Jones had weeks to sort out Saints... but now they look worse!
Dithering new manager STILL doesn’t have a game plan and now they’re staring at the drop
NATHAN JONES made sure to clap all four corners of the stadium as he trudged off the pitch after Southampton’s chastening defeat by Nottingham Forest on Wednesday.
In return he received a cacophony of boos and a six-word chant that suggests the end is nigh for him after just four league games. ‘ You don’t know what you’re doing,’ sang the majority of Southampton fans at St Mary’s, getting louder each time.
The players were jeered and some could not face it. Young forward Sekou Mara scurried down the tunnel, 19- year- old winger Samuel Edozie covered his face with his shirt, and captain James Ward-Prowse screamed at team-mates to applaud the fans for turning out.
Southampton’s league form under Jones reads: loss, loss, loss, loss. They are yet to score from open play and are rock bottom of the Premier League. Since beating Chelsea in August, they have won one league game in 13 and scored just eight goals in the process.
The television cameras panned around the ground at full time, cutting to a disgruntled directors’ box before showing a gloomy Matt Le Tissier. Even the Saints legend will struggle to find a conspiracy theory to blame for this demise.
It is a simple equation: the recruitment policy has been poor from owners Sport Republic, who have been in place a year this week. Of their 10 summer signings, only loanee Ainsley Maitland-Niles had made more than five Premier League appearances. And the appointment of Jones looked questionable at the time, despite his stellar work at Luton.
Ed Chamberlin, the ITV Racing presenter, tweeted at full time: ‘As disappointing and depressing a night as I can remember as a Southampton fan at St Mary’s.’
Club insiders grumble that Jones is yet to learn his best team despite having the entire World Cup break to work on this. The Welshman has started 19 players in four games and altered systems, regularly changing shape within games.
A high percentage of their passes on Wednesday were long balls. One, after just 35 minutes, went straight to Nottingham Forest’s goalkeeper Dean Henderson and led to furious groans from the crowd.
Southampton managed zero shots on target and racked up an expected goals (xG) tally of 0.49 against a team who had picked up just two points away
from home this season. Jones, whose side visit Crystal Palace in the FA Cup third round tomorrow, said after the game: ‘The fans won’t forget about tonight. They need to see a performance on Saturday. Then we can start to change the reception. We need results.
‘ This club has been losing games for a long, long time. I watched the Bournemouth game back (their only clean sheet of the season) and Southampton were lucky to not concede.
‘ The blame lies solely with me. I set them up, but we need to give ourselves a better opportunity to win the game. We can’t gift a goal every game. Something has to change quickly and we need a bit of luck.’
More damning than Jones’s words were those of Forest boss Steve Cooper. His side had not won on the road this season but he said he did not feel nervous towards the end of the game. ‘I never felt we were going to concede,’ said Cooper. ‘I was calm.’
Jones proved himself as one of the best pound-for-pound coaches in the country at Luton, but after four league games on the south coast, this resembles his wretched streak at Stoke that saw him sacked after 10 months in charge.
Jones was quick to point out that he took over Luton with the club 18th in League Two and led them to the Championship play-offs. ‘If they are still singing “you don’t know what you’re doing” in three or four months then they are right, I don’t,’ he said. ‘It takes time to turn things around.’
Ward- Prowse added: ‘ We as players understand the fans’ frustrations. They have to bear with us, it’s a different squad from one we have had before. We are in early days with the manager and it’s going to take a bit of time. Obviously time is not our friend and we need to turn it around quickly.’
He is right. Time is not Saints’ friend. And their 11- season stay in the Premier League looks in grave danger.