A look at Jos Hooiveld who to his credit fought back to regain his place, but it should be remembered if we want to improve then we need to improve what was one of the worst defences in the division.
You canr knock Jos Hooiveld for effort, after a terrible start to the season it looked like his days were numbered, however after the injury to Jose Fonte he came back into the side and did a fair job for a while.
But Jos's problem, in fairness like his fellow centre backs was a lack of concentration, he would be caught out at vital moments, not to mention a talent for scoring own goals, the stark reality is that if Saints are to take that next step forward as Nicola Cortese has stated he wants them to do, then the centre of defence has to be improved drastically.
Thats not to say Jos & his fellow central defenders didnt have some decent games from time to time, but you cant get away from the fact that more often than not we go caught napping and sadly again more often than not Saints seemed to mostly let in goals that came from mistakes.
We didnt manage a clean sheet till the end of November and indeed only seven in total all season and that tells you why we fought a relegation battle most of the season and why ultimately we didnt get anywhere near pushing West Ham for 10th.
Many champion Nicola Cortese's ruthless streak as one of the main factors behind Saints back to back promotions and there can be no doubt that he hasnt shirked from tough decisions, not least in sacking two popular managers, now is the time though to be ruthless in aquireing players of the right calibre and sadly that may spell the end of the road for Jos.
He has probably pushed himself into a 6/10 for the season after his late run, but the reality is that in the first half of the season he was struggling to merit a 5, the question we have to ask ourselves is firstly would Jos or for that matter any of our current central defenders get in any other Premiership team, we know the answer to that one and that being the case I will recall a favourite phrase of mine and that is "Do the same things get the same results" Put bluntly we shipped so many goals for a reason and that reason was that our central defenders werent good enough.
Of course some will say another negative review of last season, but I dont see it that way, I see it as positive, do we want to move forward ? if we do and i know our Chairman certainly does, then we cant afford sentiment, we have to be ruthless on the pitch as well as off it, xsadly for Jos that means he should be surplus to requirements next season.