Saints’ progress now in danger of being ruined
Southampton had model to envy but changes have not improved it
Supposedly the best-run club in the Premier League are now staring into the abyss. Southampton might remain within a win of safety, but more alarming even than their dreadful recent form, or Saturday’s feeble 3-0 defeat against West Ham United, is surely the fixture list.
Seven Premier League games remain, but standing in their way are trips to Arsenal, Leicester City, Swansea City and Everton, as well as home fixtures against Chelsea, Manchester City and neighbouring Bournemouth, who would love to assert themselves as the area’s best team. Ahead of this sequence, it is hard not to look back at winless home matches against Swansea, Watford, Newcastle United, Burnley, Leicester, Huddersfield Town, Crystal Palace, Brighton and Stoke City, and wonder if the damage done earlier in the season under Mauricio Pellegrino is already irreparable.
So what has gone wrong? Why are the model club now themselves facing the prospect of a rebuild?
The most obvious explanations relate to the managerial choices of Claude Puel and Pellegrino, and the fine margins in which all 14 clubs outside the ‘big six’ must operate. Both answers have merit. In hiring men with no Premier League experience, Southampton surely underestimated the intangible need for a personality with a presence and authority that would connect with a dressing-room of footballers.
The board might have liked the understated and intelligent way Puel and Pellegrino presented themselves, but it is not difficult to see why the players themselves were rather more affected by Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman. Being swayed by your own perceptions of a managerial candidate before accurately gauging his likely influence over a group of impressionable and wealthy young men is a common pitfall.
It is too easy, though, to blame Southampton’s dip on the Pellegrino decision. There are more deep-rooted issues. What was once a highly effective strategy is now showing its weaknesses. Southampton’s transfer policy in the last five years essentially rested on developing outstanding young players and a scouting department that was superb at identifying relatively cheap and emerging talent before selling on to the big six at a major profit. It meant progressing on the pitch while transforming finances to the point where a net debt of £38.9 million for 2015-16 became £2.9 million in cash by last year. An £11 million loan was also repaid to Katharina Liebherr before she sold 80 per cent of the club to the Chinese Gao family for £210 million last summer. Nothing wrong with healthy finances, but Southampton effectively also announced a subtle change to their recruitment last summer. Gone, said Ralph Krueger, the chairman, was any need to sell key players. The club would keep the core of a squad who, on average, had more than three years remaining on their contracts.
It sounded positive – even if there should have been more activity in the January transfer window – but there was a flaw. If you are just about the most celebrated ‘stepping-stone’ club in Europe, what profile of player might you attract? Someone committed to your long-term progress or someone most concerned by the possibility of moving to a Champions League club? If that does not happen, because they are not good enough or the club themselves refuse to sell, what remains?
It is a core different to the group new manager Mark Hughes was surrounded by as a player at Southampton in the late Nineties, when their unlikely survival was as much about the character of men like Jason Dodd, Francis Benali, Claus Lundekvam, Ken Monkou, Matt Oakley, Chris Marsden and Paul Jones as Matthew Le Tissier’s genius. Much of the decline also seems to have followed the acrimonious loss of a dressing-room figure in Jose Fonte of comparable stature. It is a delicate balance, and whether or not Southampton do avoid relegation, the past 18 months have underlined a need not just to review how they recruit their managers but also their players.