the same forum as Eckert. His soundbite: ‘We seem to be that club everybody hates this year, and I don’t really care.’The sentiment among supporters in the coming months will be fascinating. Much like the club, they want to forget a damaging, costly episode, but many have leant into their circumstances. When Eckert’s side played Colchester in the Carabao Cup first round last weekend, there were chants of: ‘We are Southampton, we’ll spy when we want.’As ever, the test of humour will come if results settle into a negative trend.‘I think we’re all coming to terms with what happened now and ready to move on,’ says Martin Starke, host of the popular Total Saints Podcast.‘To be honest, I thought the manager would go and, at the time, I thought he should have. I was very angry about it, like a lot of people – we had tickets for Wembley and it was taken from underneath us. But I’ve mellowed a bit over the summer. We have to draw a line under it. Even if Eckert survives, the pressure is considerable – the 2026-27 season is Southampton’s last under the comfort of parachute payments Whatever Eckert delivers for his unwritten pages, it seems unlikely that he can muster an ending as wild as what has gone before. Assuming he gets the chance‘I still don’t think the punishment fitted the crime but moving forward we’re in a good situation – we’re going into the season with a manager and a squad that has been together for a bit of time and proven they can win games in this league and perform. There are plenty of reasons to be positive.’Eckert’s immediate future stands as a caveat to some of those points. Even if he survives, the pressure is considerable – the 2026-27 season is Southampton’s last under the comfort of parachute payments. ‘Now or never,’ as Starke put it.Those financial imperatives were possibly illuminated by reported cuts to the women’s team set-up this summer, though an academy job has been offered to William Salt, the 23-year-old intern pressured into spying right back at the start of a scandal.The image of him beside a tree, aiming his phone at a Middlesbrough training session, was the most surreal point of an extraordinary plot. Whatever Eckert delivers for his unwritten pages, it seems unlikely that he can muster an ending as wild as what has gone before. Assuming he gets the chance.