Let's talk about...Southampton
It's my first opinion piece on this blog and it has to be about my favourite team, isn't it?
Let’s be honest, Southampton are not doing well and they are well on course to be back in the Championship next season. Last season did not feel like false hope, because the team played good, attractive football that earned praises. But it is an entirely different story this season even though most things still stay the same, especially at the hot seat.
As a Southampton fan and having read two great articles from Opta Analyst and Jonathan Wilson from The Guardian, I feel…conflicted, to say the least. From a fan perspective, it is rough to see your favourite team languishing at the bottom of the Premier League table and I want things to change as soon as possible with hopes that the club can be in a better position comes the end of the season. But from an analyst/someone with reasonable understanding of the game, I…sort of…understand why Southampton are at the bottom of the table and, especially, understand why Russell Martin chooses to stick to what he knows instead of deviate away from his core principles just to get a result or two.
Russell Martin
Modern managers are expected to have philosophies, and to evangelise them in their dealings with the media. […] The result is that football can be made to seem a battle of competing ideologies, while a manager deviating from his pre-stated ideals is regarded almost as an apostate. Even the most self-assertive managers can seem uneasy about stepping away from the one true path. […] But the truth is that very few managers are idealists. They may have complicated personal moral codes.
Jonathan Wilson, The Guardian, Nov 2024
I love these quotes from Jonathan, which reflects my own views about the two extremes of pragmatism and idealism. The truth is, it is not easy to be an idealist manager, especially when football is heavily result-driven. Each manager has their own personal beliefs and a different way of seeing how football is meant to be played, of course. But most have to adapt to the resources and the players that they have. Some can have more resources, which allows for more expression of one’s philosophies. But some have limited or very limited resources, and they have to work with what they have, which also means twisting and changing one’s philosophies to adapt to what’s available.
Now, that is not to say that Russell Martin is working with limited resources. He is managing Southampton after all, a Premier League club who have won the “million dollar match”/Championship playoff final just a few months ago, and a club who has been in the Premier League for no less than 10 consecutive seasons before getting relegated. There has been a change in ownership, but the club still has resources. A lot for that matter. You do not have to look very far to prove that point, because Southampton spent a total of 270 million Euros in their last 3 transfer windows as a Premier League club. That is…a lot of money just to bring players in.
Russell did make things work even with a slightly weaker squad in the Championship and demonstrated an attractive, possession-based style of football. The players buy into his system and he has their trust to play the style that he wants to see. But the biggest problem is, the Premier League is not a place to make errors. You can make the same mistakes in the Championship, and most of the time, those mistakes will likely go unpunished. But in the Premier League, where player quality is absurdly high, one small mistake can cost you all three points, and Southampton have been learning that the hard way. 8 individual mistakes leading to a goal after 12 matches, that is an average of more than half of a mistake made in a match (!), and those mistakes can easily cost you a goal or two.
I love Russell’s style of play. It can be attractive at times and some of the possession sequences showed that. I distinctly remember watching Southampton played Newcastle in the opening weekend and seeing some of the sequences to play through Newcastle’s press was sublime. The players clearly understood what they needed to do, where they needed to be to create small passing combinations, and where they wanted the ball to go. But his style is also extremely risky, because if the opposition chooses to press Southampton directly inside of the defensive third and attempts to create dilemmas for the defenders and midfielders, the mistakes that they make become detrimental.
In that same game against Newcastle, everything seemed to be going well…until Alex McCarthy made a crucial mistake to give Alexander Isak the only goal of the game. I instinctively knew from that point on that Southampton will be in big troubles this season and started to not watch the games to keep my mental state healthy and happy. I also make a joke about McCarthy’s ability to play the ball with his feet with my friend, a fellow Saints fan, because we all knew about it from last season. People might start to see more of McCarthy’s inability to play out from the back, but as Saints fan, we have all seen it when Gavin Bazunu got injured midway through the second half of last season and McCarthy was chosen to step in to be the starting goalkeeper. Like I mentioned earlier, some mistakes might go unpunished in the Championship, but you will be exposed to the world if you make those same mistakes in the Premier League. And, unfortunately for McCarthy, this is the situation that he is facing right now, especially with Aaron Ramsdale now out for a few weeks with a broken finger.
All of that is just to say, I think it is hard to shift the blame on Russell Martin. He is doing the best he can, showing the way that he wants football to be played, and is trying to work with the players that he has. Even if he sees this season as a stepping stone for him to make the jump to a bigger club like Vincent Kompany did with Burnley, at least he brought a fresh breath of air to a club that has seen some terrible football since Ralph Hasenhüttl left.
