There has, at least, been a win to break the pattern. But Southampton’s victory over Everton was followed immediately by defeat by Wolves and so they spent the international break bottom of the table. They have taken four points from 11 games. In only two games this season have Southampton had the better xG – on the opening day, when they lost 1-0 at 10-man Newcastle, and in the 1-1 draw at Ipswich. They are, barring something miraculous, doomed.
The routine has become familiar. Southampton play their goal-kicks short. They pass the ball neatly. They have a lot of possession; 56.6% – only three teams in the Premier League are averaging more. They don’t take their chances – no side have hit a lower percentage of shots on target this season. Somebody makes a mistake – perhaps one of their players, perhaps the referee – they concede and the game is lost.
Their manager, Russell Martin, looking ruggedly masculine but in touch with his feelings, then speaks sadly and patiently about his belief in playing football the right way. Then everybody else weighs in. Some are supportive because they genuinely believe the journey is more important than the destination. Some are supportive because it was playing that style of football that got Southampton promoted and they think that’s their best hope of staying up. Some accuse Martin of naivety, perhaps even arrogance or self-absorption. Does he have to change his approach?
To which there is no right answer. In football there very rarely is. Should a promoted manager adapt? Perhaps; it worked for Thomas Frank at Brentford. But there is a danger in sudden switches. Why should players assembled to play in a particular way be able to adjust to playing another? While it possibly is true that a simpler, more risk-averse style might benefit a team low on confidence, it’s very unlikely to help a struggling side if they stop playing to their strengths.
Then there’s the more nebulous point that a lot of management is essentially a confidence trick, persuading players to have faith in the process or the messianic charisma of the leader so they achieve transcendence by sacrificing themselves for the greater good. Start ripping up the doctrine and it can be no great surprise if doubt sets in.
The way in which the relationship between players and coach maps on to religious language is itself significant, a means by which the discourse subtly shapes expectation. Modern managers are expected to have philosophies, and to evangelise them in their dealings with the media. Pep Guardiola, say, has spoken of how Johan Cruyff “built the cathedral” at Barcelona and it being the job of subsequent coaches to maintain it.
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. The bullishly self-assured Netherlands manager Louis van Gaal, when he unexpectedly adopted a back three for the 2014 World Cup, was notably determined to insist that the evolution to a back three was inherent in the post-Cruyffian football he had practised at Ajax and Barcelona.
But the truth is that very few managers are idealists. They may have complicated personal moral codes – Wolves’ Stan Cullis, for instance. In his final match as a player, the centre-half refused to pull down Albert Stubbins on the last day of the season, allowing him to score the goal that gave Liverpool the 1946-47 title at the expense of his side. Yet seven years later, as manager, he was happy enough to water an already soaked pitch so that Honved’s passing game foundered in the mud; doctoring the pitch was fine, but a deliberate foul was beyond the line. There aren’t many, though, who would eschew a particular style that they thought might be successful.
In football “pragmatic” tends to be a synonym for defensive or direct, but the truth is the vast majority of managers are pragmatists; they play how they play because they believe that is what offers them the best chance of success. Guardiola is constantly refining what that means; 15 years on from the tiki‑taka of his first Champions League win, he is playing with a classic No 9 and has experimented with a back four comprising only central defenders.
Martin may or may not be correct about the best way for Southampton to play but the notion he is pursuing some self-defeating higher goal rather than simply trying to win games is fanciful, and the idea he is trying to parlay his season in the sun into a glamorous job abroad having seen Vincent Kompany land the Bayern Munich job after relegation with Burnley absurd.
The truth is that it probably doesn’t matter how Martin plays: the squad simply isn’t good enough. Compare these players with the Southampton team promoted in 2012. In that first season, when Nigel Adkins was replaced as manager by Mauricio Pochettino, the squad included a pair of future England full-backs in Nathaniel Clyne and Luke Shaw, a regular goalscorer in Rickie Lambert, in Maya Yoshida and José Fonte two centre-backs who would go on to play regularly for their countries, plus a hard-working and well-balanced midfield of Morgan Schneiderlin, Adam Lallana, Steven Davis, Jack Cork and Jason Puncheon. The present crop – who on Sunday host the Premier League leaders, Liverpool – just isn’t of the same calibre.
Perhaps that is an issue of recruitment. Nottingham Forest’s scattergun splurge and the algorithms of Brighton and Brentford have bucked the trend, but the gulf between Premier League and Championship has never been greater. Even before last season, when the three promoted sides averaged a record low of 22 points, a five-year rolling average shows points for promoted sides falling from about 41 to about 37 over the previous two decades. It’s true that all of Fulham, Bournemouth and Forest stayed up in 2022-23 but only Brentford and Leeds did in the two years before that.
Fundamentally, Southampton’s struggles aren’t about style; they’re a symptom of the increasing financial stratification of football. Without extremely enlightened recruitment, staying up for any promoted side is incredibly difficult – and there’s not much Martin can do that will change that.
