It’s been a while since my last Watt View column but The Ugly Inside and Southampton FC remain staples in my life whether I am contributing on here or not.

As I embarked on writing a piece in the weeks preceding the start of the season, my intention was to reflect on the summer purchases so far and what we needed to see happen prior to the opening Premier League weekend.

Unfortunately we all now know how that played out in the absence of my pre-season column, however, much of what I would have explained remains wholly relevant.

There is absolutely no question that Saints boss Ralph Hasenhuttl has to add a proven quality goalscorer to his first choice 11 and it has to be done quickly.

Clearly the club placed all its eggs in one basket in the failed attempt to lure Liam Delap away from Manchester City, which seems evident from the reported £20 million plus £10 million in add-ons Saints were willing the shell out.

You have to question how, having seen the issue of a lack of goal power throughout last season, there was no back-up plan to address missing out on Delap.

It also could not have been a surprise to the club seeing as they had been negotiating with City all summer with goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu, midfielder Romeo Lavia and head of recruitment Joe Shields all making the move to St Mary’s.

The desire to bring Delap to St Mary’s must have been ongoing for some time and it must have seem unlikely throughout discussions, so why did attention not turn elsewhere more quickly?

Question marks also remained pre-season over defensive frailties, despite the arrival of central defender Armel Bella-Kotchap, and the lack of experience and quality at the back was exposed for all to see at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium as Saints crumbled 4-1.

Personally, an established centre back and striker were absolute musts over the summer - along with the need to get them in early to settle and prepare for another tough season in the Premier League.

But, despite not achieving that, the club’s owners had still invested in six signings and there was, as always, hope among the faithful that the decision to invest in top young talent would push the club forward.

That hope was dashed, however, when Hasenhuttl’s first team sheet of the season dropped and fans were reminded that no amount of changes to the back room team can seemingly change the manager’s bizarre team selection policy.

For me it was a really simple one, 4-3-3.

Bazunu (though the two headers conceded were poor but benefit of the doubt given for now) in goal, a back four of Kyle Walker-Peters at right back, Bella-Kotchap and Mo Salisu as the centre back pairing, Romain Perraud at left back.

That creates a back four and the manager himself has said he has tried to add more numbers at the back to strengthen - yet creates a “five” which is effectively a three once stretched and pulled by a quality team.

Three across the middle in Oriol Romeu, James Ward-Prowse and Romeo Lavia, with Stuart Armstrong and Joe Aribo either side of Che Adams up top.

I am also a fan of Moi Elyounoussi and felt he was hard done by not to start, while Sekou Mara is a fit 20-year-old who must be itching to be involved in the Premier League - yet was not included in the matchday squad despite not being injured.

Hasenhuttl had other ideas though, as he often does, going for a 5-3-2 which included Yan Valery, Jan Bednarek and Mo Salisu as centre backs, Moussa Djenepo as left wing back and Adam Armstrong up front with Joe Aribo behind.

Whatever the manager’s reasoning was, the starting 11 wasn’t good enough - and the most frustrating thing of all is that players in the squad who should have been starting in order to add the quality needed were sat on the bench.

Then, when substitutions were made, the manager opts for Jack Stephens over Bella-Kotchap, leaving both him and Adams on the sidelines for the duration.

This is my biggest gripe with the management decisions made. As fans of SFC it has come to be expected and accepted that money will not be splashed without consideration, and even then it will be significantly less that even similar-sized clubs.

But when we have a solid foundation that we know can compete then use it, don’t sabotage it. One can only assume from the cryptic wording that Hasenhuttl has an issue with Adams, something that has become somewhat of a familiar scenario among the manager and players if we are to believe various reports over recent seasons.

When asked about Adams post-match, the Austrian said: “I think we didn’t want to change the two guys up front - Joe (Aribo) and Stuart (Armstrong). They deserved to play as they had a good pre-season and they scored goals. In the end, Arma (Adam Armstrong) got the chance to start today because he was a successful striker in pre-season for us. He deserved that.”

The issue here is that Stuart Armstrong came on with Saints already losing the game, while it is clear to everyone that pre-season - and particularly the disjointed one Saints experienced - cannot be used as complete rationale for decisions made in relation to Premier League matches.

On Mara not being involved, he said: “He’s only trained for one and a half weeks. He’s a young player and you can see what this league gives you. Give him time.”

Yet, taking the above personnel decisions into account, Hasenhuttl said this post-match: “This was frustrating to see how big the gap is between these two teams to be honest because after the first goal you had the feeling that they were absolutely in the game and then they smashed us with crosses and we couldn't defend in a way that we wanted to do.

“It's not easy to defend in the box but it happens when you play in the shape and when you're defending around the box because we are normally more active up front and give them more pressure in our moments in the game.

“We know this, but I wasn't expecting that we struggled so much in defending the crosses to be honest, and this was a little bit annoying and I must say.”

I have to say that the manager’s decisions and his comments leave me utterly perplexed. While I appreciate fans won’t be party to everything happening behind the scenes, we are invested in the club and deserve to understand the reasoning behind decisions.