The club + recruitment
What I will shift the blame on, however, is how the club is being run. Firstly, the club is in a very familiar situation to the last time that they were in the Premier League. They have a manager who has successfully applied his own philosophies onto the club, has played attractive football at times, but are struggling and are fighting for relegation.
The last time that they had to face this situation, the club chose to sack Ralph and brought Nathan Jones in, who clearly did not have the quality to get the club out of their struggling situation. I was an advocate for Jones, mainly due to the brilliant work that he did at Luton Town, but I was blindsided because I forgot his disastrous stint at Stoke City and Luton were still going well after he left the club both times. Then, they sacked Nathan and promoted Rubén Sellés up to be the interim manager for the rest of the season. Rubén tried to bring back some of Ralph’s fundamentals to try and stablise the situation, but, once again, he just did not have the quality to save the club from the brink of relegation. It was a tumultuous season and a lot of questionable decisions from the club’s higher-ups.
Side note: I am glad to see Rubén is doing well with Reading and has found a level where he is comfortable managing in. Considering the situation that the club has to go through in the past few months, he has done a magnificent job to save the club from relegation and are now keeping Reading in the conversation for one of League One’s playoff spots at the time of writing.
This time around, they will be (or have already been) at the same decision point with Russell. Should they sack him and then go down the same route that they went down two seasons ago? Or should they be patience with him and accept the fact that they might not be good enough to survive relegation? It is a tricky situation…
But I feel like all of this could have easily be avoided if the club has a proper recruitment policy in place. It seemed like they did a few seasons ago, with the idea of buying players from top English academies, giving them first-team opportunities, and hoping they will leave for a large sum of money. It worked…to some extent. Tino Livramento and Roméo Lavia were the two obvious standouts, Gavin Bazunu has been decent, but then you have the likes of Sam Edozie or Juan Larios, both of whom have struggled to make an impact either due to a lack of first-team experience or injury concerns.
Then, for the rest of 2022, things just went south. A lot of these transfers, at first glance, made sense and seemed reasonable. But, in reality, very few in this list actually worked out. I have already mentioned Lavia and Bazunu, but the remainder of the list all failed in different ways.
Armel Bella-Kotchap and Mo Salisu was supposed to be the future centre-back partnership for Southampton, and, at times, they looked very good playing with each other early on into the season. Relegation came and Salisu left for AS Monaco (15m Euros) while Bella-Kotchap joined PSV on loan, which subsequently pushed him down the picking order for Russell once he returned. Duje Ćaleta-Car was average at best and was never one of the starting centre-backs for that season, and the club made a lost for him when he returned to France to play for Lyon. James Bree was also average but it is hard to criticise his performance for the price that the club paid for his service.
Joe Aribo has been decent at best and never stands out even though he just came off a successful Europa League campaign with Rangers in 2021/22. Carlos Alcaraz showed his potential at times, and he could have been a good talent to develop, but he left to join Juventus on loan and never fitted Russell’s style. Even though the club made a bit of profit on him, they must have expected to sell Alcaraz for a higher fee than just 18 million Euros. The same story goes for Sékou Mara, but he looked a lot more raw than Alcaraz and he just never seemed to be the #9 that the club was looking for. Selling Mara back to France for just 12 million Euros and only making a profit of 500k Euros was a significantly underwhelming piece of business.
Mislav Oršić was heavily misused in my opinion, especially since he just came off a brilliant World Cup campaign for Croatia. Another same story for Paul Onuachu, who arrived at Southampton as one of the top-scorers in the Belgian Pro League for Genk. But now he only appears on the bench for Russell’s side whenever they actually need a striker and has limited minutes to make an impact. It is even worse for Kamaldeen Sulemana as he is now not even registered for the Premier League squad and cannot even compete with Tyler Dibling and Ryan Fraser of all people.
The club also made a loss on both Romain Perraud and Lyanco, who were brought in with the intention of developing into a solid Premier League player. Perraud was decent, but Lyanco was not better than Ćaleta-Car and was also error prone, even though he was a slight fan favourite.
Overall, it has been the story of buying right players at the wrong time and new signings could not adapt to the style of the current manager. It is tough when the club has to adapt to a new manager’s style of play every 5 or 6 months and has no clear identity that they want to build upon, which makes the recruitment process a lot tougher and more manager-driven instead of style-driven. This reminds me of Brighton’s owner Tony Bloom’s words about Southampton being one of the club models that his Brighton side wanted to follow. Yet, ironically, Brighton are now in much better shape and position than Southampton while also have a clear recruitment process in place and a style of play that they want to follow, both in terms of recruiting managers and players.
