da leao： Following successive promotions from League One and the Championship in 2011 and 2012, Southampton finally found themselves back in the Premier League after a seven-year absence.
da betobet： There was a real feel-good factor around the club under the leadership of the ambitious executive chairman Nicola Cortese and infectious manager Nigel Adkins, and there was a feeling of real momentum and a belief that the likes of Rickie Lambert, Jose Fonte, Adam Lallana and Morgan Schneiderlin were ready to make the step up to the top flight.
The south coast outfit’s first season back in the big time was certainly a struggle at times, with Adkins’ replacement at the start of 2013, the then unknown Mauricio Pochettino, eventually leading the club to safety in the second-half of the campaign.
After surviving under a new manager that had given the team an effective high-pressing style of play, Saints invested in the likes of Dejan Lovren, Victor Wanyama and Dani Osvaldo as they looked to move on to the next level.
They certainly got success with two out of those three players, with the front three of Jay Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert and Adam Lallana thriving under Pochettino as Southampton secured an eighth-place finish in the 2013/14 Premier League campaign.
The St Mary’s faithful would have been hopeful that they could push on under Pochettino, but instead the Argentine left for Tottenham, while there was a mass exodus of some of their star players as Lovren, Lambert and Lallana all joined Liverpool, Luke Shaw moved to Manchester United and Calum Chambers went to Arsenal.
Instead of standing still or hoping for the best with what they had left, they reinvested the impressive sums of money they received for those players back into the market, bringing Dusan Tadic, Graziano Pelle, Ryan Bertrand, Fraser Forster, Sadio Mane and Toby Alderweireld in under new manager Ronald Koeman.
Their squad was arguably stronger as a whole with those players, and the club ended the campaign in seventh position in the Premier League under the Dutchman, playing some of the best football the Saints fans had seen at this level in a number of years as they qualified for the Europa League for the first time since 2003.
Southampton had become renowned for a successful model of producing young players and selling them on for a huge profit, as well as replacing other stars with cheaper alternatives from the European market, and it was the case again at the end of the 2014/15 season.
Schneiderlin and Nathaniel Clyne left for Manchester United and Liverpool respectively, while Alderweireld went to Tottenham Hotspur following the end of his loan spell, with the likes of Cedric Soares, Oriol Romeu and Virgil van Dijk replacing them.
Koeman led the south coast outfit to a sixth-place finish and a spot in the Europa League group stages, but he moved on to Everton in 2016 following a dispute over a new contract, with Mane, Pelle and Wanyama all leaving too.
The pundits and the media had always said that the business plan in terms of new managers and players would catch up with the south coast outfit eventually, and it ultimately proved to be the case when Koeman and those key players went and weren’t effectively replaced.
Claude Puel struggled to have the same impact at St Mary’s as Koeman did and failed to lead the club through a Europa League group that contained an Inter Milan side that were also eliminated, while his team didn’t impress from an attacking point of view with only 17 goals in 19 home Premier League matches.
The likes of Sofiane Boufal, Nathan Redmond and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg didn’t make the required impact, and while they ended the campaign beaten finalists in the League Cup and in eighth position in the Premier League – albeit only six points above 17th – Puel was sacked.
It doesn’t look like a particularly good decision in hindsight, and the club and Les Reed failed to get the right replacement for the experienced Frenchman.
Mauricio Pellegrino arrived at St Mary’s, and it has been a rapid downhill slide since then for the south coast outfit, with former captain Virgil van Dijk eventually getting the move to Liverpool he was demanding in the summer, while performances haven’t been good enough on the pitch with the incoming players simply not as good as their predecessors.
While the clubs around Southampton have acted when things have been going badly, Reed and Co have stuck by the Argentine even though performances and results haven’t really improved and the fans have continually called for the 46-year-old to be sacked.
They are in real danger of relegation going into their crucial clash against fellow strugglers Newcastle United at St James’ Park on Saturday, and it is difficult to see things turning around for them given they have only won five of their 29 top flight games this term and still have to play Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City.
Scoring goals has once again been a problem – they failed to get the attacking player they needed in January with a protracted move for Spartak Moscow’s Quincy Promes failing to happen – while they don’t look as strong at the back as they have in recent years.
Throughout all of this, senior figures Les Reed and Ralph Krueger have kept largely quiet, even though they have been quite vocal in the past when things are going well.
Former owner Katharina Liebherr had been praised for the job she had done following the death of her father, but she decided to sell an 80% stake in the club to Chinese businessman Gao Jisheng in August, who is yet to communicate with the supporters about his plans for the club.
There are few positives for the club as a whole right now and that feel-good feeling and optimism that there might have been previously – remember they were playing a competitive match in the San Siro less than 18 months ago – has been completely extinguished.
While Southampton used to be the envy of a number of other Premier League clubs for how well they were run, now it is the complete opposite and they are instead looking down on Saints as they look destined for the Championship.
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