Spygate: Southampton owner Dragan Solak will not sack head coach Tonda Eckert

The EFL’s commission said it was “deplorable” of the club to have used junior staff members to “conduct the clandestine observations”.

Solak admitted that such a culture was “unacceptable”, but he blamed “a huge amount of misunderstanding, ignorance and arrogance, we have dysfunctions in the club, but we will actually make an effort for people to understand that whoever orders them to do something, that is putting them out of their comfort zone, they have every right to refuse”.

When asked about the analyst intern who had been sent to spy on opposition training sessions, and who had been caught doing so at Middlesbrough, Solak said: “I don’t see really this culture when somebody is really making junior staff do something they don’t want.

“I believe that our junior intern felt personally it’s wrong, and he didn’t feel right for doing this, and I think he should have expressed that stronger. I’m pretty sure that if [he had] come to us, the top management, actually it would be the seniors who would be punished, not him.

“I have a lot of pity. I’m sorry for what he had to go through. And we obviously would like him to stay in the club and we offered him a prolonged job with the club.”

It has been reported that some of Southampton’s players want to leave and may even consider taking legal action against the club over lost promotion bonuses. The team beat Middlesbrough over two legs to reach the play-off final, before they were ejected from the competition.

Solak said: “Honestly, it’s on them to decide. I had a very open conversation with them, and they were actually very nice. And you could see that they are hurting. But through that, they still behaved as gentlemen. You go through things, but life is fair.

“If you are a player of Southampton that really has quality to play in Premier League, I’m pretty sure you’ll play in Premier League this season or the next.”