Ralph - What Happens Now?

 

In a situation that you could never have foreseen before we played Aston Villa at Villa Park on 5^th March, major questions need to be asked about Ralph Hasenhuttl’s future as manager of Southampton FC.  In the period between Boxing Day and that March date at Villa Park, Saints had played 9 won 5, drawn 3 and lost just 1 in the Premier League and had got through to the Quarter Final of the FA Cup with 3 more wins including playing our reserves against West Ham’s first team and still winning.  Everything Ralph touch turned to gold and we were flying. Those 9 league games also included games against big boys Manchester United, Spurs (twice), Manchester City and West Ham, who were in the Champions League places at the time.  The manager was a genius and we were looking at a Top 10 finish and we already had 35 points.

Three months is a long time in football and since then, played 12, won 1, drawn 2, lost 9 and you could argue that all bar the home games against Liverpool and Chelsea were winnable.  In that run, Ralph has been bereft of any inspiration, and it seems, any idea of how to change things around.

These two runs are the heart of the debate… he is clearly capable of being a good manager and finding ways of getting good results for a short period of time but is it enough to have this, followed by the sort of run that followed?  When we are good, we are very, very good and when we are bad, we are shite.  The history of Southampton FC has been littered with this kind of thing, to be fair.

One of the clubs all-to-frequent PR gaffe’s was to eulogise the SFC Playbook which was Ralph’s blueprint for the entire club from the first team on down.  When things were going well and we are doing things exactly as the SFC Playbook says, we have a very defined a structured way of playing and other teams struggle to deal with it.  If they do manage to deal with it however or they do manage to catch us on an off day when all 11 players aren’t 100% at it, we seem to have no other way of winning games other than playing with what amounts to basically a back nine and leaving one striker isolated and hoping for the best. Regardless of the strength of your squad, this clearly isn’t acceptable.

Those last 12 games have been very much like the end of the season when Claude Puel was in charge where we seem to have no clue how to attack. This meant really boring negative football and when we inevitably go behind, you knew there was more than likely no way we were getting back into it, unless JWP scores a free kick like at Leeds and Brighton in that run. When the expectation of scoring a goal is so low, the game is just becomes a chore to watch and that is never good for the manager, especially if results are bad.

One of the things that saves him getting too much stick is that our squad is not good enough which is a result of under investment, really since 2016, thanks in large to the situation with Mr Gao. That was at the point where we started believing our own hype and thinking we had some magic formula that would always work – buy cheap, polish it, sell for lots, replace cheap, polish it, sell for lots, rinse, repeat etc etc - only things started to go a bit wrong….

There were a number of players signed to be first team starters that didn’t work out and there have also been players bought that just haven’t developed as we hoped.  We have also made bad decisions regarding extending contracts of players who were never going to be first-team regulars, which merely succeeded in bulking up the wage bill, blocking the pathway to the first team and taking money away from other areas.

The way you judge your manager is how well he has done with the resources that are available to him and this is where it’s difficult to judge Ralph because in the middle of the season, he was massively over performing in that regard, but at the end of it, you could argue that he had used up all his miracles, looked tired and jaded and that a change was needed for both parties. You cannot afford to be tired and jaded in management top level football because you are setting the tone for the players. If you get that way, then the decision making either becomes too safe or it becomes too random. To be honest, we have seen both recently.  Ralph of course, hinted that he was feeling the pressure in a mid-season interview when he said he thought he only had another two years left in management.  This was ironically just before our best performance of the season in the 3-2 away win at Spurs.

The perception inside the club was that the squad was better this year than last, so it will be a disappointment to have finished lower and with less points and we had last year. Ralph himself said he was happy with the squad though to be honest, I don’t have much time for managers who say the opposite because all you are doing is undermining the players that you have.  Player ego needs to managed these days, so a manager publicly saying his squad isn’t good enough is not a great thing.

Ralph has however, got to be honest with himself and with the club about whether he has the stomach to carry on anymore. Being manager of Southampton is not easy because you are always up against it, be it having less money that others, less good players, more than your share of bad refereeing decisions, further to travel etc and it will therefore take a lot out of you. 

The last two seasons of basically followed the same pattern where we have performed well up to a point and then completely fallen apart.  This is the whole Plan B thing as well because the players we have can’t maintain our high pressing style of football throughout an entire season.  In the season before the one just finished, it was put down to a lack of players in the squad and key injuries which disrupted things but it’s happened again this season so you have to think that it will happen next season as well unless there is something markedly different happening.  We tried to address the player tiredness this year with a ‘marginal gains’ approach by taking our time over long throws and generally shithousing with the energy drinks breaks and all that but we still had the same end of the season as the one before where we didn’t look like we knew where our next point was coming from. That’s not good and for the rumoured £6 - £7 million a year that we are paying Ralph, he should be coming up with an answer to that.

Ralph seems to have this stubborn belief that things will just magically change for the better.   There have been some real ‘definition of madness’ things going on and I have been absolutely mystified at times this season and wondered how he expected it to be any different to how it has eventually turned out.

