After the way Glenn Hoddle was poached from Saints back in 2001 there was no love lost between Saints fans and Spurs and that deep mistrust surfaced again earlier this year when they poached Mauricio Pochettino.

Rupert Lowe famously called Tottenham Hotspur a bunch of North London Yobbo's for the way they poached then Saiint's manager Glenn Hoddle, for those not old enough to remember Spurs held talks with Hoddle without approaching Saints first, they claimed these were nothing more than an informal chat, but even as they were happening it was being linked to the press and it forced Hoddle's hand, rather than wait till the summer and leave the Dell in good standing, he had seen his bridges burned for him and it was either go to White Hart Lane then or Spurs would look elsewhere.

We all know of their courting of Pochettino, the constant press rumours the constant denials of any interest, then suddenly hey ho the moment the season ends he is top of their wish list and appointed with indecent haste.

Morgan Schneiderlin was again courted and the press played their part in stirring up the pot even after Saints had stated that they were not going to let him leave.

But the latest rumour is that Spurs want Saints head of player recruitment Paul Mitchell, this is absolutely ludicrous, this must be the first time that a member of a club's backroom staff in a non coaching position is the subject of specualtion in the national press of a bid from another club, indeed most Saints supporters would not have heard of Mitchell, not to say his work is not valued, he is just low down on the radar.

So why is he being linked, ? well two words "Neil Ashton" this Daily Mail journalist has stopped at nothing to de stabilise Southampton Football Club in 2014, the only surprise is he hasn't tried to suggest that the car park attendant at St Mary's is planning a sex change.

But Ashton must be getting his information from somewhere, after all when you put something out like this you are risking your credibility if it turns out to be complete rubbish, Ashton seems to be in the know at Spurs, claiming that not only are they after Mitchell but Pochettino trusts his judgement ( Strange that one as during Pochettino's time at Saints we only signed four players and two of them Forren and Osvaldo turned out to be total disasters) and that Levy is looking to re structure the back room staff, now either Ashton has a mole in White Hart Lane or he has a vivid imagination.

"Daniel Levy's massive restructuring programme at Tottenham has started with an attempt to bring in Southampton’s head of recruitment Paul Mitchell."

This was Ashton in the Mail earlier this week, this is a big statement, in it Ashton is not speculating , he is putting things forward as fact, so who is telling him these "facts".

As I say he must be getting information from someone, it probably isn't Saints who confirmed that they have received no official approach from Spurs, so if we discount disgruntled ex employee's then it has to be from within Tottenham themselves.

At the head of Tottenham Hotspur is Daniel Levy, he joined them in February 2001 coincidentally just before Glenn Hoddle's departure from the Dell in the March of that year.

Soon after Levy arrived George Graham was sacked in controversial circumstances and since then including Graham, Levy has had 10 permanent managers plus several caretakers in 13 years at White Hart Lane, all bar the current one have left under a cloud, on the face of it the average shelf life of a Spurs manager is 17 months, probably about the Premier League average, but if you take out Harry Redknapp and Martin Jol who between them did 7 years in the Spurs hot seat then the other 7 have lasted an average of around 10 months each.

Managerially speaking Levy has rarely got it right for the club and that being the case his employers ENIC must be considering his position given that in addition to the managerial fiasco's there is the issues with their trying to move to the Olympic Stadium (ask West Ham fans about that one) and when that failed the building of the new ground that doesn't appear to have been managed well and of course the fact that Spurs are going backwards on the pitch.

That being the case then it is easy to see why Levy should be making noises to his trusted press contacts that he is going to change the backroom staff at Spurs and bring in a different culture, however after 13 years has that culture not been set in place by Levy himself with his constant hiring and firing of managers ,meaning that now there is no true loyalty to any man at the club be it manager or otherwise because they have so many people brought in by ex managers and employee's

So over the last 13 years Daniel Levy has not had the greatest reputation with Saints fans, they would claim his tactics have always been underhand, perhaps that is harsh and untrue but it certainly felt that way in the dealings we have had with them starting with Hoddle.