Again, this problem could have easily been avoided if…the club has a Director of Football. Jason Wilcox was doing good work until Manchester United came in for him, and the club decided not to appoint a Director of Football since then. This means the recruitment process is heavily driven by Russell and his staff, which means most of the players bought during the 2024 summer window were catered towards his style of play. And, once again, while a few of the signings have been decent, the same cannot be said about the remainder.
Ramsdale is an obvious upgrade in goal and he has been so crucial to limiting the damage. Mateus Fernandes and Yukinari Sugawara have been good on a few occasions and are important to how Russell wants the team to play. The returned loanees like Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Flynn Downes have also been decent. But then you have the likes of Ben Brereton Díaz and Cameron Archer who have been disappointing, or Maxwel Cornet who I completely forget that he is currently with the club.
Recruiting attackers
There…seems to be a tendency for almost all attackers who have been signed over the past couple of seasons to deliver a disappointing performance and then, potentially, get sold for low profit or a loss. From Onuachu or Sulemana, to now Brereton Díaz and Archer. No one, and I mean no one, has managed to fill in that #9 role and deliver. Adam Armstrong has one good season in the Championship but he seems to be struggling when he is forced to receive the ball not from inside of the opposition’s half or given the chance to make runs in behind the opposition’s defence.
This problem goes waaay back to when the club signed…Guido Carrillo from Monaco for 22 million Euros. Clearly a manager-driven signing by Mauricio Pellegrino, Carrillo was such a disappointment and the club lost all of that money by letting him go to Elche on a free in the 2020/21 season. Manolo Gabbiadini had a very promising start, but an injury during the match against Tottenham put a halt to that momentum, and also to a potential good #9 for the club. Gabbiadini had a few important moments here and there after returning from the injury, but he just never found that form when he first came to the club, and left for Sampdoria while the club made a loss of almost 5 million Euros.
Danny Ings and Ché Adams had a few good moments under Ralph and they were probably the best of the crop. But it is hard to make a case for them to be considered as successful signings. The club made a small profit on Ings, but they let Adams left on a free and did not recoup any profit for him. Sofiane Boufal, Mo Elyounoussi, and Sulemana were/are pretty much the same. All three also had/has a few good moments, but they were/are never a good player by any means. Both Boufal and Elyounoussi left on a free, which means a total of 36 million Euros out of the window, and Sulemana is almost certain to not bring any profit back to the club considering the way he is being treated.
There seems to be an expectation where new attackers coming to the club and they have to make an instant impact, either because of their price tag or the situation that the club is in. While it might be easier for domestic signings like Ings, Adams, or Armstrong to adapt to the club quickly, it took time for players like Onuachu, Boufal, or Elyounoussi, the time that the club did not have or have very little. As such, most of them struggled to live up to the expectation even though they did well at their previous clubs.
You would also think that, with Rasmus Ankersen as one of the board members, Southampton would learn the lesson of not spending heavily on attackers, but rather rely on developing cheap signings or players from the academy. Brentford have done very good at doing that with the likes of Ivan Toney, Yoane Wissa, Mikkel Damsgaard, or Kevin Schade, and Southampton could have benefitted something from Ankersen’s wisdom. Brighton are also doing it very well with Evan Ferguson, Danny Welbeck, and João Pedro. Yet, here we are, with a situation where Southampton have wasted millions of Euros on buying attackers and most have not been successful.
Conclusion
As people like Jonathan Wilson or JJ Bull have pointed out, the main problem with Southampton is the players are not good enough to play the style that Russell wants the team to play. It is hard to blame most of the current situation on Russell’s idealist mentality, especially things did work out last season. While he could have deviated slightly from the style of play and limited the risks to do some damage control, it also means he is an apostate to his own philosophies, like Wilson pointed out.
However, the club needs a long, hard look into how it is being run and a lot of re-evaluation of their recruitment process. It has been a major problem for a long time, but Ralph Hasenhüttl did a great job to work with limited resources and the players that were brought in. Now that the club is under a different ownership and has more resources, the problem is exacerbated to a different level where more money is being spent with no clear direction and a lot of money wasted.
This will not be something that can be fixed in a day or two, or even a month or two. At that time, Russell might not even be in the hot seat. But the club is in desparate need for a direction and an alignment from top to bottom. Because right now, it feels like the club is hitting a brick wall and they are bashing their heads into that wall without finding a solution to go around that wall.