Pochettino, Koeman, Hasenhuttl: Figuring out Saints’ finest boss

In this two-part feature, Prost International takes a look at the finest managers Southampton have had since the club returned to the top-flight in 2013, with the winner ultimately being decided by Saints fans.

After their two greatest managerial findings came in successive appointments, Southampton thought they had solved one of football’s most problematic blueprints.

In Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman, Saints had unearthed good managers that transpired to be great ones. When both departed, they seemed likely to leave eminent legacies in world football. Both had a profound tactical acumen and a distinct richness that made the club, the city, feel all too indebted towards their seemingly omnipotent ways.

Nigel Adkins’ tempestuous ending had resulted in Southampton making their two most significant sequential decisions in the club’s history. They were both planned, diligently prepared behind the scenes and executed to perfection. Both were outside the box, innovative and made with a strategic clarity of plan. It’s easy to forget now, but Pochettino and Koeman were surprising and somewhat daunting appointments, yet were tremendously newsworthy.

What followed was a period stuck in purgatory for Saints supporters. After hitting the highest of highs, was a three-year period suffering the lowest of the lows. Since this is a piece celebrating Southampton’s finest managerial triumphs, it only seems fair to touch on the abject.

Like the monotony of Claude Puel’s sideways motion of football, or even the utter tactical hopelessness of Mauricio Pellegrino, the Argentine was brought in due to the misguided belief he was similar to his compatriot Pochettino. Everyone shortly realised the only thing that bore resemblance was a first name. Mark Hughes then followed, and well, he was Mark Hughes doing a Mark Hughes type of job.

But then came a man who was initially described as the ‘Klopp of the Alps’. We soon discovered this man deserved to be compared to no other.

Ralph Hasenhuttl (December 2018 to present, 69 games, 26 wins)

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Hasenhuttl is different to Pochettino and Koeman. He is an offbeat 6ft 3’ extrovert who casually took up Tennis to fill up his time in between jobs and ended up being a semi-professional on the Munich Tennis scene. He is the all-encompassing tracksuit boss that once ran in front of his team’s bus to tell the driver to slow down. He is the former Champions League manager who left RB Leipzig simply because of a disagreement over a slight nuance in formation with the club’s director, Ralf Rangnick.

After years of the mundane, arrived the most captivating enigma. By this time, Southampton’s squad and fans were weary and quickly wilting, ready to dilute back into the world of the Championship. But Hasenhuttl single-handedly breathed life back into it all.

Joining the club in December 2018, Hasenhuttl’s first half-season showed a marked upturn, recording eight wins and 10 draws in 25 games. Southampton staved off relegation and finished 16th. Still, Hasenhuttl’s 4-2-2-2 pressing-fanatic system was yet to take hold.

The start of his first full season in charge couldn’t have gone much worse and proved to be a sobering reminder that he was becoming the fall guy for years of hierarchy mistakes. It takes a brave man to make bold decisions at a time of crisis and perhaps unsurprising given his character, the Austrian did just that.

Hasenhuttl reverted to his favoured 4-2-2-2 system and extracted the players who were malleable enough to fit into it. Following their 9-0 defeat to Leicester in October 2019, Southampton took more points than their counterparts for the rest of the season (44 points compared to the Foxes 42.). With the third-best record in the post-lockdown table, Hasenhuttl’s side – which it most certainly is now – finished 11th with the best points tally (52) since Ronald Koeman’s final season.

Hasenhuttl still occupies the St Mary’s dugout and it seems likely that each passing summer will prove fruitful in giving the 53-year-old the tools he needs to eventually guide the club into Europe.

Now, all three cases have been heard. Who did #SaintsFC fans decide?

Round 1: Koeman or Hasenhuttl?

?Calling all #SaintsFC fans?

Need your help.

No recency bias, who has done a better job at the club?

— Jacob Tanswell (@J_Tanswell) August 21, 2020

Winner: Ralph Hasenhuttl

Round 2: Hasenhuttl or Pochettino?

?#SaintsFC fans – Round 2?

Hasenhuttl triumphs over Koeman.

Who has done a better job between these two then?

— Jacob Tanswell (@J_Tanswell) August 23, 2020

Winner: Mauricio Pochettino

While to the untrained eye, Koeman’s achievements appear the most accomplished, Southampton fans took into account the certain proviso’s each manager had to work under. Koeman had the best squad, so didn’t quite overachieve as much as the other two.

Hasenhuttl came into the most toxic environment known to a manager; a sagging club with an abundance of players that were simply either not good enough or not want to be there. Hasenhuttl revitalised a stagnating, crestfallen team and more significantly, rebooted a culture which had long been imploding.

Mauricio Pochettino was ultimately the victor due to his capacity to raise the expectations of a newly-promoted club and install an innate belief that just staying above relegation stuck in mediocrity limbo wasn’t acceptable. His Southampton side went toe-to-toe with just about anybody and fired a competitive confidence into players that had doubts over whether they could make it at the top level. He developed an assortment of players that would go on to have illustrious careers at other clubs, giving Southampton enormous sell-on value.

If you could somehow fuse the three together and amalgamate each ones finest qualities, you would quite possibly get the greatest manager to have ever graced world football.

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