Southampton need more than a thousand bad ideas after their whimper-less relegation
Southampton badly need a complete reset and relegation from the Premier League needs careful handling. Are the club’s owners Sport Republic up to the task?
This has been a season of disappointment upon disappointment for Southampton supporters, and they were probably amongst the least surprised to see even the mathematical chance of staying in the Premier League disappearing down the Solent and out to sea without much of a fight against Fulham. A 2-0 defeat confirmed their relegation, and perhaps the most surprising thing was that the players didn’t really seem that bothered. They played as though they’d already given up, and while in a strictly logical sense that’s almost understandable, it’s not what fans want to see on a Saturday afternoon.
Southampton have been struggling all season, and haven’t been out of the relegation places since the first week in November. But when push really did come to shove, they really were found wanting. After they’d played 26 matches they had 22 points; after 36 matches they have 24, and with their final two fixtures of the season against Brighton and Liverpool, there seems little prospect of them picking up any more, either. Ruben Selles hasn’t worked out. Nathan Jones didn’t work out. A lot of their transfer business hasn’t worked out. Very little has worked out for Southampton.
Just about the only thing that has, James Ward-Prowse, surely cannot be long for the club. Over the last few weeks he has become their Obi Wan-Kenobi. Save us, James Ward-Prowse, you’re our only hope. But real life isn’t Star Wars, Southampton aren’t Princess Leia, and the club are now headed towards the dark side of the Championship at warp speed.
Ward-Prowse will presumably stay behind in the Premier League. Players want to compete at the highest level and Southampton will need to balance their books. And the worry for Southampton supporters is that once he’s gone… what else is there?
Because the evidence of this season suggests, potentially not very much. Only three players – Ward-Prowse, Che Adams and Carlos Alcaraz – have scored more than two goals in the league. Adams may be an asset in the Championship if he can stay fit but beyond him, how many players are screaming ‘bounce back’?
But Southampton’s issues are about more than the players. They’re about more than the manager. Removing Ralph Hasenhuttl last autumn was akin to shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic. Getting rid of Nathan Jones was the sound of a water-filled trombone, playing The Last Post as the whole edifice started to slide below the water-line.
The problems at Southampton are insitutional and, if anything, even pre-date the arrival of Sport Republic, who have owned the club since the beginning of 2022. Under the previous ownership of Gao Jisheng, the club had started to drift, with Jisheng appearing disinterested and distant. If anything, under Sport Republic the opposite is close to true. There was a sudden pivot towards buying young players and significant changes to scouting and recruitment processes which have primarily been conspicuous for the extent to which they have been unsuccessful.
There have been splits behind the scenes, a high staff turnover, ruinous divisions in the dressing room, and a Director of Football whose overreach has been so great that there’s been talk that he needs to be ‘reined in’. It is a mess from head to toe. It is a club badly in need of a reset.
The latter part of this season was clearly Ruben Selles’ audition for the manager’s job. This audition has been failed, and it’s difficult to see how he can stay in this position beyond the end of this season. But it’s also difficult to see who his replacement might be. Regardless of everything that happened at Chelsea this season, Graham Potter might be the dream appointment, just the sort of person who might fancy a rebuild job of this nature and have the philosophy to be able to carry it out. But would he want to set foot inside St Mary’s while the club is in this sort of state?
Because one thing that Brighton and Southampton have in common is that they are both highly data-driven clubs, but data is usually only as good as the people using it, and in a modern football club that requires all parts of the operation to be functioning as they should. Southampton have brought in undeniably talented young players. The problem is that they haven’t handled them well enough, and young players can need careful handling.
The problem wasn’t that they decided to get rid of Hasenhuttl, it was with hiring a replacement who may have made a degree of sense on paper but who didn’t – and in more than one sense – once installed. It’s a recurring theme. The problem hasn’t been that they’ve been making these changes; the problem is the way in which these changes have been made.
And that’s what starts to raise a window of concern, because relegation from the Premier League also needs careful handling. Parachute payments cushion the fall but at their highest level, giving Southampton their best chance, but they’re a one-shot deal and the club cannot afford to make a hash of their spending in the same way that they have done over the last two transfer windows.
If they miss out on a return next season, those parachute payments get lower. Other commercial revenues will also drop. The advantage they hold over other Championship clubs can be quickly eaten up, and Southampton should already know this very well. When they were relegated from the Premier League in 2005 it took them seven years to get back, including a two-year detour into League One.
Three Premier League clubs have to fall come the end of the season, and Southampton have looked like one of them since the autumn. So relegation is no surprise, and perhaps it’s that lack of surprise that informed the sullen mood around St Mary’s as gravity finally caught up with everybody on Saturday afternoon.
The hope now is that Sport Republic can manage this situation better than the club has been managed since they took it over. This is a football club that needs a pause to catch its breath and then a substantial rebuild, not a thousand bad ideas – which might have a couple of gems hidden amongst them – being thrown against a the wall just to see what sticks.