EFL rules forbid any team from trying to watch another side training in the 72 hours before a game

Southampton's appeal against being thrown out of the Championship play-off final for spying has been rejected.

The match will now go ahead on Saturday between Hull City and Middlesbrough (15:30 BST kick-off), with a place in the Premier League on the line.

An EFL independent disciplinary commission on Tuesday evening expelled Southampton from the play-offs and reinstated Middlesbrough, who had lost 2-1 to the Saints on aggregate in the semi-finals.

Southampton appealed against their removal, calling it "manifestly disproportionate to every previous sanction in the history of the English game". However, the EPL has rejected Saints' appeal and upheld the punishment.

"A league arbitration panel has tonight dismissed Southampton Football Club's appeal against the independent disciplinary commission's sanction following the admittance of multiple breaches of EFL regulations," the EFL said on Wednesday.

"The determination means that the original sanction of expulsion from the Championship play-offs remains in place, as does the four-point deduction to be applied to the 2026-27 Championship table and the reprimand in respect of all charges."

The decision is final and there is no further right of appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Southampton issued a statement calling the ruling "an extremely disappointing outcome".

It added: "While we fully acknowledge the seriousness of this matter and the scrutiny that has followed, the club has consistently believed the original sporting sanction was disproportionate, a view that has been widely shared by many in the football community over the last 24 hours.

"While tonight is a painful moment, this football club will respond with humility, accountability and determination to put things right."

Saints midfielder Leo Scienza said his side's expulsion was "heartbreaking" and expressed sympathy for everyone involved, including Hull and Middlesbrough.

He posted on Instagram, external: "Disappointment, anger, sadness. It's difficult to find the right words for what we're all feeling right now.

"What has happened over the last days is heartbreaking. For the club, for every player in this dressing room, and above all for our supporters. A moment like this should never end the way it did.

"I feel sorry for every football fan, as well as the players and supporters of Hull and Boro, who were caught up in all of this chaos too.

"We gave everything for this dream. Day after day, sacrifice after sacrifice, always believing we could bring this club back to where it belongs. For me, the dream of playing in the Premier League was something I fought for with everything I had. That's why this pain cuts so deep."

All you need to know about Southampton's spying

Earlier on Wednesday, Southampton chief executive Phil Parsons said the club could not "accept a sanction which bears no proportion to the offence".

Parsons pointed to a £200,000 fine issued to Leeds United in 2019 for spying on Derby as evidence of precedent.

However, when Leeds were punished seven years ago, regulation 127 – which expressly forbids observing an opponent within 72 hours of a game – did not exist. It was introduced as a result of Leeds' wrongdoing.

Hull, meanwhile, are unhappy they will have to face different opponents at short notice, with owner Acun Ilicali suggesting the club could take legal action if they lose the final.

Ilicali told Sky Sports he was not happy with the situation, but there was no other option "in order to finish this mess".

When asked, he did not rule out considering legal routes should Hull fail to reach the Premier League.

"I don't want to accuse anybody and until we see the full picture, but it has had too much of an effect on us," Ilicali said.

"I am representing a big club and a big family and I will not let our family get harmed with injustice."

With the EFL's process regarding 'Spygate' now complete, attention will turn to the Football Association, which could bring separate charges against individuals.

It was January 2022, and Southampton were 14th in the Premier League table, 10 points clear of the relegation zone.

Saints had been in the top flight for 10 seasons, and had stabilised as a mid-table club under coach Ralph Hasenhuttl.

The club had just announced a takeover by Sport Republic, a company backed by Serb media mogul Dragan Solak.

"It is a pivotal moment in time," chief executive Martin Semmens told BBC Radio Solent.

It did turn out to be pivotal, but not in the way they had hoped.

The perception was that Southampton had stalled under their former owner, Chinese businessman Gao Jisheng. This was a chance for them to push on again.

But Saints endured a dismal end to the 2021-22 season, losing nine of their remaining 12 games. They just stayed up but it was a sign of what was to come.

Three months into the new season, Hasenhuttl was sacked.

"He'd done a really good job on under a tight budget," BBC fan writer Martin Sanders said. "They sacked him at the first opportunity, and they appointed a manager [Nathan Jones] who just wasn't good enough for that level."

