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The tone had been set way before kick-off.
It was 7.25pm and James Ward-Prowse led the Southampton squad out for their warm-up. Everything at that point seemed the same. The first aspect of pre-match preparations followed routine, going through the collection book of gentle stretches and activation running.
But, as the tempo cranked up and the warm-up reached its crescendo, they dispersed. Unlike Leicester, who were doing a short and wide possession drill, Saints worked a new one touch passing rotation, requiring smaller, sharper movements and vocal presence. The two central defenders, Jan Bednarek and Jannik Vestergaard, stood either side of the rectangular area, where they would pass the ball into Nathan Redmond, who would then set the ball for a runner either side.
Kelvin Davis barked encouragement. Craig Fleming clapped. There was clear intent to play quicker, vertical passes, getting more players closer to the ball and to team-mates.
A change of approach? Check. Now came the trail of breadcrumbs.
Shortly after the passing practice, Jack Stephens convened with Vestergaard and Bednarek to go through a series of warm-up patterns, traditional to what a centre-back would do. They lined up in a back three, tight and narrow in shape. The sequence of headers and volleys took place by the corner flag of the Chapel Stand, the side closest to the technical areas and more significantly, the media box.
While Stephens joined the central defenders to complete a practice that gave the pretence of the team lining up as a three at the back, Kyle Walker-Peters watched on gazingly, doing some half-hearted passing with Nathan Tella. The two would put on the believable facade of preparing to be wing-backs.
If you think these little nuances and clues are inconsequential in the grand scheme of a 90 minute Premier League match, then please step into the modernised footballing world of analytics.
Leicester City had six cameras on the Southampton warm-up. Two on individual players – call it Player Cam if you like – and four scattered around St Mary’s, all with varying lenses, mechanisms and definition.
Meanwhile, two of their analysts were sat in the press area. They would point and fret throughout the half an hour prior to 8pm, continually looking for any soft signs that would help understand how Saints would set-up. Stephens completing a drill with Vestergaard and Bednarek put the cheese in the trap.
Despite a general malaise within the players in recent times, there was a discernible change in attitude laid out before kick-off. The Stephens show aside, the warm-up was beset with second guesses. The layout of the cones to the structure of the shape, everything was set-up to feel different, even the brand-spanking white shoes Ralph Hasenhuttl exemplified the notion.
8.03pm. Despite Walker-Peters just having had a goal disallowed for offside, the team started with visible purpose. The Leicester backroom staff, their job frightfully intense at the best of times, began to take screenshots of Saints in possession. It appeared to be a quasi-back three, with Stephens tucking in narrow. Those in blue, from the high vantage point of the Kingsland Stand, concluded Southampton had changed formation after all.
But disgruntled moans quickly followed. Immediately after appearing to deliver the final verdict on the shape, Stephens drifted out to the touchline. The centre-back/left-back/central midfielder (no one knew) then travelled further into Leicester territory, taking a throw-in twenty yards from the byline – akin to an archetypal full-back.
This was a continual ruse that would endure throughout the match. Even when the profusion of cameras and instant replays thought they had exploited a weakness, the fluctuating positions of Saints’ players, most notably Stephens, Nathan Redmond and Stuart Armstrong, dispelled any such thoughts.
The art of temptation continued to waver even after Vestergaard’s red card (more on that later). And like using cheese to coax a mouse out of his hole, before pulling it away at the moment of gnawing, Hasenhuttl continued to encourage his men to alter the depth of the back-four line.
Minutes after being reduced to ten, the Saints boss ordered the team to stay high. At other times, he signalled for a low block, demanding his team to drop into shape and let Leicester’s backline freely have the ball. Redmond would be inspired to occasionally press and hurry one of the three at the back.
And unlike recent, chastening times when his side have suffered a red card early on, Hasenhuttl opted to make a first half substitution, with Mohammed Salisu ensuring the shape stayed the same, albeit with one less forward stretching the play.
Prost International can reveal members of the Leicester backroom staff immediately expressed doubts over Vestergaard’s apparent foul and subsequent red card on Jamie Vardy. One went as far as to reach out to a member of Hasenhuttl’s coaching team to acknowledge the baffling decision.
Upon watching the first replay of the challenge, a Foxes’ associate admitted “it wasn’t a foul” and shortly after, said he would ‘take it’ but as an extreme, unearned virtue. They were left in no doubt that there would have been vehement protests had the shoe been on the other foot.
Aside from St Mary’s jilted relationship with VAR decisions, the game itself bore the old hallmarks of what a utopian Ralph Hasenhuttl team looks like. Long recovery sprints, intensity in closing down and displaying the type of dark arts that had previously been a staple of their success.
Whether it was running the clock down by deciding on free-kick takers or Takumi Minamino being told to stand ensconced in the centre spot before coming off, knowing there was no short side to exit the pitch, everything they did to rile Leicester worked.
