When Ruben Selles was given the task of replacing Nathan Jones it was initially acclaimed by many Southampton supporters, but 3 months later his name is now mud, but is it really all his fault.

The time for the post mortem on Saints season will come in a few weeks, but in the meantime a lot of the blame on the situation that we are in is being placed firmly at his feet.

Of course there has to be some blame attached to him during his time as temporary manager at St Mary's, he has made some strange team selections and substitutions, but looking beyond the veneer of the situation shows that whoever ultimately decided he was the man for the job, like those fans who chanted his name in his first few games in charge, was dazzled by his initial success and did not look whether he was actually qualified and indeed ready for the enormous task that stood before him.

The answer to that question now is clearly no on both counts, he had never actually been the manager of a Professional adult football team before.

He had spent most of the last 15 years slowly building up a career in football, starting as a fitness coach, then as a data anyalyst, before several assistant manager positions at various clubs in what could be describes as lesser leagues in Europe.

His arrival at St Mary's in the summer as assistant to Ralph Hassenhuttl was his first step into a position with a top flight club in one of the major leagues.

He was clearly earmarked as a potential manager for Saints, but the idea was that he would spent a couple of seasons or so learning what was needed at this level.

But with Hassenhuttl sacked and then the debacle of the Nathan Jones tenure, suddenly he was thrust in at the deep end, to be fair he probably relished the opportunity and two wins in his first three games plus a draw at Manchester United got everyone excited that he was the man to steer us clear.

Potentially he could have been, but the problem he had was that the club did not bring in anyone to help him out who had the experience needed in the Premier League or for that matter any other senior level.

Dave Horseman was promoted from being B team coach, but he had no coaching experience above youth level, he also like Selles does not have appeared to have played the game at professional level.

So we gave Ruben Selles the job, but we did not give him the tools to do it, we gave a man who had all the technical knowledge and only a few months experience at Saints in the Premier League a mammoth task, but gave him no one with experience to counsel him & help him.

When Ronald Koeman arrived, despite his experience both as a player and a coach at the highest level in Europe, he had no experience of the Premier League, hence Les Read knew that he had to get in someone to counsel him on the League, the players in that league and all things that the Dutchman had no experience in.

That paid dividends and this is what Martin Semmens should have done back in February, he should have recognised that we now had an entire coaching staff with not only no real managerial experience, but little actual football playing pedigree, Carl Martin's 60 or so games in League Two being the best we could muster.

We should have appointed another Sammy Lee or indeed even Sammy Lee himself , just someone who had been there and done it at Premier League level.

Clearly after that initial burst something was going wrong, Selles started to become erratic in his team selections and substitutions and his body language showed that he was a man under pressure.

Quite simply he was in a position that he had never been in before and certainly at a level far far higher than anything else he had experienced.

To be blunt he should never have been put in that position, of course he would accept it, this was the chance of a lifetime, but he had not earned his right to be there by paying his dues as they say.

The blame does not lie with Selles, but with the man or men that put him in this position and then failed to give him the assistance he would clearly need, perhaps they offered it and he turned it down, but they should have still recognised the gravity of the situation and made it a condition of his getting the job.

Who was responsible for the situation unravelling is yet to be truly revealed, as it stands Martin Semmens is the man that bears the overall responsibility for the day to day running of the club, he has to be the first man the finger is pointed at.

But for Ruben Selles he has turned out to be the man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If Saints had appointed someone experienced to replace Jones then he would still be learning his trade as assistant, he would still be the golden boy for the future, now his reputation lies in tatters, he is seen as the man who now in his last 8 games has managed only 2 points, less than the 3 Nathan Jones earned in his only 8 games in the club.

It is hard to see how Selles can just drop back to being the assistant manager again next season, it is impossible to conceive that he might actually be kept in the job and tasked with getting us promoted.

Whoever appointed him has a lot to answer for, not only has he effectively relegated us, as I said 2 points in our last 8 games was appalling, if we had gained just 8 a poor figure at the best of times we would have a fighting chance.

But it is more than that, he has ruined a good man who may well have had a future at this club and now finds his own career in tatters.

Selles knew what he was getting into, I am not excusing him, but that does not make him a bad man, just one that was out of his depth at this moment in time, unfortunately he had to find that out the hard way, he should never have been put in that position.

