Will Russell Martin Be The 7th Manager In A Row Hounded Out Of Southampton Tuesday, 26th Sep 2023 13:20 Some Southampton supporters will throw their arms up in horror and accuse me of all sorts of things when I say that if public opinion pushes Russell Martin from his job, this will be the 8th time in a row that a Saints manager has been sacked in this way. Since Ronald Koeman left in the summer of 2016, Southampton FC have had 6 permanent managers, plus Ruben Selles, all of them have two things in common, firstly they have come under pressure on social media from fans, but tellingly not too much at the games themselves and secondly they have all been sacked.
In some cases you cannot argue with the decision to sack the man in question, in others you feel that he was damned before a ball was kicked, in some cases they have done nothing worse than take us to a safe mid table finish, only 2 of the 6 have actually completed a full season in charge and only 1 has actually managed to last more than a year. This is telling us something and before anyone tells me that it is all down to the club, yes all were employed by Southampton FC, but during this time there have been 3 different regimes, the end of the Liebherr era, the tenure of Gao Jisheng and now Sport Republic.
So from this perspective this is 3 different regimes all apparently getting it wrong. But have they got it wrong in all 7 cases so far and more importantly are they about to make it 8 sackings in a row. So lets take a look at each manager and see if sacking them was justified or not. Claude Puel was the man tasked with taking over from Ronald Koeman in the summer of 2016, a man who had presided over the best period in Saints League history since we finished 5th in 1985, Koeman was always going to be a hard act to follow and he had issues from the start, he lost the services of Victor Vanyama, Sadio Mane, Graziano Pelle and to a lesser extent Gaston Ramirez. He also had Jose Fonte whose head was already out of the club.
Yet he still stated the season reasonably well, the side scored goals at times, a 3-0 win at West Ham testified to that, but by November the fans were on his back, one theory is that some supporters felt that he had played weakened sides in the Europa League and I can understand that, whilst the main gist of the fans seemed to be they were not being entertained. After Xmas Puel lost the services of not only the departing Fonte, but also Virgil Van Dijk to injury, but he still managed to get to the League Cup final, lost only to Manchester United in the final minutes and steer the club to an 8th place finish.
To do that he had to abandon any ideas of attacking and protect the defence from counter attacks firstly and then build on that, slightly ironic as that is exactly in my opinion what we need to do now. But come the end of the season the knives were out for Puel on social media "I'm not being entertained" & "I can't justify buying a season ticket" being the most used reasons why supporters wanted him sacked. So sacked he was within a couple of weeks of the season ending and season ticket sales slow, but was it a good move, after all Puel had probably just presided over a season that when considering the League position and reaching a major cup final was perhaps in the top 8 seasons in the club's then 132 year history, just behind Gordon Strachan's 2002/03 season 8th and reaching an FA Cup final just trumping a League Cup final and just ahead of Lawrie McMenemy's 1978/79 season of 14th and runner up in the League Cup.
I can see why some would want him sacked, but most outside of Southampton wondered what we were doing. Next up was Mauricio Pellegrino, he was not popular from the start, he was seen as journeyman coach and was not what the fans wanted after Puel, they wanted another name as Koeman had been, Pellegrino too had issues in the squad, Van Dijk was refused a move to Liverpool and was now going through the motions. But Pellegrino started reasonably well, 8 points from the first 5 games, but by Xmas a rot had set in with 20 points from 19 games in the League and then a disastrous Xmas period including a 5-2 walloping at Spurs with Van Dijk already out of the squad and posting pictures of him holding a Liverpool shirt next to his Xmas tree.
But in the start of the New Year a mini revival saw 6 points in 5 games and with 26 on the board a nudge towards safety. But the knives were out for Pellegrino and criticism mounted, after 30 games he had 28 points on the board a ratio of 0.93 per game, maintain that in the remaining games and we would hit the 36 margin. But a defeat at Newcastle saw the panic button pressed and his sacking followed. Mark Hughes was swiftly installed to the end of the season, but he fared little better, 7 games yielded 8 points and we stayed up, but it wasn't a case of Hughes led us to safety, we stayed up because Swansea City who with 8 games left had 31 points, still only had 33 come the end of the season, a 1-0 win in Wales in the penultimate game secured our safety.