The game against Chelsea at home was a classic example. Chelsea had two golden chances  because we were all over the place, with Timo Werner managing to hit the woodwork twice in the opening five minutes. Having got away with those two chances it was absolutely obvious that we should’ve changed the defensive system and gone to three at the back to match Chelsea up, right then, right now.  It was an obvious change that should have been ready to go but he didn’t do it and we didn’t make any changes until 10 minutes later when we were 2-0 down.   The indecision was final.  We were eventually 4-0 down by half-time and ended up losing by six. Next year we have five substitutes to use so the decision making has to be quicker.

That Chelsea game, coming on the back of the 4-0 defeat at Villa, seemed to kill Ralph completely and after that we went all Claude Puel and risk averse and shocking to watch.  Risk averse boring football is a dangerous game to play because it’s only maintainable if you get results.  Fans will quickly lose patience is there’s the double whammy of no result and no entertainment.

We got a result playing that way against Arsenal but the next game was Burnley away, which was a completely different assignment in terms of style of football and standard of opposition we were facing and he went with the same team and tactics as the Arsenal game and we were dismal in a limp defeat.  It was almost as if he didn’t have the energy to think of what was needed for that particular game.

Other ridiculousness this season has included picking Shane Long to start a game in the Premier League in 2022 at the age of 35.  Maybe there was some justification for playing him in the last 10 minutes against tired defenders but never from the start.  What did he think was going to happen? What did he think was going to happen if he paired Bednarek with Stephens or played Nathan Redmond as a striker?  All these things are 99% proven not to work and they are highly unlikely to suddenly work.

Towards the end of the season we also had the absolutely bizarre selection of substitutes which included players who has been completely out of favour all season when the places on the bench could’ve been used to put a youngster on and give them some experience and therefore gain something for the future. Theo Walcott on the bench for the last game having hardly played all season. Do me a favour.  He would have had my full backing if he’d said, “we’re looking at the future and going to play some youngsters in these last games”.  We’ve ended up losing all these games, learning nothing.  “We win or we learn” – remember that! 

There are three things keeping Ralph in a job at the moment.  One is the length of contract he has got at the cost of getting rid of him.   Another is the perception / reality that the squad is very weak and no manager could really do better.  The third is that he has shown himself very capable in the very recent past.  He has to prove if he is going to stay, that he is not a busted flush, he still has the drive and energy for it and that he is worthy of being in charge if some money gets spent. Anyone can see that a lot of our current players aren’t good enough, but Ralph should in my opinion, have done slightly better with what he’s had. That’s what we pay him the big bucks for.  Of course, this season he’s also done a lot better at times with what he had but if you compare this season to last, the squad is slightly stronger and we have ended up with less points.

Martin Semmens has always been Ralph’s biggest supporter and was of course, championing him as “the best manager Southampton could have” as recently as March.  As I’ve said before, it’s not solely down to Semmens now because we have new owners.  It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall at the next board meeting – I guess it depends on what the expectations were.  Another complication is that of course if you replace a manager, you have to replace him with someone who is going to be better in some way. This is not a situation like with Puel, where we thought that just about anybody would’ve been better and no one could say that Pellegrino was an upgrade on Puel.  I know there are many fans out there who basically think we’re at the point where anyone can do better and just want the current incumbent to be sacked. That’s a dangerous mindset to have.  Martin Semmens talked in the past about how they have already done some planning for the day that Ralph eventually leaves. If the board do decide that it’s time for a change, we just have to hope that that is correct and that they get it right. Bruno Lage, the current Wolves boss, was apparently on that list once upon a time but with the style of football that Wolves play, I’m not sure that would have been a great fix for us.

For my own part, I like Ralph and really want him to succeed but there comes a point.  I can’t believe quite how bad we’ve been at the end of this season and that’s the players and the manager.  The main thing for me is that if the Board want him to carry on, Ralph himself has got to have the energy and drive to do it or else he’s letting down the Board and more importantly, the fans of Southampton FC.

I’m not going to say whether I think he should stay or go but I am going to say that right now, I wouldn’t exactly feel it was the end of the world if he went and this is a major shift from where I was before we embarked on this dreadful run of performances and results.  I used to think, like Martin Semmens said, that Ralph was the best manager than Saints could possibly have.  I am now severely questioning that.

And another thing....

Kelvin Leaves With a 100% Managerial Record Intact

PS – In the course of writing this, some significant events happened in that three of the first team coaching staff left the club.  Not only is this an indication that Ralph is staying, if he gets to choose his coaching stafff, it may also indicate his influence is increasing,   The three departing coaches, Craig Fleming, Dave Watson and Kelvin Davis were all at the club when Ralph arrived so they weren’t his choices, which is unusual on the face of it.

I think most people will see the departure of Kelvin Davis as a shame and it always is when someone who has been with the club 15 years leaves, but I would say that it’s about time that the club stopped acting sentimental with regard to keeping ex-players in key positions.  If you want to be sentimental and reward someone for long service or being valuable in the past, make them a Club Ambassador, not a first team coach or a player who never plays.

Ralph Interviewing Prospective New Coaching Staff