Saints would go on to finish bottom of the table, 11 points adrift of safety.

While Southampton earned an immediate return to the Premier League through the play-offs, the 2024-25 campaign was dismal.

Saints finished on just 12 points, narrowly avoiding Derby's all-time record of 11 for the lowest total.

"The fans were disgusted at the last season in the Premier League," Sanders said. "We almost went down as the worst team ever."

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Sport Republic appointed a series of under-performing and uninspiring managers.

Jones, Ruben Selles, Ivan Juric and Will Still all failed to get results.

Only Russell Martin, who earned promotion, claimed any credit from his time in charge.

When Still was sacked in November, Sport Republic turned to Tonda Eckert on an interim basis.

The German had only joined Southampton last summer as manager of their under-21 squad.

After picking up 12 points from 15 available, he was handed the first-team job on a three-year contract.

Eckert had no experience as a first-team manager, mainly working within academies, but had been the assistant manager at Barnsley and Genoa.

"I was always unsure about giving [the job to] somebody – and it's easy to say in hindsight – that's not got experience in the game of managing a men's team," Sanders added.

"And some fans would say that's maybe come back to bite them a bit."

It is going to bite Saints hard after they lost their appeal against expulsion – and the chance to play for a place in the Premier League.

Sanders says there is no way Eckert can stay at the club – and everyone implicated has to be swept out too.

"Parsons and [owner] Dragan Solak will be fuming, but I think it's down to them to make huge changes inside the football club," Sanders said.

"They will have to make wholesale changes, especially from the coaching point of view, if they want to regain any credibility.

"It's so important because the whole club is tarnished. How this has been allowed to happen is just shocking.

"Tonda Eckert will never manage a game for Southampton Football Club ever again.

"Nor should he, and the fans would not allow it."

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Unai Emery won three Europa League titles with Sevilla and one with Villarreal

Three-and-a-half years ago he walked into Villa Park and vowed he had joined Aston Villa to win trophies.

Skipper John McGinn lifted the Europa League after a 3-0 victory over Freiburg to etch Villa's name into the history books again.

In front of nine of the 1982 European Cup heroes – including captain Dennis Mortimer and goalscorer Peter Withe – Villa wrote themselves another momentous chapter.

Spectacular strikes from Youri Tielemans and Emi Buendia sent them on their way, with Morgan Rogers sealing victory.

This time they still played in white and beat a German team in red. Instead of Bayern Munich it was Freiburg. Instead of Rotterdam it was Istanbul.

For Withe it was Tielemans, Buendia and Rogers as Emery clinched his fifth Europa League title.

Unai Emery had won three Europa League titles with Sevilla and one with Villarreal

Emery's previous four were already a competition record and while he dismissed the suggestion he was a European king, he is a serial winner.

It now six finals and five wins – with the latest cementing a legacy at Villa Park which will last decades.

Villa officials were nervous talking about the trophy parade in advance, which needed to be organised ahead of time given the disruption in Birmingham, but the squad will flaunt it in the city Thursday afternoon.

Emery said: "I am thankful to [co-owners] Nassef [Sawiris] and Wes [Edens]… they are supporting always. I am thankful to the supporters and I am thankful for he players.

"All the times I am successful in this competition I needed good players. Now I am so thankful for the players, they are following our ambitions.

"They are protagonists on the field. This is the reason I am not feeling the king in this competition. I am feeling really thankful – we are the kings together.

"After 1982 the club won the European Cup, it was something they were missing – the supporters – a trophy. Achieving this one is making us so, so happy but we are not going to stop."

If Tielemans' volley – rounding off a short corner routine – gave them the platform then Buendia's curler into the top corner put one hand on the trophy.

Former Villa midfielder Ian Taylor, a fan of the club who scored in the 1996 League Cup win – the last time Villa had won major silverware – leaped out of his press box chair and punched the air.

Rogers' third had the substitutes celebrating on the pitch and an airborne Emery jumping on the touchline with clenched fists. Victory was assured.

"I feel amazing," Tielemans told TNT. "My voice is a bit gone but it's all good. We put in a shift, a top performance, we had a great season. To top it off with this is amazing.

"It's been a season with a lot of ups and downs. We started so so bad. Our standards were very poor.