Photo: Action Images

Centurion added 09:29 - May 2 Both Nathan Jones and Selles out of their depth. I would add also some key members of the board...and the goalkeeper
5

Ifonly added 09:30 - May 2 "the problem he had was that the club did not bring in anyone to help him out" That is seriously wrong. You go on about his strange selections and substitutions and miss the major issue - his tactics. Hi tactics have been totally wrong and he has shown that he only knows one way of playing, with some minor variations. For us to have avoided this disaster we would have needed to play differently. But bringing in an assistant would have done zero to change that. Listen to his press conferences, he goes on about this style as his "identity". You don't change your identity just because an assistant suggests it. Selles choice of tactics meant we ended up with the likes of Moi and Theo rather than Tall Paul and Orsic. His choice of tactics meant that we picked players based on how good they were without the ball, rather than with it. His choice of tactics meant we placed too much value on possession which meant we played too slowly with constant sideways and backwards passes. That was the problem, not the lack of an assistant.

17

landsdownsaint added 09:33 - May 2 We need to do now what Cortese done & that is get someone with a cv that gets teams promoted from the championship to the PL then look at the situation again if promoted with the club offering no guarantee of us keep ing him through sentimentality , it’s horses for courses at this level .Personally I’m not sure I’d like that approach , I’d like someone with big connection tooo the club get the job , I’d love Fonte team up with Beattie but that might be my rose tinted specs

-1

DorsetIan added 09:39 - May 2 The only reason Selles became a Premier League manager is because the Nathan Jones situation had become so toxic that the Club needed to bring some stability quickly and everyone seemed to like Selles. Doing well in those first few games then cemented his position prematurely. The whole season has been a series of errors: Ralph should have been replaced in the summer. Ralph should have been replaced earlier in the season. Jone should not have been appointed. Jones should have been sacked after the Forest game Selles should have been sacked after Palace at home. We should have bought a striker who we were actually going to play.

6

obelisk added 09:41 - May 2 Isn't Selles really just Ralph 2.0 with the return of crab football and JWP playing too deep? He's been there right there right through this awful season so cannot avoid being at least partly to blame. Who's to say that he wasn't the cause of Jones' well-known frustrations as well? Regardless of all that, the problem surely lies with the fact that Ralph wasn't shown the door at the end of that poor run towards the end of last season. That there was relegation form and it was the time to put a respected and proven man in charge.

6

landsdownsaint added 09:43 - May 2 Centurion just made me think about the goalkeeper , what other club would play him for more than 3 quarters of the season & suddenly realize he ain’t up to it ( at the moment) … no wonder we’re going down
4

Block8 added 09:50 - May 2 Ifonly seems to have it about right, we were & still are playing a system that appears to be completely alien to the side he puts out. Worse still it is completely uninspiring to the fans, hence the lack of cohesive support. What is really, really annoying is all the other teams down the bottom are contriving to give us chances to remain a PL side but we have wasted every opportunity to take advantage and it is solely down to the same pig headed I know best attitude that ended Ralph's reign here!

4

mattlegod added 10:45 - May 2 Can't argue with that. It is time to bring in a new manager who Selles could assist. A new manager who has time to look over his squad as this season fizzles out, make decisions on who he want, who he doesn't and then hit the Championship running.
-1

onetowatch added 10:54 - May 2 I just hope that a new manager, whoever it may be, does not have the same obsession re JWP as the last 3 have had, including incumbent....he should never have been such a focal point of the team...Poch and RK hardly ever picked him to start...... they weren't wrong...
-7

I_would added 11:05 - May 2 Our downfall started when JWP was made The Messiah by Dopey Ralph, continued steadily on down until final relegation. This was the only result possible whilst playing with 10 men for 3 years. What makes me laugh is when I see that a top 6 club is interested in him if we are relegated (when you mean of course). Well by the time their transfer people actually watch some footage of the Joggy Joggy sloth he will be back in Saints regularly and taking us, slowly and side-waysly, into league one. thanks for making him Captain Ralph. Thanks for buying into the hype Nathan and Ruben. You're trio of thicko's.

-16

ChristchurchSaint added 11:55 - May 2 I don’t like the idea of going back, but maybe someone like Nigel Adkins as Director of Football, with a bright upcoming manager to coach the players.NA always had a very calming, but realistic view on things, he also had experience to get clubs promoted. I know he didn’t have much success after he left us, but get rid of the deadwood, and look for players who realise what is needed and actually want to play for the club. There seems to have been too many this season who were quite happy to turn up, play a half hearted game and collect their undeserved and obscene salaries.

4

felly1 added 12:07 - May 2 I think any manager would have struggled with our policy of bringing in so many young unproven players. This season is simply a culmination of a general decline over the last 6 or so years. Sold our best players and in the main replaced with inferior ones. Even Pep would have struggled to turn this situation around. Sports Republic were naive to think talented kids in a struggling team was going to work out. This is a high stakes brutal league and you need to think survival first and foremost before you start having your dreamy ideals.

