Southampton’s relegation is a disaster everyone foresaw but offers a stark warning | OneFootball

A couple of hours after Southampton’s fate was sealed, a manager talked about having the worst season in history. It wasn’t Ivan Juric, either, but Ruben Amorim, with his gift for smiling exaggeration. Although, earlier in the week, candid Croatian Juric had said: “I don't want it to be that we are the worst team in the history of Premier League.”

If everyone needs an ambition, it is a particularly undignified one. Relegated at record pace, mathematically gone with seven games to go, the drama in Southampton’s season rests on their attempts to equal or better Derby’s historic low of 11 points. It all seems to depend on a trip to Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester. They will go there without Juric, sacked for either hopeless results or an honest appraisal of their demise.

If demotion was sealed by defeat to Tottenham on Sunday, it merely confirmed the inevitable. Perhaps, given the struggles of promoted teams, Southampton were down when they beat Leeds in last season’s play-off final. They almost certainly were after their first nine games produced a lone point. The symbolic moment of their season came at the start: facing Newcastle’s 10 men, dominating possession, goalkeeper Alex McCarthy, ordered to do something he cannot, passed to Alexander Isak and Joelinton scored.

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Ivan Juric couldn’t stop Southampton sliding to an undignified Premier League exit (Bradley Collyer/PA Wire)

Outside Hampshire, Southampton’s season may be remembered for the failure of an idea, the obvious outcome when misguided idealism collided with brutal reality. When it mattered, before they were cast adrift, before Juric discovered they were beyond rescuing, they were like Vincent Kompany’s Burnley in overdrive.

In 16 games before Russell Martin was sacked, Southampton made 11 errors that directly led to goals (and others that did not). Jurgen Klopp once called gegenpressing the best playmaker: opponents instead realised Southampton could create chances for them. The Premier League is hard enough for the weaker sides without donating goal after goal.

Before promotion, Martin felt his management would be more suited to the Premier League, given fewer games and more time on the training ground. He later concluded his players were not good enough for his style of football. Many another had already worked that out, some with the sense the manager was not either.

With his stubbornness backfiring, Martin became an inadvertent advertisement for pragmatism: idealism without sufficient competence brought a fiasco. Southampton should have either sacked Martin in the glow of promotion, showing the realism to look for someone better equipped for the task and allowing him to go with plenty of sympathy and his reputation at its highest, or forced him to remain in charge all season. Promotion was a fine achievement, the £100m or so from television revenue was invaluable, but he has been the architect of an atrocious campaign.

When Martin was dismissed, it was with five points from 16 games, the direction of travel clear. If Juric’s return of four from 14 was still worse, if he was also in the grip of delusion, he suffered from joining without realising the situation was irretrievable.

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Russell Martin’s stubbornness set Southampton on a path to doom (Getty Images)

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The players were unable to stop the inevitable (Bradley Collyer/PA Wire)

Not since Edward Smith boarded the Titanic in 1912 has anyone taken charge of as much of a sinking ship in Southampton; Juric did not notice the size of the holes until it was too late. Having previously accepted the Roma job after crowd favourite Daniele de Rossi was suddenly fired, the Croatian needs to show the capacity to dodge hospital passes in future.

Juric made some odd decisions – such as picking midfielder Joe Aribo in defence – but he constructed fine gameplans at Old Trafford and Anfield. Southampton led at both, albeit in vain; it was part of a pattern where they lost 25 points from winning positions, pointing again to a lack of pragmatism, nerve, defensive solidity and strength in depth. Juric’s departure, even before the season finished, merely brought things forward. He was collateral damage from a calamitous campaign, having suffered so many defeats he could not start next season with a clean slate with either players or fans.

Juric’s bluntness may have ushered him to the exit, but Southampton ought to learn a lesson or two from a direct talker. On Sunday, Juric spoke of “mistakes the club has made in the last three or four years”. Or, to put it another way, under Sport Republic’s ownership, this is their second ignominious, expensive relegation. In one respect, the first was the worst – spending £160m with an established Premier League club.

“Recruitment is everything in football,” said Juric. Southampton spent £100m this season for 10 points. Their squad was unbalanced, with far too many centre-backs, lacking physicality in some areas, particularly midfield, and lacking quality in others. Ben Brereton Diaz will go down as a bad buy, Maxwel Cornet a weird loan. They should not have signed Ryan Fraser, just as Martin should not have kept Jack Stephens as captain.

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Southampton proved to be out of their depth in the Premier League (REUTERS)

Although the league table suggests otherwise, they might actually have half of a good team. Now, they will lose them. The luckless Aaron Ramsdale’s best saves came in losses, and he needs a safe haven in mid-table to spare him another relegation. Tyler Dibling will not bring them the £100m they are allegedly asking for, but he has talent. The gifted Matheus Fernandes has not really settled in the area, Kyle Walker-Peters is out of contract and Southampton are still lumbered with some of the 2022-23 signings – Kamaldeen Sulemana, for one, seems sure to eye the exit.

Juric’s valedictory words included the warning that there are “huge problems in lots of situations”. But there could also be the conditions to win games next season. In the loaned-out Adam Armstrong and Cameron Archer, they have the genre of player too good for the Championship and not good enough for the Premier League. Maybe promotion specialist Taylor Harwood-Bellis will be ignored by Premier League clubs. Perhaps Flynn Downes will be at a level when he can again excel.

All of which would require the right manager. If Sheffield Wednesday make the former Southampton coach Danny Rohl available, he might be ideal. For now, Saints have a second interim spell under Simon Rusk. The low-profile caretaker secured a 0-0 draw at Fulham in December, simply because no one gave a silly goal away, and that offered a vision of a sliding-doors scenario.

A less self-destructive brand of football could have been more productive. Southampton would probably have always gone down, but not this embarrassingly. Amid relegation and recrimination, the Saints ought to rue the way this has felt so needless, so predictable, the disaster everyone else foresaw.