"The way we turned things around was a credit to the players and staff. We kept working, believing. We got the win in the end, Champions League next season and a trophy."

England forward Morgan Rogers has scored 15 goals for club and country this season

Yet it was not without early nerves. Emi Martinez needed his right ring finger taped and treated in the warm up – evoking memories of Nigel Spink replacing Jimmy Rimmer after just nine minutes in the '82 final.

But those concerns evaporated, Villa were never in danger and the fans who packed Besiktas Park had already started celebrating by half-time.

Villa's official ticket allocation was 10,758 but 20,000 travelled to Turkey, they clearly outnumbered Freiburg's following and crammed into the bars and cafes off Istanbul's famous Taksim Square.

Among them in the stadium, Prince William who had already sent a message of good luck on social media and he watched on as Emery was hoisted on to Martinez's shoulders as Villa celebrated on the pitch.

Head of football operations Damian Vidagany held his hands on his head at the final whistle, signifying a release of pressure, before embracing Tielemans.

Martinez struggled to contain his emotions while co-owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens greeted the players before they collected their medals.

The future king filmed the trophy lift on his phone as Villa celebrated a milestone moment.

Rogers told TNT: "It's hard to put into words, we've worked so hard for this. We've delivered and come through. It's a great moment for the fans, great for the club. We'll go down in history."

It was the first win of a potential English treble, with Crystal Palace's Conference League final against Rayo Vallecano next week before Arsenal's Champions League showdown with Paris St-Germain on 30 May.

Uefa may have problems with English dominance going forward, but Villa will not care much about the others now.

A return to the Champions League was already assured after Friday's 4-2 win over Liverpool secured a top-five finish in the Premier League, easing at least a little pressure.

Emery has taken Villa into Europe in every season, even reaching the Conference League in 2022-23 after taking over with the club just three points above the relegation zone.

It is an extraordinary record given the financial restrictions Villa have worked under – selling talent every year to comply with Profit and Sustainability rules.

For all of their money woes the £5.2m paid to bring Emery from Villarreal in 2022 is one of football's best bargains.

England's Rogers may still leave this summer, especially with a good World Cup, but a return to Europe's elite leaves Villa in a stronger position.

He would leave a Europa League winner, a little over two years after joining from Middlesbrough in a £16m deal, after a memorable night in Turkey.

Forty-four years ago there was another unforgettable night for Villa – and Brian Moore's commentary of Withe's winner hangs at the top of the Doug Ellis Stand at Villa Park.

A new banner for new heroes is needed now.

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The bungalow doesn't look much like a children's home. A sheet of privacy film wrongly placed outside a window is peeling. Inside, the wallpaper is flaking, carpets are frayed and doors are broken. The children's home is unregistered and therefore illegal but the provider is charging a council elsewhere in the country £13,000 a week to care for a vulnerable teenage girl. She requires the support of three full-time members of staff. There are no books, toys or games.

Just a few miles away, another illegal children's home is being run from a council house. Its tenant is subletting the property to a company that is also charging a different local authority thousands of pounds a week.

Five years ago, my reports into such placements led directly to a government ban on the use of unregulated children's homes in England. I found that children as young as 11 were being housed in homes that were not registered with or inspected by Ofsted. These included squalid flats, tents, caravans, narrowboats and a home under surveillance by the police for suspected gang activity.

I also exposed how one girl was trafficked directly from her home and sexually abused, while a boy was kidnapped from another home to sell drugs. A Newsnight investigation said teenagers were being abandoned to organised crime.

The 2021 ban on under-16s being housed in such homes was meant to bring an end to the practice. But in reality, councils struggling to accommodate children are placing more of them than ever in what are now illegal homes – at huge taxpayer expense. I've now learned of unregistered placements that are costing as much as £2m per child a year.

The sector is a "Wild West", according to Dr Mark Kerr, chief executive of the Children's Homes Association. "This is the culmination of 10 years of systemic failure to develop specialist provision for our most vulnerable children," he says.

While the majority of children are either fostered, adopted or placed in legal children's homes, local authorities have struggled to find homes for children with the most complex needs – who are often the most expensive to care for. And in around 800 cases in England, councils have turned to unregistered homes, despite the ban on them, according to the Public Accounts Committee.

