23rdSaint

Sign him up.

The full article, if anyone's interested: The Athletic: What is going wrong at Southampton? by Dan Sheldon with Jacob Tanswell https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6786896/2025/11/07/southampton-will-still-sport-republic-analysis/ Johannes Spors, Southampton’s technical director, was on his feet addressing the club’s players in the auditorium at their Staplewood training ground on Monday, the day after a decision was made to sack Will Still just five months into his tenure. After saying a few words, Spors handed the floor to Tonda Eckert, Southampton’s under-21s head coach, who had just been appointed the interim first team boss. Eckert, standing up, initially said nothing, instead choosing to look each player in the eye one after the other. After the silence, he then said, “Hungry eyes. I want to see hungry eyes.” It certainly caught the attention of the squad — according to sources close to Southampton’s dressing room, speaking anonymously to protect relationships — and his messaging throughout his first couple of days in interim charge ultimately worked as he oversaw a victory away to Queens Park Rangers on Wednesday night. It was Southampton’s first league win since September 30. Three points would have come as a welcome reprieve for Sport Republic — the club’s ownership group headed up by lead investor Dragan Solak — who had been subject to much of the fans’ ire in recent weeks. Since acquiring the club in January 2022, Sport Republic, not for a lack of investment, has presided over a dismal record. There have been two Premier League relegations either side of their Championship play-off triumph in 2023-24, and a slew of disastrous managerial appointments, with Nathan Jones, Ruben Selles and Ivan Juric only registering one league win each, a record Still narrowly bettered with two victories. Only Russell Martin, who led them to the play-off win in 2024, could be deemed a success, although his tenure ended on a sour note after he was sacked during a woeful Premier League campaign the following season. Still’s axing has left them searching for yet another manager and poses further questions about how Southampton is being run from the top down. Still, then aged 32, joined Southampton on a three-year deal in May, an appointment and recruitment process led by Spors, and arrived with a good reputation from his work in France’s Ligue 1, where he had previously been the head coach of Reims and Lens. In line with his upward trajectory, Southampton was the biggest job of his young career and he arrived at a time when the club was at its lowest moment after a shambolic Premier League season in 2024-25 that saw them finish bottom of the table. Southampton, via Solak’s money and Spors’ recruitment strategy, invested heavily in the summer, spending in the region of £50million on Finn Azaz, Caspar Jander, Tom Fellows, Leo Scienza, Damion Downs and Joshua Quarshie. This spending was offset by more than £100m being generated in sales after Tyler Dibling, Mateus Fernandes, Kamaldeen Sulemana, Jan Bednarek, Sam Amo-Ameyaw and Paul Onuachu were sold. There is a view from sources close to Southampton’s dressing room, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, that the summer’s recruitment did not suit the profile of player Still had been accustomed to coaching in France. Sources close to Still, also speaking on the condition of anonymity for the same reasons, echoed that sentiment and suggested, in hindsight, that he could have been more vocal on the incomings and outgoings to ensure he had a suitable squad at his disposal. There is also a sense that he could have pushed harder on the make-up of his coaching staff, with Adam Lallana and Carl Martin already at Southampton when he arrived. The only coach Still brought to St Mary’s was Ruben Martinez, the goalkeeper coach. Clement Lemaitre, who also joined at the same time as Still, worked as a video analyst. Both Martinez and Lemaitre were dismissed, as was Martin, who had spent seven years at the club. Even though Still was generally well-liked by the players and fundamentally viewed as a good person, a common criticism has emerged that centres on his personality not being the right one to drive through the change required to lift the mood — which was at rock bottom — and provide a sense of freshness. An example of how he didn’t particularly help himself is when it came to training. He would religiously stick to only doing tactical work with the starting XI throughout the week, meaning there was a lack of focus on what the substitutes should be doing when they are brought on. As Still retreated to his office at St Mary’s on Saturday evening, following a terrible defeat at home to Preston North End, he knew the writing was on the wall. But to lay the blame solely at Still’s door for what has transpired at Southampton this season would be to overlook the malaise and flux that stems from the top down and into the dressing room. You don’t have to look too far back to a time when Southampton’s dressing room was dominated by leaders who set high standards, be it Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Steven Davis, or even Theo Walcott on his return to the club in 2021. They wanted to sign Danny Ings, their former striker in the summer, but a deal failed to materialise. An indication of the dearth of leaders within the first team is shown by Sport Republic signing Oriol Romeu as a free agent three years after they sold him, with Spors even referencing the fact that the midfielder will “play a vital role in terms of the culture (we) want to instil throughout the squad” in the statement. “Every time there is a scrap on the pitch, there is nobody there kicking off…they (the players) don’t have an edge,” said a source close to one of the first-team players. “And when they concede, everyone just throws their hands in the air. There is no hunger to defend.” In recent months, clearly recognising something wasn’t quite adding up despite the vast sums of money being spent, Solak moved Henrik Kraft, one of Sport Republic’s co-founders and Southampton’s chairman, to one side. Rasmus Ankersen, also a co-founder of the ownership group, now plays a much less hands-on role. At the same time, Solak has become increasingly hands-on, and was at Loftus Road on Wednesday evening, where he sat alongside Phil Parsons, Southampton’s chief executive, Spors and Ankersen. One commonly held opinion from people with knowledge of the dynamics behind the scenes at board level is that there is a culture of blame as opposed to one of responsibility. So, when things go badly, as they have been doing in recent years, nobody steps forward and owns it. Instead, a blame game takes place. A wider example of this can be seen within the academy, which was once feted as arguably the best in the country and arguably one of the better proving grounds in Europe. But that reputation has dwindled over the years. Highly-talented players now move on, whether that is Jimmy-Jay Morgan joining Chelsea, Harley Emsden-James opting to leave for Manchester United, Harrison Miles signing for Manchester City, or Alejandro Gomes Rodriguez swapping the south coast for Lyon. Of course, money can be a factor in decisions to leave, with Southampton unable or unwilling to match what their academy rivals can offer, but the pathway to the first team has also narrowed. During a wider strategy day last season, the club set a target to become the country’s best academy. 2027 was discussed as one option, but they opted for 2030 as the goal, as that was considered more realistic. Academy sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, detail confusion within the setup about how quickly they are asked to change direction in terms of playing styles. This, however, is perhaps more indicative of the changing of philosophies at senior first-team level. Academy coaches, for example, were told they need to implement a high-possession style from under-9 level — coinciding with Jason Wilcox and Martin’s arrival at the club — and were set key performance indicators (KPIs), some of which were measured in percentages. This notably included heavy possession and sustained control of the ball in the attacking half. What they are supposed to do now is much less clear, after a change to those KPIs. Southampton’s search for Still’s replacement is already well underway, and, despite their struggles this season, they remain an attractive proposition. Solak has shown a willingness to continue investing in the playing squad and they are performing way below their potential. Even after the club’s disappointing start, which has them in 15th place, Southampton are only eight points behind the play-off spots — and the Championship campaign is not even a third of the way through yet. But if the replacement for Still proves to be another miss, then that will undoubtedly lead more criticism to Sport Republic’s door. For a fan base that has had nothing to cling to in the past couple of years, and which has had the joy sucked out of the football they have been paying to watch, the club is under pressure to get the appointment right — and for the players to show a bit more effort than they have over the past year.