I won't claim that appointing Mark Hughes on a permanent basis was universally acclaimed by the fans, but there were enough who read the headlines of whom he had managed in the Premier League rather than what he had achieved to welcome him. But he was not to last long in season 2018/19, the knives were soon out and by Xmas so was Hughes to be replaced by Ralph Hasenhuttl. So The Austrian became the 4th Saints manager in 2 1/2 years and he lead Saints to 16th & safety in his first season, followed by 11th in his first full season and then two solid 15th place finishes in his 2nd & 3rd full seasons. But social media was after Ralph, in October 2019 came definitely the worst game at St Mary's and possibly our history when Leicester came and won 9-0, there were mitigating circumstances, Ryan Bertrand had been sent off with barely 10 minutes on the clock, we were awful, no one can deny that, it was embarrassing no one can deny that, but at the end of the day it was still only 3 points dropped. But there were some that would not forgive and forget, whenever a bad result happened despite an 11th place finish Ralph would never be accepted by a section of the supporters and the 9-0 would be brought up.
A second 9-0 the following season did not help his cause, despite even more mitigating circumstances, Jankewitz sent off after only a minute, that we were only 6-0 down with 6 minutes left when Mike Dean gave a penalty and sent off Jan Bednarek, a decision not overturned by VAR but it was the next day, this possibly remains the only decision in Premier League history that a referee didn't change when called to the VAR screen. Ralph Hasenhuttl was a dead man walking from that moment, despite still steering the team to 15th and now he had the added issue that with Gao now unable to get money out of China he had virtually no transfer budget he was the subject of a lot of abuse on social media, although again little in the way of protest in the ground. When Sport Republic arrived they stuck with Ralph for a while, but a bad ending to 2022/23 season followed by an average start to the following one that was seen as getting worse by many who did not consider the injury problems that he had in his final games.
But if there are those who are perhaps unsure that there was any real social media opposition to any of the four managers mentioned so far, there can be no doubt that the last year has seen much opposition to all of the 3 managers that we have had since the departure of Hasenhuttl. Nathan Jones was given stick before he had even joined the club, as the rumours that he was going to replace Ralph grew, there was much opposition as to what many saw as his direct type of football and after Jones lost his first game 3-0 at Anfield we had six weeks o the break for the World Cup to build up a head of steam as to why he was going to be no good. Now I am not going to say I was impressed by Nathan Jones, but I am going to say he was never given a chance from the start, hindsight is perhaps a great thing and no one can say that Jones did a good job here, just 3 points from 8 Premier League games is testimony for that and I can understand why the rot had to be stopped, but lets not kid ourself any chance Jones did have of succeeding was not helped from the negative and toxic vibes towards him before he had even managed his 2nd game in charge.
Initially Ruben Selles did well, winning 2 out of 3 of his first games in charge led to an outbreak of optimism and that seemed to be taken on board by the club who gave him the job to the end of the season, a little hasty I though, but he was seemingly popular with the players and the fans had a good song about him. But his second win was his last and we slumped to defeat after defeat and he seemingly did not have the experience to halt it, the singing had stopped and the abuse had begun long before relegation was confirmed.
Any thoughts that the board might have had of appointing him as manager for the return to the Championship were quickly dispelled with the supporters making it clear that he was not the man, I have to say I don't disagree and perhaps the board didn't either, but we lost a man who would have still been able to play a part if he had returned to being an assistant. So to Russell Martin the 7th manager in 7 years, many names were put forward on the internet by the supporters to replace Selles, most were pie in the Sky, but few actually championed Russell Martin, some were soon his back before he had even taken part in his first training session with his new team, they pointed at his possession football and how it would fail, no credence was given to the fact that he had taken Swansea the previous season to within 3 points of the play offs with no money available. He was going to fail we were told, for a while it went quite, 3 wins and a draw in his first 4 games silenced the doubters, but two straight heavy defeats brought out the knives and another two defeats has seen the knives turned to machetes as people queue up to slag off Russell Martin's tactics but also Sport Republic for appointing him.
Again I don't know if Russell Martin is the man for the job, but I do know 6 games in charge is not enough to judge and even 8 games is too little time to get things right, but there are those who are wanting him out now, they have made their mind up and to be blunt the loudest critics had made their us before a ball was kicked this season. Martin has had a difficult task, he was not sure who would be at the club and who would be gone until a little over 3 weeks ago, he could not implement his way of playing properly until then, indeed since the start of August we have seen 6 senior players leave on a permanent basis plus another 4 go out on loan, coming back the other way we have seen only 1 senior player on a permanent basis and 4 on loan, out of these 15 transactions only 1 occurred before the season started and most happened in the last week of the transfer window.