Southampton first-team coach Craig Fleming became an unusual extra in the whole act, leaving his customary bench position to become a perpetual silhouette behind the fourth official. It signified a departure from the standard norm of the technical area, where Hasenhuttl often cuts an isolated figure.
Kasper Schmeichel, Leicester’s’ mouthpiece and human sound system, had become so exasperated by all the ongoings of deception that eventually his voice trailed off by the end. “Three fucking minutes,” huffed Schmeichel, glancing at the fourth official’s stoppage board.
With just two wins in 14 prior to Friday’s match, there had been increasing calls for a change of system or shape. Just something, anything, to halt the freefall. But as we all should know by now, Ralph Hasenhuttl doesn’t listen to external voices; the Leicester draw showed why.
For a manager like Hasenhuttl, whose fingerprints cloth this Saints vintage, he sees outside opinion as pure white noise.
Perhaps the best insight into understanding the whirring brain cogs of the Austrian came on Friday night. The team selection showed significant changes to personnel, preferring to moonlight players into unnatural positions, as opposed to deviating away from the favoured 4-2-2-2.
The player to experience the most severe alteration was Stephens, the right-footed central defender whose future at the club is understood to be up in the air.
Heading into the fixture, Stephens had been naturally low on confidence after his last Premier League start came in the 9-0 defeat to Manchester United. Having played only once at left back in his professional career, against Newcastle last November, when Saints’ fortunes were waxing rather than waning, Hasenhuttl thrusted Stephens into that position again, facing obvious targeting from Brendan Rodgers. But for the good of the team, Hasenhuttl knew he would have to do it anyway.
In modern football, tactical set-ups and buzz words such as ‘philosophy’ are now being relied on more than ever before. A collective structure can supply a team a backbone, providing blueprints for players to feel comfortable. If ever they are going through a period of jeopardy in their form, they relate back to the team’s core principles in order to rediscover their own.
It is the same for a manager. Today’s coach lives and dies by their methods. Admittedly, it’s a far cry from the days of Brian Clough or Don Revie’s ‘blood, guts and then a little bit of passing’ football. Let’s be honest, could you ever envisage Clough, with his thick Yorkshire voice harking on about philosophy or tactical methodology?
Or heck, even more incredulously, could you imagine Clough’s green sheepskin jumper stopping training and sauntering over to Trevor Francis to tell him that his trigger movements to initiate a choreographed first phase of the press is proving ineffective?
Modern football relies more on a system than any individual. Doing the opposite leaves players, who are known to not be quite as hardened or emboldened as previous generations, in a state of exposure. Essentially, it is the present-day equivalent of swimming naked once the tide has gone out.
This theory was personified with the Vestergaard red card. Stephens stayed at left back, despite Mohammed Salisu, naturally left footed, coming on in the 14th minute. Instead of what would have been the rational change, Hasenhuttl wanted to avoid shaking the equilibrium too much by extensive changes. Something he was possibly guilty of the last time Leicester rocked up at St Mary’s.
The same shape encouraged the same principles with and without the ball, providing a level of familiarity for the players to relate to. This, by all common consensus, kept the team on the pitch calm.
In some perverse sort of way, Jack Stephens does tend to suit a ten-man performance. Naturally, the team drops deeper and more compact, meaning he has less space to cover. The backs-to-the-wall feel encourages firefighting defending rather than finesse, the former unarguably a stronger facet of Stephens than the latter. Salisu’s arrival also helped Stephens guard against the threat of Vardy in-behind, with the Ghanian the most adept in making straight line recoveries at speed.
While it understandable some sections of supporters have wanted to witness wholesale changes to the structure of the side, the evolving nature of football means coaches are far more likely to fortify their beliefs, rather than overhauling them. Not only do they see it as a tactical contradiction, but it can transmit confusion into player’s minds. Some managers are wary that if they are seen swapping systems or core fundamentals, then it puts them in a position of weakness with the players and other coaches at the club.
Unlike the days of Clough or Revie, where football walked the well-trodden horses for courses path, coaches now construct a tactical framework that is reworked and resolidified in every training session. The purpose of this is to repeat and rehearse co-ordinated patterns, in and out of possession. They should never be abandoned or neglected, only remodelled in search of progress.
Whatever the result was on Friday night, Ralph Hasenhuttl will continue to accept further introspection into his methods. But it is unlikely he will part with the 4-2-2-2, or thanks to the perennial wisdom of VAR, a 4-2-2-1. Contrary to opinion, the Leicester draw wasn’t just another attempt at Plan A – it was a case of Plan A being freshened.
The warm-up was different. It was more erudite in approach and astute in baiting the eyes of Leicester from above. This was also a return to past success, where they found their edge again. For a club like Southampton, who needs to find unique ways to stay ahead of the curve, it is vital they continue to evolve and maximise their potential.
Southampton looked a group galvanised from the very start. Now they’ve got to stay like that until the very end.
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