Now we have national newspapers claiming they are chasing our backroom staff, how desperate is that, mind you how desperate now is Levy ? how many millions have been spent on hiring and firing managers and in the transfer window for players who are still at the club now and who are surplus to requirements.

Once upon a time Tottenham Hotspur where a great club respected throughout football for the way they did things, in the last decade or so that has been turned to dust in the minds of most other supporters of other clubs. Bill Nicholson always the most admired and respected of men must be turning in his grave.

Perhaps we at Southampton have more to be aggrieved with Spurs than most, yes perhaps there is a little bitterness, but there is also now a degree of sympathy for Spurs supporters for the way their club has been turned from a once decent club, into one that see's itself as above ethical ways of doing things and see's nothing wrong in trying to de stabilise other club's players and now in our case backroom staff.

Paul Mitchell should have remained the anonymous vital part of the team he was, if he left he should have done so under honourable circumstances, not seen his name plastered as a major news story in a national paper as a pawn in Spurs problems.

Ten months ago Mauriccio Pochettino was the subject of similar rumour of his departure from St Mary's to White Hart Lane, despite his denials that anything underhand had gone on etc, the rumours were spookily accurate and Pochettino was appointed with indecent haste.

I wonder how true these latest rumours are ? and as we brace ourselves for alleged bids for Morgan Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez in January what tactics will be employed to try and prise them away from St Mary's

The initial question was "Are Spurs the most underhand club in the Premier League ? "

Im not qualified enough to answer that and there are certainly others that could challenge for that title, however in the eyes of the supporters I have spoken to not just at Saints but throughout the land, they are certainly one of the leading contenders.

Photo: Action Images

nomorerumours added 11:50 - Nov 14 I think that all we can do is totally ignore all the media hype and rumourmongering. It is already as bad as it was last summer and it's still 6 weeks until the window opens. Whether this is irresponsible reporting (very common for the Daily Mail), Spuds' unsettling tactics or player agents making a noise (re: Morg and JayRod , not Paul Mitchell - at least I've never heard of a recruitment manager who has an agent!) or a combination of any or all of these, is irrelevant. I do not believe any of it.

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SaintNick added 11:59 - Nov 14 Whilst i agree about rumours etc, i have to say that someone somewhere has an agenda, for Mitchell's name to be brought up and used as a news story in a paper, after all Ashton has to go to his editor and say "hey lets do a big piece about an anonymous member os Saints backroom staff" its hardly Luis Suarez to Barcelona is it
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1962saint added 12:52 - Nov 14 i think you will find that Forren was signed when Nigel Adkins was manager. I'd love to know why, as a full international player, he was never given a chance to play a single game.
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SaintNick added 12:59 - Nov 14 Forren was officially signed the day Pochettino took over, Adkins confirmed he had nothing to do with the signing and Foren himself said he was told that Pochettino was arriving, but the point was that out of four players signed to play under Pochettino two were disasters, im not criticising Mitchell but if Pochettino had confidence in him after getting those two wrong im a little surprised

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Dellwizard added 13:01 - Nov 14 There was the story that our senior physio Matt Radcliffe was supposed to have been signed by Man U. It was all over the papers. I've noticed that's gone a bit quiet now.
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cpnhadock added 13:18 - Nov 14 Schneiderlin can leave for no less than £50m to Spurs. My thinking is that is: A: his value to Saints B: good value when you consider the pile of *&^% that Spurs bought for £100m J-Rod can leave for no less than £40m to Spurs. My thinking is that is: A: good value for Saints B: what spurs deserve Paul Mitchell can leave for Spurs (but I would be gutted) However, he would need to accept that the freedom and strategy he enjoys at Saints would not be emulated under the wrath of Levy.... it would be a very dangerous move for him to make. There are three things that matter in all of this: 1. Saints will carry on producing the cream of the national side. 2. Spurs will never really be a big club - they dont have a strategy, they dont have the same money as the truly big clubs, they dont have a shred of integrity let alone playing ability. 3. Neil Ashton is a w@n%er with an agenda - I would love to see how he would react to someone spending their life picking holes and creating rumours about him. USELESS C*&T COYR!

