There was talk of protest that never came. A hastily-created graphic urged for a pre-match call-to-arms on Saturday afternoon, but it didn’t land with a majority. It’s not that Southampton supporters are happy; quite the opposite. It’s that nobody really knows what angry confrontations with the owners would really achieve.
Or perhaps it is the sheer length of this steady decline that makes anger the wrong response; deep funk would be more appropriate. Southampton were once the poster boys for the develop, sell, reinvest and carry on regardless model, but they lost their way a long time ago. Its peak in 2016 might as well be three decades passed.
So the problems didn’t start when Sport Republic, financed by Dragan Solak, bought Southampton in January 2022. But the hope was at least that it might make them disappear rather than double them.
A month into this tenure, Southampton were ninth in the Premier League and had lost one of their previous 10 league games. Now, it’s fair to say, they are not.
If Solak wasn’t always hands-on, that has seemingly changed now. Rasmus Ankersen and Henrik Kraft, part of the original Sport Republic team, have reportedly had their responsibilities diluted.
Sporting director Johannes Spors is getting the most flak from supporters, but that’s a problem in itself. When something goes wrong here, it merely seems to cause a circle of blame more than actual improvement.
One thing nobody can blame is a lack of investment. Under Sport Republic, Southampton spent a net £130m on transfer fees and finished bottom of the Premier League. They spent £70m net after promotion and finished bottom again.
This summer they extracted excellent fees for players who haven’t exactly kicked on at new clubs – Tyler Dibling, Matheus Fernandes, Kamaldeen Sulemana – and spent £50m on more transfer fees.
It’s the how and why of that spending that really sticks in the throat (and has since 2022).
Take this summer: Southampton had a goalkeeper problem, needed a striker who could act as a focal point and a leader in central defence. They spent £6m on 21-year-old striker Damion Downs (one league start, already loaned back to Germany) from FC Koln and 20-year-old central defender Joshua Quarshie from Hoffenheim.
The goalkeeper – Daniel Peretz is on loan from Bayern Munich – only arrived in January. Gavin Bazunu, who started the season as the No 1 before being dropped for Alex McCarthy and cost £12m, has been loaned to a club higher up the Championship. No supporter really thought either was good enough and the jury is out on Peretz.
In the good days, Southampton would look to their academy for the next cab off the rank. But with recent talent leaving for Manchester United, Chelsea, Lyon and Manchester City, amongst others, that pipeline has dried up too.
Only four Championship clubs have used fewer academy graduates this season than Southampton’s two: Jay Robinson has three league starts since August and Jack Stephens turns 32 next week.
On the pitch – and prepare for the high-end analysis – Southampton are weird. Only one Championship club has a higher xG and more shots on target, but only Sheffield Wednesday have conceded more goals (partly down to goalkeeping underperformance).
They don’t finish chances and let opponents create them through midfield openness. They are the third worst team in the league at letting leads slip, another indication of absent on-field leadership.
If your squad-building is haphazard and your academy producing less for the first team, you better make sure that you appoint the right managers; Southampton supporters can see the punchline coming.
Their club has sacked six managers in 38 months. Four of those – Nathan Jones, Ruben Selles, Ivan Juric, Will Still – failed to pass 17 matches in charge. Were all of them not good enough, or were they appointed at the wrong time by the wrong people and given the wrong tools?
The latest appointment may have been the most avoidable. Tonda Eckert stepped in after Still’s sacking and won four of his five matches as a caretaker.
Did that make him the best person to oversee a promotion charge? Or did the club have to reason that a mid-season gamble on a man with no first-team management experience was too significant a gamble?
Southampton haven’t won in seven league games. Thirty-six per cent of their points this season came during his caretaker spell.
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Hopes this season are not terminal; Southampton are nine points off the play-offs with 19 games left and have played eight of their ten fixtures against the current top five. But that’s not really the point. Southampton, with their parachute payments and without the financial issues dogging Leicester City, had a VIP pass to a promotion race that they have wasted. And it’s 15 years since they finished lower than the Championship’s top four.
Consecutive miserable Premier League relegations leave a mark – in two combined seasons Southampton barely took enough points to survive in one. But in those circumstances, everything has to be better to shift the story on: better recruitment, better strategy, better appointments and better attention to detail.
Southampton have failed on that front and that expensive failure has become the soundtrack to their new identity: a club that has squandered advantages and momentum by making life harder for itself than it ever needed to be.
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