![Prost International [PINT]](https://prostinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/PINTtFontLogoRoboto1536x78.jpg)
Supporters are frustrated. Players are frustrated. Ralph Hasenhuttl is frustrated. The season is only just beginning and Southampton are already weary.
To paraphrase a famous maxim, a lot can change in a year. In the world of football, a lot can change in a week. Southampton don’t even need that long; in their world, a lot can change in four days.
Let us cast our minds back to Saturday morning, September 14, 2020. The Southampton players are pottering around a London hotel waiting to travel to Selhurst Park for the season’s curtain-raiser.
Optimism is the prevailing emotion as they step on the coach. After all, just 48 days ago, they were hand-in-hand, ironically saluting the fan-less Chapel stand. They had just beaten Sheffield United 3-1 in the last fixture of the truncated 2019/20 season, recording their fifth win in nine games and just one defeat in that period.
Supporters were in similar spirits, perhaps with even more spring in their step. Just last week, The Athletic ran a poll to find out which club’s fanbase conveyed the most confidence heading into the new campaign. Southampton came out on top with a staggering 98.8% of their fans optimistic.
You read that right. Not defending Premier League champions Liverpool, or Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, the former back-to-back title winners. Heck, not even Chelsea, the team that has spent over £200 million pounds and seemingly the only club without a care in the world towards COVID-19 causing a cavernous hole in their finances. Southampton topped the list, despite not receiving a single pound coin from their owner.
The reason for this overriding wave of positivity was largely thanks to Ralph Hasenhuttl, a coach who has transcended the club from top to bottom since arriving in December 2018. He is a throwback in every sense of the word, tasked with not only improving the team on the pitch, but the infrastructure of the club as a whole, too.
Hasenhuttl’s distinct personality along with his natural propensity to find devil in the detail enables him to take particular interest in micro-managing the day-to-day ongoings at Staplewood. The Austrian’s fingerprints lay visible within every room of the campus.
During lockdown, Hasenhuttl was in constant touch with chief executive Martin Semmens, discussing a plan to appoint a recruitment specialist to work alongside the manager. It was to seek a specific type of player Hasenhuttl wants and needs, also deemed malleable enough to fit into his well-defined philosophy. They also conversed over an overhaul to Saints’ youth system, driven by Hasenhuttl himself.
Southampton’s under-23’s are now called Southampton’s B team. It is a team model common among mainland Europe, adopted by clubs such as Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund. The rebranding of the name follows a change in direction of the club’s ‘reserves’, with the principal aim to give academy products a clearer pathway into the senior squad.
The B team will train at a different time to the first-team squad, giving Hasenhuttl ample opportunity to observe and occasionally coach the side. Matches will be played at AFC Totton’s ground, with the thought the exposure gathered from playing within a stadium environment – rather than at Staplewood – will prove beneficial.
All these modifications have been designed in hope that when the next age of players do step up into Hasenhuttl’s squad, they will be better equipped to adjust to his coaching methods and ultimately, be able to make an instant impact.
Hasenhuttl’s work on the academy continued with his self-made creation of the ‘SFC Playbook’, a tangible blueprint – containing training sessions designed by himself – that are to be referred to by every age group, from the B team all the way down to the under-9’s. They will all adopt Hasenhuttl’s notorious pressing system, replicating the first-team’s defensive and offensive patterns of play.
The great lengths the Saints boss has gone to in order to build from the ground upwards, indicates a man that sees himself on the south coast for a long time. In June, he penned a fresh four-year-deal, giving him even greater power to evolve the club with his holistic approach to success. “Ralph is very much there until late, and then he’ll go back and watch footage of goalkeepers pressing off their left foot instead of their right foot,” Semmens said last week, when asked about the intricacies of Hasenhuttl’s coaching methods.
It is no secret that the 53-year-old is always the first person to arrive at Staplewood each day and the last to leave. During the season, this could be as late as 10pm. And you could hasten a guess to think not all that time is spent on just analysing the first team, rather the various teams within the Staplewood set-up and the running of the club, too.
Quite simply, Ralph Hasenhuttl is a rarity in the modern era. He is not a quick fix, an act-first-think-later manager; or a Jose Mourinho type of honcho, which often consumes success from short-term results on the pitch, but neglects the long term downsides.
