Arrogant or naive decision-making relegates Southampton after 11 years

And Saints, with the financial power of a club closer to the bottom than top, fall into the bucket of teams who start the campaign in some sort of trouble. Yet again, another fact that we are all aware of.

But what isn’t a fact is that this relegation - finally confirmed on Saturday afternoon - was somehow predetermined. Saints didn’t have to be relegated, things didn’t have to reach this point. But they have. And Saints are down. 

READ MORE: Injured, inconsistent, ignored: Horrific Saints recruitment that led to relegation

It’s a culmination of a year of arrogant - or naive - decision-making that expedited the gradual decline that had set in during the years preceding this eventual disaster.

When Sport Republic arrived at St Mary’s last January, they took over a club in desperate need of a refresh. 

The days of Mauricio Pochettino, Ronald Koeman, Sadio Mane, and European football were long in the rearview as the aim became survival under the ownership of Gao Jisheng.

With credit to Ralph Hasenhuttl, Saints achieved that in each of his three-and-a-half seasons prior to the change in ownership but there was hardly any opportunity to push on or dream of more.

Sport Republic - seemingly a fresh upstart of idealists - set out to achieve more. They set out to take the club to the next level. 

They made it clear that last season’s second-half collapse wouldn’t be tolerated with the sackings of Hasenhuttl’s coaching staff. They then put their money where their mouth is by spending more than £100m in the summer without any major sales.

As well as seeing faults in Southampton’s model, Sport Republic clearly felt there was a league-wide flaw in how clubs recruited and how squads were built. They attacked a market that they clearly felt was under-utilised - the talented young players that other teams might be scared to give opportunities to with so much on the line in the Premier League.

Most will find it hard to do right now, but it’s fair to give them credit for their bravery and commitment to the plan they came in with. Most clubs are too scared to adopt the kind of risk Sport Republic did. But it also clearly hasn’t worked and on the flip-side of that bravery is genuine arrogance or naivety to think that all current Premier League thinking was wrong.

The initial warning signs came in the opening weeks of the summer window with Saints’ first two signings. Despite conceding 67 goals last season - fourth-most in the Premier League - there were promising signs from a young defence. Kyle Walker-Peters had long established himself as one of the better young full-backs in the league while only serious injury was keeping Tino Livramento from the same conversation.

In Mohammed Salisu they had a centre-back who had displayed the kind of dominant potential not seen regularly and links to Manchester City had come about on merit. 

But it was also a defence riddled with mistakes, miscommunication, and lacking physical leadership. All the talk from the Saints fanbase was about the need for increased leadership and someone to come in and take charge of a defensive unit full of talent but lacking in the final details required at this level. The departure of Fraser Forster just heightened this need.

Instead, Sport Republic’s first two signings saw Gavin Bazunu and Armel Bella-Kotchap arrive through the Staplewood doors. Two talented players - but two talented players only months removed from their teen years - they just didn’t fit the bill for what was required.

It’s not that the duo were inherently wrong or not good enough - although those questions must be asked of Bazunu - it’s that their profiles were completely wrong for the situation at hand.

The entire summer transfer window appeared to be a bizarre - and admittedly brave - attempt from Sport Republic to prove that as new kids on the block, they indeed knew best; better than anyone else or any conventional thinking.

In their summer of upheaval, they unearthed a few real diamonds with Romeo Lavia the shining jewel from their heavy expenditure. But of the nine players brought in, none were over the age of 25 and at least five of those players - Joe Aribo, Samuel Edozie, Duje Caleta-Car, Sekou Mara, and Ainsley Maitland-Niles - have all been frozen out at various points.

And most glaringly, Sport Republic failed to sign the player needed most - a real number nine capable of scoring double-digit goals. 

By the time January rolled around, Saints were in desperation mode. Already onto their second manager of the season following Ralph Hasenhuttl’s sacking - and that second boss’s tenure quickly unravelling - Saints went back into the transfer market and recruited another five players.

Three of those - Mislav Orsic, Paul Onuachu, and James Bree - have made no real impact while the jury is still out on Kamaldeen Sulemana. Charly Alcaraz is the lone and thrilling exception.

The Kamaldeen Sulemana situation brings us to the next phase of Sport Republic’s naivety or arrogance: right decisions made at wrong times become wrong decisions. 

A club-record fee was spent on the Ghanaian winger but that club-record fee was used to bring in someone for the future rather than the present. Kamaldeen has never shown himself to be a difference-maker even if he has traits that could see him become one. 34 Ligue One appearances for Rennes had led to five goals and taking the seismic step up to the Premier League meant things were hardly going to get easier for him.

The question of timing is much greater than one player though. As with the recruitment of Bazunu and Bella-Kothcap, the timing for what was needed was all wrong.

There was no need for Sport Republic to move so quickly and so drastically. Yes, a reset was needed but it didn’t need to come with one decisive transfer window. The recruitment of every single player comes with risk and that is heightened when those recruited have no track record to fall back on. Sport Republic simply adopted far more risk than necessary and they did it all at once. 

The same could be said of Sport Republic’s managerial decisions. Having obviously lost faith in him already, there was no need to keep Hasenhuttl in the summer, particularly if they weren’t going to back him with a striker and sack him before another transfer window came around.

Then the appointment of Nathan Jones was again poorly timed. There’s no doubting the impressive job Jones did at Luton and while he might have deserved a chance in the top flight, he needed to join a club where the structure was clear and he had the time to implement his long term project.

Instead, he arrived to a huge and unbalanced squad in desperate need of someone to come in and take control. That wasn’t Jones. Additionally, the decision to ride out the season with Ruben Selles was timed preposterously.

The decision was seemingly made based on one admittedly impressive win at Chelsea and the fact that the squad seemed to ‘like him’. With an international break coming a month after the victory at Stamford Bridge there was absolutely no reason to rush into an appointment. 

It became incredibly obvious that Selles didn’t have the magic that appeared potentially present but at some point Saints decided they were stuck with him or just accepted their fate.

The strangest aspect of these managerial appointments was in terms of how badly they matched with the apparent ethos of Sport Republic - the bravery and willingness to fail that had guided their recruitment and public statements. Each of Saints’ three managers this season adopted an increasingly cowardly set up designed to keep Saints alive in games rather than win or score. 

They failed to find the net in 15 of their 36 matches - more than 41% - and only kept five clean sheets all season making their apparent survival game-plan completely useless. 

READ MORE: Three steps Saints must take to correct this season and get back to Premier League

For all the risk that Sport Republic took, their managers took none of that. But the owners were the ones who employed them and the owners were the ones who stood by and watched with little action.

For the future of the Premier League, it’s a major shame that this Saints experiment failed. They tried to do things differently and that’s a rare occurrence in the oft-risk-averse nature of this league where money governs all.

But risk without intelligence - or risk guided by arrogance and naivety - is just risk for ego’s sake. Risk must come with a genuine plan and the action to put that plan in place. As they blindly gathered unbalanced assets, Sport Republic failed to see that or failed to do that. Let’s see if they learn lessons from a catastrophic first season at the helm.