I love him. Welcome back, Ori.

I enjoyed watching @L1Minus10 try not to laugh

This is going to end in tears, isn't it?

Mini interview on the club website: https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/eckert-calls-for-energy-and-fight

Have I missed the pre-game press conference or do we get to skip it given the manager situation?

Not sure it's quite as bad as suggested on UI. Direct quotes taken: "Not a single one of us goes out there and says, 'I'm not trying today'. That's our job. This is what we get paid to do. We have to perform on the pitch. If we're not performing, we have to give 100 per cent work rate. At the minute, we haven't been doing that. That's the kind of thing we have to drill into the squad. If we're not going to win games, we have to work hard for everyone. Everyone has to see that we're running our balls off for everyone and for the fans. Things will start to change when we start doing that. That's the conversation we've had in there. We have to dig ourselves out of this hole. Keep working hard. Games come thick and fast. I'm p***** off. It ain't good to be in. I'm the one around the leaders. We have to get going again and bring it back on Wednesday night. There are enough leaders, but I think the leaders in there are p***ed off as well. It's kind of a hard one. You have to choose what you want to say because there are a lot of young boys in there. I always touch on that. We haven't been good enough. It's as simple as that. You can say, 'Oh tactics this, tactics that, formations'. But we haven't been good enough. I think that's the thing that we have to get out of. It's only us that can do that. We're the ones on the pitch. It's a s*** one. We have to take it on the chin and f****** go again." I think it's everything. I think it's everything in one. Essentially, we're the ones on the pitch that have to do it. You can say it's other people or anyone, but it's us on the pitch. I think that's the only thing I can go off. We have to be better. It's so frustrating when you look at a squad and you see them training every day, and the good players that we've got in the squad still. We just ain't doing it on a Saturday afternoon. Until that changes, we have to dig ourselves out of this hole."

Supposedly good with youngsters, too.

You might want to calm down a little bit. None of those sources are credible 👍

Some good news. Give him the captaincy, too.

Not on Twitter. What end of the credibility spectrum are TEAMtalk: Echo/Solent/Athletic or Dave down the pub?

Without wanting to get caught in your pedantic web, there's a difference between a purely data-driven model vs. using data (in whatever broad and pointless guise you're boringly trying to present) to supplement decision making. It would seem we have failed to use any context or reasoning in so many of our data-driven recruitment decisions under SR.