THE SELLING SAINTS CAN’T GO MARCHING ON LIKE THIS

‘I UNDERSTAND how to win games in this league,’ said Mark Hughes, which may have come as a surprise to Stoke. Hughes left them earlier this year in even more trouble than his new club, Southampton. Hughes probably meant he had been around the block several times in the top division and is familiar with the course and distance, which is true — but since when was that the Southampton way? They appointed smart, continental managers, graduates from Europe’s elite, they aimed to play expansive football, sold and thrived, such was the sophistication of their production line. Sacking Mauricio Pellegrino, one place outside the bottom three, it was claimed those at the top felt the club were sleepwalking towards relegation. Actually, Southampton have been sleepwalking towards a reckoning of this nature for some time. A club cannot sell talent on an industrial scale as they have done, without consequence. Eventually, the young replacements were not going to meet the standard of the last batch; the new recruits would be unable to settle or knit as neatly. And, yes, smaller clubs will always sell; but not in the numbers Southampton have sold. So it has come to this: a panicky fallback on a familiar face, instructed to fight fires and keep them up, with no grand philosophy attached. Southampton overstretched when they sacked Claude Puel for playing dull football. How can aesthetics not suffer when the most creative players are constantly shipped out for profit? Hughes’s arrival is a move of pure pragmatism, then, with no high ideals. He is instructed to keep them up, that is all, and as such his short-term appointment is an admission of failure: Southampton are not as clever as they thought. In future, their aggressive pursuit of transfer monies must be more sensitive to the needs of the coach and his team. The worry, though, is that everyone worth selling has now gone.