COMMENT: Mauricio Pellegrino under fire at Southampton

For all the murmurings of discontent from supporters around St Mary’s, for all the talk of whether he is the right man for the job, surely common sense dictates that he needs more time to get things right.

But Pellegrino himself will know that even if a majority do feel that way, patience in his line of work is never likely to last too long and so he must find a way to improve results, and do so in one the toughest runs of fixtures Saints have ever faced.

To achieve that you feel he must be bold, be decisive, and, more than anything, be himself.

Pellegrino arrived at Saints amid talk of high pressing and attacking football, but immediately set a different tone, speaking of gentle evolution, of changing things slowly.

It made sense to a degree. If Saints wanted a move away from Claude Puel’s style of football and towards something more dynamic, it would be a brave move to try immediately for it after hardly any pre-season and with a squad mainly comprised of players who had got used to a certain way of playing.

However, the backdrop to this is that patience was already in short supply.

After the run following the EFL Cup final where entertainment levels dropped and goals were hard to come by, supporters were baying for a change.

Whether the board genuinely believed Puel deserved to go for eighth in the table and leading the team to Wembley, or if they felt the fans had turned to such an extent they just had to give in, we shall never know.

But in appointing another manager out of a vaguely similar mould, it did suggest an evolution rather than a revolution, and so it has proven.

Supporters, however, have wanted more, something fresh and different, an antithesis to Puel.

In fairness, expectations are sky high at Saints these days. At times unreasonably so.

Six years of rampant success made eighth place the EFL Cup final, albeit with some dull matches along the way, seem worthy of sacking a manager. When you look at Saints’ history as a club you could have been forgiven for thinking it would have been a golden season, no matter what the style of play.

With that lofty bar already set for Pellegrino, to try and follow up in terms of results while also guiding virtually the same squad to become some kind of free flowing and dynamic attacking force, it was always going to be tough.

What has been a frustration for supporters is that any steps that have been taken are of the baby variety when something more dramatic was desired.

Is that fair?

You do have to ask whether two successive managers in a row could look at virtually the same squad, deduce the best chance of results is playing in a similar style, and both be wrong.

Puel was an experienced manager who led a team to the Champions League semi-final. Pellegrino has far fewer games on his CV, but has still been around different countries and played at an extremely high level. Neither of these guys are mugs.

So do you therefore deduce the balance of the squad is wrong? If so then you have to question those who have assembled it.

If not, you still end up looking at the same people, as the only other logical conclusion is that they have made two incorrect appointments on the bounce.

It is partly for this reason that Pellegrino surely won’t be sacked quickly. Saints do not want to have binned two managers in the space of six months, and you if you were Les Reed and the board you wouldn’t want to have to answer the questions that come with it if you are the one appointing.

Also at the forefront would have to be how you would replace Pellegrino.

Saints would either need to abandon their plans altogether and go for a British manager like Sam Allardyce or Sean Dyche or similar, which would likely change the structure, and power dynamics, of the club, or the chances are it would be another foreign coach of a similar ilk. And, if it had got to the point you have decided it hadn’t worked with these two, would you go for another?

There is far more context to the situation at Saints than can possibly be covered in this piece, but the bottom line to all of this is that Pellegrino surely needs to be given a fair chance.

Some argue he’s had that with an incredibly kind opening run of games, and Saints are in lower midtable just starting to glance over their shoulder.

With an incredibly tough set of games to come, facing all the top six before the turn of the year with five of those matches away from home, there are daunting circumstances.

But if you conclude it would be hard for any manager to take the current squad and produce the kind of football and results required, you cannot do as much as you may want about it until the transfer window opens anyway.

The way this season is structured, Saints will have played more than half their games by that stage, so surely Pellegrino deserves at least that long to get it right, unless things go spectacularly badly from here.

Saints are a club who have traditionally been patient. The fans, to their credit, have in the past prided themselves in being a very supportive bunch who have wanted to give managers time and the chance to work. They have not been the reactionaries of English football, but far more measured observers who have appreciated more of the finer details of the game.

Their angst now may well be to do more with adjusting to life without that feeling of constant success, or possibly what they see as a club in need of a shake-up behind the scenes.

But, for a wide range of reasons, Pellegrino will surely continue, even if he knows as well as anybody things have to improve.

Hopefully he will at least go for it on his own terms, if, indeed, he isn’t already.

He knows the consequences if things go badly, so it’s always better to at least fight on your own terms.