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BoondockSaint added 13:52 - Nov 14 Unfortunately for Spurs fans, they are not as big a club as they think they are compared to the "Top Four". So whoever runs it, is expected to get them into the top 4 every year. Like Scousehampton who think they should always be the team of the 70s, so Spurs think they should always be at the level they were in the 60s. Levy has no patience and keeps thinking all they need is the just the right manager, but what they need is to clear out the players. The players know that they have the power and if they're bad on the field, it's the manager, not them that will be blamed by Levy. MP must have been aware of this, but like the woman who marries,the serial cheater, his ego was telling him, "They'll change for me." and they never will. As for the speculation on Mitchell, whether it is the press or Levy, if they want to improve recruitment, who's the team with the best record in that? Scousehampton? Nope, it's us, so naturally it's our guy who is the target of speculation. We can't be too critical, as Cortese was cut from the same cloth as Levy..see the hiring and firing of Atkins. The Men in Blazers claim Saints have their own version of banks' dye packs that explode when robbers leave: We put a pack on our players so that as soon as they leave, they turn into crap!! So bring on the stupid money for J-Rod and Morgan! It all goes into the Return of Gareth Bale Jar! (Hey a boy can dream, can't he?) I'm actually more concerned that the Spurs look around to see who has the best fan site and try to nick Nick!!!

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SaintNick added 14:30 - Nov 14 I have had offers to join some Spurs site but I have told them I want a move to a fans site of a club in the Champions league
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BoondockSaint added 15:04 - Nov 14 Did you use the usual, "They lack ambition" line?
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ItchenNorth added 15:25 - Nov 14 If we don't like all this crap, why write more articles about it to generate more debate amongst fans!
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SaintNick added 16:09 - Nov 14 Because it helps us work out what may be crap and what may have substance, if Saints supporter websites had only written articles on positive stuff that people liked it would have been a quiet may/June/July Boondock, Spurs websites dont lack ambition, they all think they are on the verge of world domination, reality as to their real chances of winning the Premier or the World Cup has no place on them

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ItchenNorth added 18:11 - Nov 14 What will be will be. I don't get our fixation with worrying about what some journos say.
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ThereIn76 added 20:22 - Nov 14 Actually Nick it's more than ten years and more like 30, back to when Irving Scholar took over and floated them on the stock market. They won the UEFA Cup in 1984, then Keith Burkinshaw resigned and as he walked out the door for the last time, he pointed at the stadium and said "that used to be a football club."
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BlockRed added 20:31 - Nov 14 Wow - just playing catch-up. I didn't realise that Neil Ashton is the presenter of 'Sunday Supplement', I usually watch that albeit bleary eyed most Sunday mornings. Can't say as he usually comes across as a hater of Saints during the show, but then I guess he just brings up a topic and then passes over to the other journos, who at the moment have nothing but praise for us. In fact he normally ends a discussion about Saints by commenting 'so the St. Mary's meltdown continues'. Is the irony aimed at himself, the sneering little greasy c**t?! Anywho, I feel that Spurs (board and backroom) are imploding at the mo. They're being found out by the way they're run and you have to ask, who in their right mind would like to jump on that bandwagon right now? Certainly none of our players or members of staff even if they're offered more money to go there. At what cost would that be to their careers in the long run? ..Unless they fancy having a cock emblazoned on their shirts/tracksuit?

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dja added 01:16 - Nov 15 You all know what the press are like build it up then knock it down. We are a team to be proud of right now. Don't get negative, be realistic and everything will turn out positive.
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TimSaint added 09:19 - Nov 15 Paul Mitchell takes the job at Spurs and after his first week, reports back that they need to recruit a new manager and a completely new board.!!
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