A Bleak Warning To The Rest Of The Premier League

After nearly a decade, Southampton FC’s future in the Premier League looks decidedly sticky.

Manager-less following the sacking of Nathan Jones and rooted to the bottom of the table, the club needs a major turnaround to avoid dropping out of the division.

It’s not that the club is cut adrift of its rivals, a mere four points separate Saints from safety, fear arises from the absence of a clear strategy.

The reason that is so jarring is that it is out of character for the club in the past ten years.

Time and again Southampton FC made bold calls and it worked.

The ill-fated reigns of Mark Hughes and Mauricio Pellegrino may not have lasted too long, but you could see the thinking behind the appointments.

Axing Jones after just a few months without a replacement lined up makes you wonder what is going on at St Mary’s. The club has sacked coaches midseason before, but not like this.

The young squad at Southampton awaits a third new leader in less than a year to save them from the drop.

Jones was sold as long-term hire but has lasted less time than the club’s previous stop-gap solutions.

Jones and compromise

The appointment of Jones represented a definite shift in gear from the previous managers the club had gone for.

Around five years ago he was one of the most exciting prospects in the British game, elevating Luton Town from the fourth tier of English soccer to the brink of the second.

It was an achievement borne of sheer guile, Luton had sparse resources and little prestige, so much of the success was attributed to Jones.

Unsurprisingly a bigger team came knocking. Stoke City hired Jones mid-way through the 2018-19 season, but he failed to have the same impact and was let go after just 10 months in charge.

He returned to Luton a year and a half after leaving and picked up as if nothing had happened. The club rose to the upper reaches second tier, an even more impressive achievement.

Another chance looked likely, but it was a shock that it came at St Mary’s.

Since disposing of Nigel Adkins way back in 2012, Southampton has not gone for a coach so untested at the top level of the game.

Some might argue Claude Puel and Mauricio Pellegrino’s lack of experience in English management was a risk, but they came with top-flight credentials from other top European leagues.

Jones had never coached at the highest level and there were many times when insecurity about that fact appeared to surface.

The most memorable was after a 3-0 defeat to Brentford, where he did not admit weakness but suggested he’d bent his principles because of the environment.

“I’ve compromised,” he told reporters, “I’ve compromised in terms of certain principles because of one, personnel, but two, the way that people want to play and so on.

“I’ve compromised because of fans, and so on, a few little things but – no more. I’ve been very successful playing a fluent style, Luton were a real aggressive front-footed side.

“Statistically, there weren’t many better than me around Europe in terms of aggression, clean sheets, defending the box, balls in the box, [expected goals], all those sort of things.

“We were pound-for-pound the best because we were spending next to nothing and producing so much. And I’ve gone away from that.

“Maybe it’s because of the Premier League or how things look – players, internationals and stuff like that. I’ve had to compromise certain things and I’m not going to do that again.”

Jones was mercilessly mocked for his comments, especially his description of Luton as “pound for pound the best”, whose stats were bettered by few on the continent.

Perhaps he had a point, there was a reason after all, why Southampton hired him, they believed he could do what he’d done at Luton but on a bigger scale.

Acknowledging he’s not been true to himself was a brave thing to do and his description of “compromise” suggests a lot about the club’s present situation.

Ultimately, though, the players weren’t performing and his sacking was not a surprise.

Southampton FC’s past genius

The failure of the Jones experiment contrasts starkly with the shrewd decision-making which characterized the early days back in the top division ten years ago.

Its return to the Premier League had barely begun when Southampton replaced Nigel Adkins with the Argentinian Mauricio Pochettino prompting widespread dismay.

Not least, from the Southampton fans who struggled to understand why a rookie from the Spanish league had a better chance of success than the man who’d just restored them to the top flight.

At Pochettino’s first home game, the Saints’ fans borrowed a Spanish tradition and waved white handkerchiefs in protest.

“It’s not as if we’ve poached a manager from an established club and can say we’re moving to the next level,” said Mike O’Callaghan, chairman of the Southampton Independent Supporters’ Association, at the time.

“He’s unknown and unproven, and was sacked at a club bottom of the Spanish league. All we’ve known is success under Nigel Adkins at Southampton. Previous chairmen have made us into a joke, and now the present [executive] chairman is doing the same,” he added.

But the opposite turned out to be true. Pochettino transformed Southampton into one of the Premier League’s most exciting teams.

The likes of Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana and Luke Shaw became England internationals and earned transfers to elite clubs.

An impressive 7th place finish saw the manager poached by Tottenham Hotspur where he would continue to thrive.

His appointment gave the Southampton leadership some serious credibility, removing a much-loved manager was a risk, but they had demonstrated how well-calculated it was.

A faltering reboot

The upward trajectory continued under Ronald Koeman who was aided by two of arguably the best signings of the past decade; Virgil Van Dijk and Sadio Mane.

Performances peaked in the middle of the decade with Southampton recording back-to-back Europa League finishes and reaching a League Cup final.

They narrowly avoided relegation in both the 2017-18 and 2018-19 campaigns, playing far more turgid soccer under Mark Hughes

Considering the players who’d left, a drop in results was only natural and when Ralph Hasenhüttl arrived in 2019 it looked like they were back on the up.

In the long run, however, the Austrian failed to live up to the initial excitement and Southampton is not finding the unknown gems it did in the past.

This summer, there was a squad overhaul with an emphasis on hiring young fresh talent, Gavin Bazunu and Romeo Lavia arrived for big fees but precious little experience.

It looked like a risk, especially under the continued leadership of Hasenhüttl. He’d been retained but was under pressure almost as soon as the season began.

His dismissal in November felt avoidably late and unnecessarily left an inexperienced group of players rudderless. Subsequently replacing him with an equally untested choice has backfired too.

Maybe it is unfair to judge Southampton by its previous standards, the first five years in the Premier League its decision-making was close to perfect.

This is why this season’s struggles should worry other teams, it shows, for clubs of Southampton’s status, a couple of missteps can land you at the bottom of the league.