Smallbone’s set-up key as Saints make Premier return

After the expensive relegation, the lucrative promotion. Southampton contrived to finish bottom of the Premier League in a year when they spent some £160m, had three managers and only mustered six wins. They return to the world’s richest league courtesy of the world’s richest game, their prize for play-off victory probably beginning at £140m and, if they stay up, worth rather more. If Bobby Stokes, the hero of the 1976 FA Cup final, still has the most famous Wembley winner in Southampton’s history, Adam Armstrong has the most valuable.

For Leeds, consigned to another season in the Championship, it ranks as the most costly. A sixth unsuccessful play-off campaign means they are still without a win at Wembley since 1992. On the 35th anniversary of Don Revie’s death, the Damned United remain incapable of escaping their past.

There was another kind of unwanted sequel: a third defeat to Southampton this season, with Armstrong scoring in all. There were times when Leeds looked the finest team in the Championship this season but that trio of losses to Southampton means that, unlike Saints and Leicester, they have not rebounded to the top flight.

In the dugouts, the subplot started in Norfolk in 2017. For Russell Martin, the Norwich captain bombed out to train with the Under-23s seven years ago, it was revenge on Daniel Farke, the manager who exiled him. Martin has reinvented himself as a coach.

Martin had earned points for style in his managerial career but with questions about the substance of his teams. A first year at Southampton has ended with an answer in the affirmative. That he was chosen by Jason Wilcox, the director of football who later decamped to Manchester United, means the Old Trafford newcomer left a legacy.

In a final with a habit of ending 1-0, the opening goal carried still greater importance. Armstrong got it. His movement has always been his greatest asset. He ghosted in behind Ethan Ampadu to meet Will Smallbone’s pass and drill a shot past Illan Meslier.

For Ireland international Smallbone, a lifelong Southampton fan, it was a wonderful moment; for Armstrong, made more potent by the drop in division, a 24th goal of the season to accompany his 13 assists.

His has been an extraordinary campaign. It almost got still better on the stroke of half-time: the elusive Armstrong had a shot on the turn saved by Meslier. But if Southampton had more incision in the first half, they could have been made to rue substitute Samuel Edozie’s second-half miss.

Spark

Leeds were undistinguished before the break, lacking the spark they demonstrated in demolishing Norwich in the semi-finals. Farke required a response and got one, his side penning Southampton in, Joe Rodon adding another dimension by running the ball out from the back. Dan James rattled the bar with a half-volley. It was James, too, who drew an injury-time save from Alex McCarthy: the goalkeeper, only playing because of Gavin Bazunu’s season-ending injury, commanded his box in what may prove his last game for the club.

It is probably Che Adams’ last, too, with the forward also out of contract. If so, each can leave confident he played his part in restoring top-flight football to Hampshire.

Fourth for much of the season, the Saints took the third spot to go up, their huge overhaul last summer eventually resulting in a change of division.

As a result, Bazunu, Smallbone and Ryan Manning, who came on as a sub, are set to add three Irish faces to the Premier League.

For Sport Republic, the owners whose maiden year was disastrous, the second has been redemptive. But for Leeds, Wembley had a cruelty, the play-offs a brutality. Again. © The Independent