There came a point during the first half at the London Stadium last Saturday when the stewards could have been forgiven for identifying Mark Hughes as a person of interest. After all, if anyone seemed likely to stage a pitch invasion it was the Southampton coach, who could only have looked more furious if someone had crept up behind him, leant in and whispered “Marko Arnautovic”.
What an achievement it was for Southampton to make West Ham, a team held together by old bubblegum and in the grip of a bitter civil war between owners and supporters, look so robust in a vital relegation scrap. West Ham had worn a fixed grin at the start of the day, like a bickering couple straining to maintain pleasantries at a dinner party but with the tensions bubbling below the surface always apparent.
Yet Southampton were far too polite. At no point did it occur to any of their players to ask a home fan for the name of the person who supplied the stadium’s chic scaffolding or what that charming French chap – Dimitri, wasn’t it? – is up to these days. Instead they meekly accepted their fate and by the end it was difficult not to conclude that Hughes is an odd fit for Southampton.
That might sound premature given that the Welshman has had only one league game since replacing the beige Mauricio Pellegrino. Unfair too, given that Hughes was on the playing staff when Marian Pahars helped Southampton stay up in 1999.
Yet while it was not unusual to see Southampton fighting for their lives in the 90s, the club took care to craft a more thoughtful identity after relegation in 2005 was followed by administration four years later. They won back-to-back promotions after dropping to League One, developed one of the country’s finest academies, and were supposedly immune from having to turn to a manager such as Hughes, a member of the Proper Football Man tribe and someone who could write a thesis on the deep cultural significance of the post-match handshake.
I should point out that I am ambivalent on the merits of the former Stoke City manager, even if he could effectively relegate two teams in one season. His record is nowhere near as atrocious as some of his detractors like to imagine and he could yet inspire Southampton, whose squad still contains enough talent to muster two or three wins during the run-in.
But even a rescue act will not stop the appointment of Hughes from feeling like a betrayal of sorts. For a brief period Southampton held the tag of neutrals’ favourites. Their football was refreshing, they defied convention and certain sections of the British media by replacing Nigel Adkins with some Argentinian nonentity who spoke no English, and last September, when Frank de Boer was on the brink of being booted out of Crystal Palace, it was written on these pages that “it is baffling that clubs with Palace’s resources do not seek to emulate the model at Southampton, where long-term planning ensures they are equipped to handle a change in the dugout”.
Are you ready for an unexpected twist? The author of that line was … me. I’ll have to own it and hold my hands up. But not too high because the central point was about Southampton’s philosophy being something to aspire to in a league characterised by hiring and firing and giddy spending sprees, a culture of noisy impatience drowning out reasoned thought.
It seemed that Southampton were establishing the foundations to become regulars in the top half and even mount the odd challenge for European qualification, with their impressive new training ground, focus on youth and canny recruitment. Yet a talent drain lasting four years has taken a heavy toll. Their best players have been picked off by Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, while Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman were headhunted by Tottenham and Everton respectively, because only certain teams are allowed to have nice things.
Keep the sympathy proportionate, of course. Southampton gradually started to lose their touch in the transfer market, the flow from the academy dried up and firing Claude Puel last summer has turned out to be a mistake. If relegation proves unavoidable, the board would face justifiable criticism. The project would be seen as a failure.
Yet the danger is that would also have an adverse impact on the Premier League’s mid-table clubs, who count their television money and still wonder how they are meant to take on the top six. The downfall of Southampton, though self-inflicted, would induce no schadenfreude. The worry is that it would make teams and owners who already fret about missing out even less likely to take risks and more prone to short-termism.
Mistakes have been made, but Southampton are not another Aston Villa or Sunderland. Their self-respect has not slowly been stripped away by a disconnected owner. But the conversation is relentless and unforgiving these days, especially on social media. The scoffing begins, philosophies become unfashionable and fresh ideas start to feel stale. Visionaries become frauds.
The Southampton Way looks vulnerable in that cold climate. No one is protected from panic when time is running out and they have already sunk back into the crowd, left to drift along like the rest and make up the numbers. Hughes could save them, but the real challenge for Southampton will be retrieving their core values, the daring that made them different.
