This is how it ends, not in a blaze of defiance with backs-against-the-wall, let’s-do-it-for-the-fans wins, but with a half-empty ground booing the end of an era with home defeat to a promoted club (Fulham) who have spent less and achieved infinitely more.
Southampton were all but mathematically relegated anyway, but there are means of dealing with that situation. Not like this: 0.24 xG, one shot on target, sacrificing possession but barely using the counter attack effectively. They haven’t won a league game since March, have won three home league games since February 2022 and kept one clean sheet at St Mary’s all season. They deserve all of this.
The bad decisions stacked up like final notice bills. The decision to appoint Nathan Jones, an astonishing gamble, looms large over Southampton’s season, but so too should appointing Ruben Selles as caretaker until the end of the season based on one result, exclusively buying inexperienced young players but not surrounding them with high-level experience and sticking with Ralph Hasenhuttl for as long as they did despite him looking increasingly weary in his job.
January was a shot to nothing that Southampton still managed to mess up. They at least seemed to be buying to a plan: two strikers, one of them a giant, two wingers or creative wide players. Play Paul Onuachu with Carlos Alcaraz, start Kamaldeen Sulemana and Milan Orsic and try to overhaul the playing style. Put crosses into the box and make the most of James Ward-Prowse’s set-piece delivery. But Onuachu started four games, Sulemana nine and Orsic has played six minutes since arriving.
And you are left with a mess: Stuart Armtrong and Theo Walcott starting on the wings, Alcaraz often on his own until it was too late, goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu dropped for Alex McCarthy and Romeo Lavia left helpless in midfield because he is a kid and he can’t do it all by himself. Senior players who have one eye on the exit door, young players who don’t know how to react to the rapid decline and a manager who won’t be there next season and probably won’t be there in a month’s time. When Ward-Prowse said that the club’s standards had slipped, this is what he meant.
The young players do have sell-on value. Southampton could well come back quickly and may even come back stronger; relegation does at least allow for a full spring clean. But leaving the Premier League, given the broadcasting revenues on offer, is never a good thing. The first full season of a new ownership regime ends with Southampton rock-bottom of the league. They may be preaching that this is the time to stick together, but trust takes a lot longer to win back than it does to be lost.
This is an extract of The Score, Daniel Storey’s weekly verdict on all 20 Premier League teams’ performances. Sign up to receive the newsletter on Monday mornings here
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