You could argue Hasenhuttl is shouldering a multitude of roles that doesn’t quite match the criteria of your ordinary manager. At times, he has amalgamated into a chief executive, a recruitment strategist, a director and an Academy head of football.
The added nuances to his job title means Hasenhuttl places an extraordinary physical and psychological burden onto himself, unselfishly geared towards growing and transforming the club, so it prospers even when he may be long gone.
Which other manager, one that comes over to England for the first time and joins a side in the bottom half of the table, does that?
The answer is no one. Instead, quite understandably, they are far more concerned with keeping their own seat at the dinner table, rather than worrying about who else can feast.
Semmens, speaking to The Athletic, continued: “He has a different focus in terms of strategy and planning for the future. That’s what I like about the relationship the most; the utter intensity to winning on a Saturday. But when there is a break, he has the utter intensity in terms of how we can get better in three months and six months.”
But Hasenhuttl and his profound intensity to propel Southampton forward can only result in so much and can only go on for so long. Right now, Ralph Hasenhuttl is a one man band. Four days on from Crystal Palace, Southampton have lost two in a row and the gloom has slowly drifted back into the south coast air.
But against Brentford on Wednesday night, Hasenhuttl showed a different side to his personality, not the enigmatic, firefighting manager that instantly captured the imagination of supporters so soon after arriving.
The jovial extrovert, who is so precisely reflective and cordial in his tone, had dissipated and an altogether contrasting elements of his personality had emerged, just four days into the new season.
Hasenhuttl walked into his virtual press conference and proceeded to open up a can of worms. A far cry from the man who typically uses generalities to avoid being overly critical and singling out players.
“Its simply not enough, Hasenhuttl began. “We have to be very very clear with the form we have, it will be difficult to win games.”
Sit-up writers, get typing. He continued. “We are not quick enough, physically or mentally.”
The undercurrent in the tone of his words bore disappointment and the feeling that someone or something was letting him down. Perhaps it was the fact Brentford made six changes for the game, while his side were at full strength, full tilt.
Hasenhuttl’s frustration stopped trying to be hidden; it was palpable by this point. “Our squad is not the biggest one and it’s not a surprise. We haven’t got many alternatives at the moment. There are big problems but it’s a long season.”
Just like his his body language on the sidelines, Hasenhuttl is incapable of hiding his emotions. It’s not too difficult to work out what the Austrian is thinking, nearly all of the time. If somehow all the Premier League managers were to convene and participate in a game of poker, you would be pretty certain he would fold first. You cannot fault him for it. In fact, it is that exact trait that’s enabled him to transcend every club he’s been to.
Hasenhuttl was flowing with irritation by now. He went on to comment upon his own players’ fitness, admitting the condition of those who returned for a condensed pre-season were not up to his high aerobic standards. “There is a lack of fitness from some players. We only have success when we have all players and are fit.”
That last sentence is the most telling. Hasenhuttl now recognises there is a ceiling for his current squad, and they are dangerously close to it.
In defeat, Ralph Hasenhuttl sent out a clear message to the board and the owner – buy or risk free-falling. Wednesday’s press conference was a cry for help, a search for fresh impetus. Stagnation is on the horizon and this Southampton side needs new faces to stimulate a squad which has been at their physical maximum for the last nine months.
But no matter how hard they try, Saints are sapped of the genuine quality and guile to become a consistent, well-oiled top 10 outfit, something Hasenhuttl wants – and deserves.
A central midfielder is the priority. But they need more than that. It’s unlikely they will be able to do anything too ambitious anyway, given the financial handcuffs the unfamiliar recluse that is Chairman Jisheng Gao has locked onto his club.
Gao continually refuses to put any money into Southampton, meaning Semmens and Hasenhuttl have to work overtime to scrimp, save and do everything they possibly can to improve the squad. This usually results in the club selling their most prized-assets, begging the question: how can Saints ever build on the good work of Hasenhuttl if they are always fighting against the tide?
Hasenhuttl’s mood and the words he chose after his side’s cup exit underlines a man who is in severe need of aid. Who would have thought that would have been the case just last Saturday morning.
Life is never straightforward and nor is being a Southampton fan. It’s certainly not if you’re the manager.
Follow us on Twitter @ProstInt
