Southampton Football Club's meteoric rise, it seemed, was over. This summer the wheels had well and truly come off at St Mary’s, and a team that had just enjoyed an impressive campaign and should have been building on an 8th place finish were now being touted as firm relegation favourites. Oh how wrong we all were.
Last season, Southampton became everyone’s second team. Why not? What was not to like? They’d come from League One and survived in the Premier League against all the odds. They then went on to thrive in the league last season playing a brand of football that endeared themselves to everyone. They moved the ball well along the ground, they worked hard pressing the opposition, they had a squad of honest, talented and often home grown players. There’s nothing there to alienate anyone and plenty to attract the neutrals.
But, almost overnight, all the promise and excitement around Southampton vanished. The season had gone well and with that came interest in the Saints best players from the bigger boys. Lallana, Lovren and Lambert sold to Liverpool. Luke Shaw to United, Calum Chambers to Arsenal. The team had been stripped and sold for parts. Jay Rodriguez and Morgan Schneiderlin looked likely to follow. And then, just when things seemed their bleakest, much sought after manager Mauricio Pochettino departed to take the reins at Spurs.
The writing seemed on the wall and the vultures of our nations press were circling. Just this once it didn’t seem like unnecessary doom-mongering by the tabloids. Everything seemed to suggest that there was no positive future for the Saints. £88million had been recouped on player sales and while £56million had been spent to rebuild the squad, it didn’t seem that the incomings were as impressive as the now household names featured in the outgoings.
And even if they were, even if these were like for like replacements, it was thought that it would take far too long to bed all of these new players into a winning team. After all, that is what we say when any new manager takes charge of any squad isn’t it? It takes time for him to build the squad and put his mark on the team.
Ronald Koeman, highly respected as a manager and a player, got the Southampton job in place of Pochettino. He was quite a coup for the south coast club, especially considering the state of the squad when he took over, but his appointment went largely under the radar. What difference did it make? The team were too far gone.
I’ve spent a lot of time here, talking about the plight of Southampton football club this summer. I’ve done that deliberately. It’s important to show the huge contradiction between how bad things were and how low expectations were and how well things have actually gone.
Southampton are sitting pretty in 2nd place in the Premier League. Things have turned around to the point where Morgan Schneiderlin, one of their key players who had voiced so publicly his disillusion in the summer, seems content to stay and is showing his best form. New players like Graziano Pellè are becoming the household names.
You can’t give enough credit to Ronald Koeman for how well this season has gone so far for the Saints. The team have gelled extremely quickly and from here on in only a promising season should be expected.
But one thing this should do is make us rethink the way we rate new managers and how we make excuses for them. For so long we’ve said that a new manager needs time to settle in and put his stamp on the team. Maybe we put too much faith in that idea.
It’s an easy answer for when things aren’t going well. “Give him time, he needs time to put his mark on the team”. I’m not trying to initiate a culture where managers are given less time than they already are. But perhaps we put too much stock in this idea that instant success can’t be achieved.
Mostly though, credit to Southampton football club. They have cast doubt on the idea that instant success is impossible. But there is another old football cliché that they have proven beyond any doubt. NO ONE MAN IS BIGGER THAN THE CLUB.
Plenty of so-called indispensable players were moved on and simply replaced. And what’s more, they even seem to have improved. A lesson to Liverpool post-Suárez or Spurs post-Bale. No one is irreplaceable, no one is bigger than the club.