After the woeful performance up at Blackburn Rovers, Southampton manager Russell Martin has launched a passionate defence of his tactics and of Jack Stephen's, but most Saints supporters at the game will not recognise the game he is describing.
The Daily Echo spoke to Russell Martin after the draw with Blackburn Rovers on Saturday and to be quite blunt, I am very worried about what our manager had to say about the game.
The Southampton manager admitted that he will not change his tactic of playing Jack Stephens, unless he feels that the role is not working, also bizarrely claiming that some of the best teams in the World play with four centre backs in the team.
The manager had this to say:
"I get asked about Jack’s position and why we are doing it. I spoke to a Sky Sports pundit who thought Jack was incredible on Monday and today. I think the same.
"I’ve watched some of the top teams in the world play with four centre-backs. It’s not a problem because those coaches are from abroad and have top players.
"For some reason when we do it, there is a big problem. Jack does it incredibly well. The understanding he and Flynn have is incredible.
"We didn’t do it at the start. We changed because it helped us a lot. We struggled to penetrate the middle of the field. When he went in there we did that.
"He really helps because he always arrives wanting the ball. I hope that by the end of the season, he will be appreciated for what he is, instead of looking at him as a centre-half who isn’t playing there."
He continued: "He is more than that. We are so fast in this country to pigeonhole players from the age of six or seven because of their size and profile and they end up playing there for life.
"He’s an incredible footballer and his mentality is fantastic. I don’t see it as a problem, nor is the formation or how we start the game.
"Some of the build-up today was brilliant. That’s down to how brave Jack and Flynn are. That is why the team looks the way it does and we have 70 per cent possession.
"We aren’t going to change but we will try to keep getting better and finding a solution for the problems we might face.
"If Jack stops working for us in there and the lads don’t get enough from it then we will look at the next bit.”
I am extremely worried about these comments, opinion is clearly divided here, on one hand we have the manager and on the other 2,500 Saints supporters who booed their side off the pitch at the end.
I did not see some of that "Brilliant build up play" what I did see was a side that had 69% possession, but rarely created any chance of note, we only had 7 attempts on goal, even Blackburn who sat back had 11 chances and their 3 on target was one more than we managed.
What I saw was a slow laboured midfield, Jack Stephen's included that was laboured and was too scared to actually try and attack in case they got caught out.
Martin wonders why the fans are critical of playing 4 centre backs when some of the World's top teams do it without criticism ? The answer is simple they are doing it with some of the World's top centre backs, we are not.
I'm sorry but the Manager appears to have watched a completely different game from the one I watched and the mood in the away end was not one that seemed to be agreeing with the manager.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and the fact that Russell Martin feels the need to defend his tactics and indeed an individual player shows that he knows there is a problem.
Indeed the game at Blackburn was the 6th consecutive League game that Captain Jack has been in the side, that 6 game run has seen only two wins and 2 draws and only 8 points gained, that is not good enough for a side looking for promotion, it is almost relegation form.
If you delve deeper into this run, 4 of those games were against teams in the bottom 3rd of the table, Middlesbrough were 10th and only Ipswich were a side vying for promotion.
But it gets worse when you consider that as bad as that 6 game run was, one of the two wins, the game against Sunderland saw Stephens hauled off after the Mackem's had come back from 2-0 down, the two goals that gave us victory in the last 13 minutes came with Jack off the pitch and one of the subs that came on Joe Rothwell scoring two.
Just when we needed a goal on Saturday, guess who came off and who stayed on the pitch, clue it was not the man with an eye for a goal loanee Rothwell.
So what the hell is happening with Russell Martin, I have stayed firmly behind him even during the early days when we were struggling for a while, I have praised him for the way he had built up a way of playing and in doing so lead us to the very gates of automatic promotion.
Yet then he tore it all apart with sheer bloody mindedness, of a determination to play one player.
The victim here is Jack Stephen's, indeed he and his team mates know this is not working, no one is picking on Jack Stephens as an individual, we just know his limitations and that he has been shoehorned into the side when there are better players.
I know I am going to sound like a broken record, but the truth is literally everyone can see where we are going wrong, it is not the individual performance of Jack Stephens, it is the disruption that it has done to our system.
Russell Martin says he is not going to change, but we are going to get better and find a solution, that is quite easy, play square pegs in square holes, do not send out the wrong message to not only the fan base, but more importantly your own team, players like Will SmallBone, Shea Charles and Joe Rothwell, must be frustrated when they find themselves either on the bench or taken off when a central defender is sitting in the midfield.
Get back to the basics and get the ball moving forward quickly as we did earlier in the season when yes we did play possession football, but we knew when to get it forward or out wide quickly and get the opposition on the back foot.
Worryingly the manager has now made a rod for his own back, how can he now drop Jack Stephens ? He has to stick with him at any cost and that cost could well be promotion through the play offs.