In Tonda We Trust as Saints face out of form Boro in the first leg of the Championship play off semi final and start as favourites, but that is no guarantee of anything and Tonda Eckert will be preparing his men in his usual efficient manner.

The controversy has already started before a ball is kicked in this half of the play off semi final's with report emanating from the North East of a Southampton spy at the Middlesbrough training ground.

The story of a suspected spy wandering around the training ground filming training sessions sounds a bit far fetched and even more strange is that after being "caught" the spy was let go without giving his name, call me traditional, but of you find an intruder on your premises, would you not call the police.

Did they hold him whilst they checked that he hadn't been in the changing rooms and been stealing things there or elsewhere in the complex ? It seems not, they just accepted his silence, forced him to delete the footage and sent him on his way.

Either way the Teesside media has been using it to fire up things ahead of Saturday's first leg, knowing morale is at rock bottom in the Boro camp.

At the start of February, Boro were flying high and looked odds on for promotion, then the season started to go wrong and starting with losing to Coventry on 16th February, they have won just 4 games out of 15, they have drawn 7, so they are still a hard side to beat having lost just 4.

But 19 points out of 45 on offer is not good.

There are reason, they will point at the loss of Championship Player of the Year Hayden Hackney to injury, however that only accounts for the last 8 games, Hackney is reported to be back on the training ground this week, but having not played since mid March he is far from match fit, he is likely to appear on the bench, although more as a psychological boost than anything else.

So Boro boss Kim Hellberg has a task ahead of him to rally his troops and the supporters, at the start of this week over 6,000 tickets remained unsold for Saturday's game and Boro averaging around 27,000 this season are used to playing in front of swathes of empty seats.

In the Southampton camp Tonda Eckert will be preparing his side in the same meticulous way that he has been doing since his arrival, in that same 15 game period, a third of the regular season , starting with that sensational turnaround at Leicester City, Saints have won 11 and drawn 4, in doing so the 37 points they have gained enabled them to overturn the 18 point gap that existed between the two clubs back in February.

That is a big psychological advantage, we have grown stronger with two players in each position meaning that substitutions are more than just fresh legs, Boro are mentally on the floor and missing their best player.

The task ahead for Tonda Eckert is clear, firstly keep the unbeaten run going and secondly impose ourselves on Boro and hope that if we get our noses ahead then their fans will get on their backs and they will crumble.

But this is the play offs and anything can happen so Tonda has to make sure his team does not get too complacent and that goes for the Saints supporters as well, in these two games previous form means nothing, they are essentially two one off games and nothing is certain till the final whistle of the second game.

From a Saints perspective little has come out of the camp so we have to assume that Jack Stephens aside, Tonda Eckert has no fitness issues.

If that is the case then I would suggest that the goalkeeper and back four are going to be Bree, Wood, Harwood-Bellis & Manning.

The midfield will be a little trickier with the return of Flynn Downes from suspension, I think we could go with a midfield trio of Downes, Jander & Azaz, although Shea Charles could just as easily be preferred to any one of those three.

That would see them flanked by two wingers in Leo Sceienza on the left and Tom Fellows on the right.

That leaves just the centre forward spot and it will be interesting to see if the manager sticks to what has been a fairly strict rotation policy between Cyle Larin & Ross Stewart, if so then he will start with Larin, or if he had decided that one or the other will better suit this game.

What a problem to have, both are neck and neck on 8 goals apiece in the League and in most games at least one of them scores.

Although we are far from reliant on them for goals, of the current squad Finn Azaz is top scorer with 10 goals, Ryan Manning has 8 goals and not all from free kicks, Taylor Harwood-Bellis is lethal from set pieces with 7, Leo Scienza has 7 and the goals come from all across the team.

But what will worry Boro most is our never say die spirit, we are a far different team in spirit from the one that collapsed back in January at the Riverside, going from being fairly comfortable on 54 minutes at 0-0 to being 4 down just 22 minutes later.

So two thousand Saints supporters will leave home at around 5am on Saturday morning to back their team, given that it doesn't look like Boro will sell all their tickets, then they could easily have given us 3,000, if they had then we would have reciprocated for the second leg and their die hard fans would have been able to attend.

We have had some great times this season, we go again for this game and we have to do so twice more after, win all three games and this will truly have been a season to remember.

All Photos Via Reuters