So should we be surprised that Martin is struggling to get his players playing his system well , in Saturday's defeat to Middlesbrough 5 of the starting 10 outfield players were not at the club last season, indeed 4 of those 5 had only been with us for 3 weeks. So are we surprised that Russell Martin has not yet got them playing in the way that he wants, yet many are not taking any of this into account, to them the season is already over unless Martin is sacked now, if fact worse than that we will be relegated. I am not going to say that Russell Martin has got everything right, he has made a few selections that have made me raise my eyebrows, but they are usually just the odd one per game, rather than wholesale changes, but in effect he has had to start from scratch again at the start of September, it hasn't gone well but he has to be given some time and he hasn't had enough yet. So we come to the headline of this article, "Will Russell Martin Be The 8th Manager In A Row Hounded Out Of Southampton"
The answer is I hope not, I hope that he is given time, I hope that he proves his doubters wrong and that he leads us to promotion, but I am afraid that i also see a vociferous minority that seem to want him to fail, they were not happy with his appointment and they almost seem to only accept his sacking as a vindication of what they have been telling the rest of us for the last two months. This is not a pro club stance, this is not a pro Russell Martin article, it is one about what the modern game appears to be turning into, one where continuity is frowned upon by some, it is about disposable managers, if you have a few bad results sack the manager and reset. But that has not been the answer at Southampton FC in recent times, Mauricio Pellegrino didn't improve the squad from Claude Puel, Mark Hughes fared no better than Pellegrino did with the same set of players and indeed a potentially stronger squad as Gao forked out for a few players when he actually could. Ralph Hasenhuttl brought us stability although I think by the end he had become shell shocked by the strain of it all, change is not always a good thing, especially in football. There are many cases where the fans think that change is the answer, but sometimes even when you have a good squad it can't turn things around overnight just with a new manager. In fact the Premier League is littered with clubs who change managers at every crisis, but ultimately don't really improve, Everton, West Ham, Aston Villa, Newcastle are all examples of this over the past 5 years or so, Spurs since sacking ex Saints boss Mauricio Pochettino in November 2019 are now on their 4th permanent manger, things have not got better in that time. So we have to give Russell Martin a chance, it is always going to be fluid, lets be blunt setting rigid timescales is not good practice, if Martin loses the next 4 games then there are big decisions to be made, but he deserves a bit of time to get things right given the turmoil that he has faced, if he moves forward then Xmas is perhaps a good time to judge, but he might need to be judged earlier as i have said, but that time is not now, at the moment it is a blip, his first task is to stop it becoming the norm. if he does that we are moving forward.
Sport Republic have to take some of the blame for the chaos that has ensued and no one can claim that they have not made mistakes, but that does not mean that everything they have done has been terrible and the infrastructure of the club is now far different than it was a year ago. Yes it has cost us our place in the Premier League, they have made changes, the person that appointed Russell Martin was not the man who sacked Ralph Hasenhuttl and appointed Nathan Jones or Ruben Selles, things are changing, Sport Republic cannot change the last 12 months but they can change the next 12. I am not saying that what I have written here is right, I am not saying anything other than it is my opinion, I want Southampton FC to prosper, I do not want them to fail and more to the point I am willing to give them the chance to prove that they are the people for the job. Let's be blunt on this, football is changed, few clubs are run by billionaire supporters of that club , they are playthings for the rich, look at the mess that Everton are in, there are two types of club now in football, those with rich Arab or American owners and the rest of us, who is to say that the next owner will be any better than Sport Republic. Show me a better alternative and I would happily see a change of ownership, but I don't see anything on the horizon, Sport Republic have ploughed the money in as the fans wanted, they are perhaps not bad owners, they have just not been good at appointing people to run the club for them, but that seems to be changing. Perhaps it is harsh to say these 7 managers have been driven out, I'm sure that some will take exception, but all to varying degrees had very vocal criticism from the supporters and no one can deny that they left of their own accord. It is not the supporters fault that they were sacked, they are adults in charge of the club, indeed at least three sets of them over the 7 year period, but supporters can be the instigators for change both good and bad, Sport Republic would not be the first owners who sacked a manager in order to curry favour with the supporter base and I'm sure they won't be the last Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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