It’s the decision that no other supporter of a team struggling in the Premier League wanted.
But days after an extremely awkward fans’ forum – when director of football Rasmus Ankersen attempted to justify decisions made the club – Southampton have pulled the plug on a pretty dismal spell in charge for former Luton Town boss Nathan Jones.
Losing to 10-man Wolves proved to be the final straw, with Southampton rooted to the foot of the Premier League table and four points away from safety, and it’s now back to the drawing board for a side who only dismissed Ralph Hasenhuttl at the beginning of November.
So where did it all go wrong for Jones and what were his worst moments in charge? The rap sheet actually makes for surprisingly fun reading…
“We wanted to be aggressive, we wanted to press high but we didn’t do the basics well enough and when they got near our goal – which at times was far too easy – conceded poor, poor goals. Goals that should never have gone in.”
That was Jones’ assessment after his first game in charge of Southampton – a 3-1 home defeat by Brighton on Boxing Day. There’s no disgrace in losing to the Seagulls this season – plenty of sides have done that – but it was the lack of threat going forward that was extremely concerning.
Boos actually rang around St Mary’s at full-time, which little did we all know was a sign of things to come.
Hasenhuttl’s Southampton were wildly inconsistent in terms of results, but at least you knew each and every week that his side would run themselves to death and get in the faces of the opposition.
Often that was a bad thing – owing to gaps opening up because of overcommitting on the press – but you had no real clue what Southampton were trying to do against Nottingham Forest.
They didn’t register a single shot on target against a Forest side in the relegation zone at that time, and they ended up losing the game to Taiwo Awoniyi’s first half goal.
A dire game and a dire result.
Days after giving Newcastle a fairly good run for their money in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, Southampton put in one of their meekest performances under Jones.
Brentford ran out comfortable 3-0 winners – Ben Mee, Bryan Mbeumo and Mathias Jensen the scorers – at the Gtech Community Stadium, and it was pretty grim viewing for those in the away end.
Theo Walcott even got a 25-minute outing, much to the surprise of…well basically everybody.
“I could have stayed in a mining community, been a PE teacher and had a nice life, married a nice Welsh girl. I don’t. I want to test myself on every level & that’s nothing against Welsh women. I want to test myself.”
Those the words of Jones after the 3-0 mauling at Brentford. Nope, we don’t know what to say either.
Losing home games in the Premier League is bad enough, but losing to a relegation rival at home when you’re winning 1-0 and they’ve had a player sent off? Unforgivable.
Carlos Alcaraz opened his Southampton goalscoring account to give Jones’ side the lead, and things looked even rosier when Mario Lemina handed his former employers a player advantage.
Jan Bednarek had other ideas though, turning the ball into his own net, before Brazilian wonderboy Joao Gomes – a star turn on Football Manager 2023 in case you’re interested – sealed a dramatic turnaround.
End of days stuff.
To sum it all up, Southampton played eight Premier League under the stewardship of Jones.
One win was picked up in that time – Frank Lampard, thank you so much for your cooperation – but the other seven matches ended in defeat, many of them in resounding style.
Worse still, the St Mary’s faithful witnessed four of them and they all ended in defeat. Still, at least they beat Blackpool in the FA Cup fourth round, eh?
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Credit: 90min.com