1

underweststand added 12:11 - May 2 Tough on Selles who obviously "bonded " with the players in the first half of the season, and then suddenly found himself subordinate to NJ, who had his own staff , and then suddenly was the "last man standing" for the job at short notice. HIs good start (7 points in 4 games) was a false dawn when coming up against better sides, when he showed an inability to use subs. effectively. It's too late to change anything now. We are all in the same boat for the remainder of the season and must sink ...or swim. Right now we are dangerously short of lifejackets.

0

MSB added 13:30 - May 2 Graham Potter
1

Crispinmumbles added 14:33 - May 2 Strangely, I knew we had made a mistake after he won his first game in charge away to Manchester City. Weird right but as the players pushed him toward the fans to receive the acclaim for the win, I imagined what Big Lawrie or Bally or even Koeman, Pochettino or Koeman would have done if the players had man-handled them like that! In Lawries case, probably a right hook! The problem was that as manager or head coach or whatever, you have to have a seperation between you and the players, it never works when their your mates and from the reaction, it was obvious that Selles was mates with a lot of the players. As a result, when things aren't going so well, how do you dish out a bollocking (Sex Pistols v Regina, Nottingham 24 November 1977) to your mates and how are they going to take it seriously? This is why so many former players fail when stepping up to the job when they have played there. Any halfwit knows this which brings us to the people who appointed him...

-2

SaintNick added 14:39 - May 2 Onetowatch/I would, not sure what your point is here about James Ward Prowse, when Pochetino joined us JWP was only just 18 and had only made his league debut 4 months earlier. He played roughly half of his 15 games in his first season (12/13) under Pochetino, in 2013/14, he started 16 Premier league games and another 18 games off the bench, not bad for a teenager, 34 out of the 38 games, only 7 players played in more, so under Poch, JWP was an important squad member given that 3 of the players whom he was vying for a place with where Morgan Schneiderlin, Jack Cork & Steven Davis. Under Koeman in his first season he started 16 games and 9 as sub, but he had more competition with the arrival of Wanyama and Tadic. In the second season he started 14 games with 19 off the bench, again 33 out of 38 games. Perhaps he wasn't a first choice, but then again 107 games played in out of 52 in total wasn't a bad number of appearances for a player who was just 21 when Koeman left.

6

YosemiteSaint added 14:53 - May 2 We're ripe for a rebuild. And/but, my main worry now is that we've been running a rudderless ship because Dragan Solak is using the occasion to begin paying off his Saints purchase debt (which apparently he must do by the end of 2024) and subsequent investment. Under such conditions, all the money we'll get in this summer's player fire sale likely won't be reinvested in the squad. So the saddest part of the relegation playbook may just be beginning.

-1

Block8 added 15:16 - May 2 JWP is a very good footballer, which we will find out when he leaves for a better team!
5

SaintPaulVW added 16:46 - May 2 If we were Selles we would probably all jump at the chance to manage a PL club if it was offered. However the club, in the position we were in when the appointment was made, really should not have offered the role to someone with so little meaningful track record. He comes across as a nice guy but what has he succeeded at in management before? Sports Republic seem rather reckless with Dragen's money. If staying up is important to the club then even a few games ago we should have got someone like Allardyce in on a big success bonus.

0

ianr added 20:08 - May 2 Good article Nick, spoilt only by that morons deluded attack on JWP, nothing to do with the report. Once relegated is it possible he could pick another premiership side and leave us well alone.
2

sidsaint added 21:51 - May 2 Good article and some excellent comments. No other premier club would have put Selles in such a position with no support from an experienced director of football / or seasoned manager. He was on a hiding to nothing from the start. This season has shown everyone how not to run a football club. So many deserve better Selles being one of them and a number of players who keep putting in a shift week after week without the right backing. What a shambles.

0

Farlow added 22:14 - May 2 Quite simply you dont appoint a coach cause the players like him,you appoint one who knows what hes about and the players respect him and want to play for him.
1

YosemiteSaint added 04:56 - May 3 Leeds have apparently got the memo, and have signed Allardyce. Still waiting for said memo to turn up in Soton i guess.
0

Number_58 added 09:20 - May 3 Out of interest, how do we know Selles is a 'good man'? He might be a complete b*stard for all we know.
1

Colburn added 13:05 - May 3 Agree with you Nick on Ward-Prowse, I think people forget how young he was under Poch and Koeman. He has not been the reason for our demise but the one who has kept it at bay for the last two years. Ou demise is down to not replacing Ings and not getting managerial decisions right since SR took over.
1

Blogs 31 bloggers

Sunderland Polls