Saints face huge dilemma in replacement for Hughes
WHO remembers the Southampton Way?
It was a triumph of the idea that if you got the principles and the process right, then the results would follow. Southampton appointed imaginative managers, built around their academy players and added astute signings from abroad. And they were rewarded with finishes of eighth, seventh and sixth.
It served as a model to other clubs and proof that, outside the elite, the most important things to have are ideas and a plan. And finishing two points behind Liverpool in 2014-15, and three points behind Manchester United in 2015-16, they suggested that the gap between the haves and havenots can be shaved down to almost nothing if you are smart enough.
Two-and-a-half years on, Southampton are in the relegation zone with one win from 14 games, desperately looking for a new director of football and a new manager to turn the club around.
They appointed Mark Hughes in March to save their status, thought that he was the right man for this season too, but then found out he was not.
Now they need a new man to do the same thing again.
This is not the Southampton Way any more. It is the Sunderland Cycle.
For years Sunderland would appoint someone to save their season, stick with him, sack him, find someone to clean up his mess, and repeat. Martin O’Neill, Paolo di Canio, Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat and Sam Allardyce were all mid-season appointments, none of whom lasted much more than a year.
They just about kept Sunderland in the Premier League, but at the cost of any sense of identity, and when Allardyce left for the England job the inevitable finally happened. Sunderland are now in League One.
A similar story happened to Swansea City. Like Southampton, they were a club with a clear sense of identity, one built on playing a certain brand of passing football first imposed by Roberto Martinez and Brendan Rodgers, and signing technical players from Europe who could fit. But when Michael Laudrup was sacked for Garry Monk, that identity disappeared.
The lesson here is that there are only two options for clubs in this chunk of the table, to look up or to look down. If you want to stay in the Premier League, the best way to do that is to be ambitious, be positive, to have an ethos and to stick to it. It was when Swansea City stopped being true to themselves, and started worrying about how to stave off relegation, that they made it inevitable.
This is the crossroads that Southampton now stand at. Their managerial appointments have taken the club further away from the Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman gold standard in recent years. Claude Puel was a good coach but not sufficiently engaging for players and fans, and so the club took a risk by removing him after one year. Mauricio Pellegrino was too nice, and Mark Hughes did at least offer promise.
So now the temptation for Southampton must be to go for Premier League experience.
Fulham have just replaced Slavisa Jokanovic with Claudio Ranieri and it must be attractive to go for someone who knows the league. Especially with Sam Allardyce and David Moyes available, and Moyes having done such a good job saving West Ham United last season.
But then even if Saints do appoint a firefighter and stay up, what next?
Sacking him in December 2019, with the team struggling, trying to find a new man to come in before the January 2020 transfer window?
This approach has a sell-by date and they will only be delaying the inevitable by pursuing it. They need to get back to their roots.
During Saints’ golden years, the club realised that Premier League experience was overrated in managers and that they could get the best man for the job by overlooking that particular facet. That is how they landed on Pochettino and Koeman and Puel.
This month, as they choose their next direction, they should take the opportunity to go back in that direction. To boldly appoint a new exciting foreign coach, who has a plan beyond simply scraping towards 38 or so points to prepare for next season. Someone who looks up rather than down, and who has a positive vision.
Without that ethos, Southampton will be another Championship team who were in the top flight before they lost their way.