This becomes even more essential when poor decisions and selections lead to avoidable harm, such as what was witnessed on Saturday when, arguably, only Dejan Kulusevski’s well-crafted strike was a deserved effort.

The other three were defensive mistakes which, according to the boss, were the fault of both the defence and the attackers - yet his selections were not in line with the view of most associated with the club.

This bizarre state of affairs is not how we wanted to start the season and must change as we move forward. We need to see sensible and logical decisions, transparency about the rationale for the choices made and an ability to adapt when the game plan doesn’t work.

Photo: Action Images

saintmark1976 added 16:27 - Aug 8 Matt, you could have saved yourself much time and effort by simply saying up front what your article is trying to get across politely, which is Ralph has to go and the sooner the better.
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dwayne_dibley added 16:34 - Aug 8 is Sam Allardyce available?
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saintpete01 added 17:49 - Aug 8 YOUR TIME IS UP RALPH !!!!
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ItchenNorth added 17:58 - Aug 8 Switch to a back 4. If you have concerns about defending or quality of the defenders, the old adage rings true; attack is the best form of defense ! Also, where is the press we were famed for under Ralph. Surely that wasn'just employed because we had Danny Ings at the time leading from the front ! I think the players bought seem pretty good this summer, Bazunu, Lavia especially and Aribo can start. For me though, if we want Liam Delap, just go get him. Sell the dead wood if you need to. Go get him. Good article and read btw. Keep them coming Watts View.

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wessexman added 19:01 - Aug 8 Well written but also very alarming. Ralph comes across more and more autocratic and will not let constant heavy defeats get in the way of his philosophy. Trouble is, somehow he and the team have been able to string just enough results together to keep afloat. I think this transfer window could well be the end of Ralph and our Prem status. Talk about the 11th hour.....

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SanMarco added 19:01 - Aug 8 Good article. Explains the chaos and idiocy of life under Ralph rather well.
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Block8 added 19:30 - Aug 8 Very well considered article which grasps the problems we are incurring. Three at the back hasn't worked and we need to try be solid as we just cannot defend coherently! But most of all there is a need to play our best players in their best positions and not have a team that appears as confused as the fanbase!
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GRIM added 19:31 - Aug 8 Ralph's arrogance & EGO are destroying the moral of the players & the clubs most ardent supporters. It's very obvious he just doesn't value other peoples opinions, hence he doesn't communicate with his coaches / assistants or listen to the supporters. He's a nice enough guy but the last 3 years have proven he does not have the skills to manage & get the best out of a team of average players. So many players come to the club with big potential but how many of them have achieved the standard we expected. Ralph makes a habit of trying to change players instead of honing & fine tuning their skills. Salisu / Broja/ Livramento/Djennepo/ Tella / Diallo are all examples of players that looked good at first but all of them deteriorated very quickly under Ralph's guidance. As for improving the defence how come both Tarkovsky & Ben Mee both left Burnley on free transfers & Saints never attempted to sign them, perhaps Ralph refuses to work with players that know more about the game than he does.

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felly1 added 21:38 - Aug 8 Nice write up. I've thought for a while we should play 4-3-3.
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sidsaint added 22:15 - Aug 8 Very good article which echoes the thoughts of many of us,
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Ali_Diarea added 23:12 - Aug 8 I think our current squad would suit 4-2-3-1 Romeu, Lavia as the two holding midfielders; Armstrong, JWP and Aribo behind Adams. But I think Ralph is too stubborn to change now and that could ultimately be his undoing
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SaintPaulVW added 07:30 - Aug 9 The problem with these slightly odd team selections is, that whatever the justification given, it is undermining the confidence of the players. We need to fit the best shape to the players available not the other way round. 2 years ago we tried to regularly play 3 mediocre central defenders. We then seemed to see sense and took one duff CB off enabling us to play a better player instead. Confidence was restored and our results took an upswing. It is early season, however I am hoping we will see sense again soon. The line up outlined in this article seems a far better choice.

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Peterx added 08:00 - Aug 9 The problem is RH is way to clever & unfortunately their is no one who seems to have a strong enough voice of reason to question his selections. We won the game last year playing 4-2-2-2, Stuart A and Moi where the 10's, with Che and Broja up front. We could have played the same line up except for Broja, where we could basically swapped Broja for AA/Aribo. Yes Spuds would have been wiser to it, but when you have something that worked why change it. That to me would have been logical, especially given Moi and Stuart A are experienced professionals who are also solid in defence. Instead because he wanted surprise them and probably also shoehorn Lavia and Oriol into the same side then we get what we got. I still support RH, I think we would have been down already without him but we need his number 2 or someone to step up. Get Roy Hodgson as a tactics consultant or something for an hour phone call to talk sense into him. But also lets not panic. My sense is that this Spuds team was much stronger than what we have seen for some time.

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Chickendippers added 12:29 - Aug 9 As Peterx says - when it was clear 5-3-2 wasn't going to work they should have reverted to 4-2-2-2. We played 5-3-2 last year against Chelsea in the cup and gave them a tough game by being aggressive higher up the pitch. Lyanco was great that day as was Valery. For some reason we didn't do that yesterday. I don't think it matters who the 3 CBs are - they have to be aggressive.

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