How Ralph Hasenhuttl is Stunning the Premiership with A Different Kind of Management and Playing Style at Southampton

 

Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl has taken a callow squad from relegation favourites to European contention in two years - he deserves all the praise he is getting now! 

 “They are so, so good,” said Pep Guardiola. His first reaction to being asked about victory at St Mary’s was to say “how impressed I was with Southampton.” This was not the patronising praise sometimes dispensed to a beaten team, possibly to inflate the victor’s achievement in defeating them. This was more heartfelt

Guardiola has a habit of hailing managers whose ideas he admires and, in part, his words reflected his fondness for Ralph Hasenhuttl’s high-pressing, attacking ethos. But they were also a sign of achievement. Southampton will still spend Christmas above Manchester City in the table.

At which point, there is a contractual obligation to mention the 9-0 defeat to Leicester, the time Southampton spent in the relegation zone 12 months ago and the reward they reaped for sticking with Hasenhuttl. 

But while the temptation is to credit managers whenever their teams do well, this really is the Austrian’s triumph. It is not just an endorsement of his style of play, but of his coaching. Because, and while Saints’ performance levels have indicated otherwise, perhaps some of their players are not individually that good; not without Hasenhuttl anyway.

Not compared to the sides Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman took to eighth, seventh and sixth (they limped to a flattering fourth top-eight finish under Claude Puel), most of whom were the targets of raids from big-six clubs. Teams with various combinations of Virgil van Dijk, Toby Alderweireld, Dejan Lovren, Jose Fonte, Luke Shaw, Calum Chambers, Cedric Soares and Nathaniel Clyne in defence, Morgan Schneiderlin, Steven Davis and Victor Wanyama in midfield and Adam Lallana, Sadio Mane, Dusan Tadic, Rickie Lambert, Jay Rodriguez and Graziano Pelle in attack had high-class personnel. 

The incongruous element was that they were at a club that had been in League One relatively recently; they had not proved themselves capable of the feats many would later accomplish. That is not to criticise Pochettino or Koeman, but hindsight suggests they did not overachieve as much as then felt the case.

Fast forward a few years and this is a different scenario; a club that had three flirtations with relegation, two of which threatened to become full-blown affairs, with a cast list plucked from mid-table anonymity. This is a team that is greater than the sum of its parts, and a group improved on the training pitch. Danny Ings’ remarkable scoring return of 27 goals in his last 43 games has rendered him the side’s star, but it is notable that even a player of his calibre has produced the best form of his career under Hasenhuttl. He is not alone in that, while a rejuvenated Theo Walcott is performing better than he has for years.

But it is also worth considering the cases of their colleagues. Even James Ward-Prowse, now the division’s pre-eminent free-kick taker, was Saints’ 19th man for a trip to Huddersfield two years ago; now he is captain. Oriol Romeu, hyperbolically described as one of the best players in the league by Roberto Martinez last week, seemed physically incapable of passing the ball forward before Hasenhuttl arrived. He has been reinvented.

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