So why, if the homes are unregistered and therefore illegal, are English councils still placing children in them? And how can the system be reformed so this doesn't continue to happen?

Counter-intuitively, just as the use illegal children's homes has increased, the number of registered children's homes has soared – doubling from 2,209 to 4,455 in eight years, according to Ofsted. That's despite the fact that there has only been a 9% increase in the number of children in care over this period.

Many sources tell me that this huge increase in homes has been caused by a rush of new providers entering the market. Alongside private equity, property investors have also piled into the market.

And even though many providers have no prior experience in care, prices have also surged. The amount spent by councils in England on children's residential homes has doubled in the last four years and tripled in the last eight years. Four years ago, I found some companies making profits of 40%.

Staffordshire council paid £2.6m last year to care for a teenage girl in a registered placement who required up to five staff to care for her. The council says there's a national shortage of specialist homes and the NHS pays half of the cost of the placement.

Even the average placement in a registered home now costs £6,100 a week, or £318,000 a year.

But it's the unregistered homes – which are so brazenly run that Ofsted even records a tally of them – that cause the most concern.

I've visited many and am continually surprised by the environments in which children who have faced appalling abuse and neglect prior to entering care are placed in.

I saw one caravan in Lancashire where a 12-year-old boy had been placed in the care of a company that also uses narrowboats, with children often ending up being moved between the two. In contrast, his brother had been in a stable and far cheaper foster placement for years.

In Portsmouth, I also visited a flat above a shop where a council had placed a 14-year-old known to be at risk of jumping out of windows.

One whistleblower I recently spoke to described seeing a boy living in a house where the sofa was propped up with two bricks, another said she had seen a child barricaded inside a room.

I also met Chereece, a care leaver who says she was moved between holiday homes in Wales for months – sometimes twice in a week.

"It was an absolute nightmare", she says. "Different staff, different young people – I felt like I was a prisoner."

Many of the children in illegal children's homes are located in terraced or suburban housing in parts of northern England with cheaper rents. One in five are of all children in care are living at least 20 miles away from where they grew up, according to Clare Bracey of the national charity Become, which campaigns to end the practice.

And even illegal placements can be hugely expensive. Our FOI requests show that multiple illegal children's homes are being paid over £2m per child per year in extreme cases. These rising costs mean there is less funding for earlier support that may prevent children being placed in care, according to the Local Government Association.

So why would councils actively break the law in placing vulnerable children they are responsible for in sub-standard settings which are not monitored or inspected?

It's clear that the registered and therefore legal children's home market is not meeting the demands of a specific cohort of children with complex needs.

This group of children being placed in illegal homes – which is roughly 10% of those considered to require residential care – are sometimes violent and often require restraint. Some must even be locked up under Deprivation of Liberty orders mandated by the High Court for their own welfare.

Previously, many of these children might have been placed in secure children's units, where they are locked inside, but places in these are very limited and can be very expensive. Cornwall has recently been paying £63,000 a week to place a child in such a setting.

So councils say they are forced to turn to illegal children's homes.

It's a situation akin to removing the "sickest patients" from hospitals and placing them in backstreet clinics, according to Anders Bach-Mortensen, an associate professor of social care at Roskilde University.

With a massive increase in the supply of children's homes, it might be expected that costs of placements would fall for both registered and illegal children's homes. But the opposite has happened.

Some directors of registered children's homes believe that profiteering is responsible and cite an increase in property investors entering the sector.

The current exodus of landlords from the rental market led some to look to convert properties to children's homes.

A whole cottage industry has also developed online to advise landlords how to flip rental properties.

"Children's homes continue to offer a compelling alternative to traditional buy-to-lets," argues one middleman who markets his ability to secure the required planning permission on Instagram.

One conversion in Hemel Hempstead is a "fully hands-off investment with guaranteed income and no ongoing headaches", he says.

On Facebook groups for managers and directors of children's homes, many openly admit to running illegal placements.

Some providers say Ofsted should share the blame for this state of affairs. Its registration process is "broken" and encouraging illegal children's homes to "thrive", according to one director of a provider of registered homes.

The influx in applications to register children's homes has led to waiting times of up to 18 months before the regulator takes a decision.

As a result, some

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