Boos filled the air at the full-time whistle, deafening in noise and aimed at those on the pitch.
The anger from Southampton’s supporters, who put up with a lot of average, third-rate football during 2022, felt unshackled by the arrival of a new year. The hum was prolonged and profound, and loaded with outrage. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” they chanted in unison as St Mary’s emptied.
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The players stood rooted to the positions they had ended the game in, mostly up front or in no-man’s land. They appeared shell-shocked and withdrawn, some as if they were trying to look outside of the stadium and through the stands. Samuel Edozie, 19, buried his face in his shirt.
Southampton’s young players are being exposed to the harshest and most extreme conditions, in the most unforgiving of winters.
While the boos stopped the players in their tracks, one man was moving.
Nathan Jones, like a mariachi band mistakenly arriving at a wake, strode onto the pitch to clap. His stoicism was a tinderbox moment, a signal for the ferocity of the noise to increase.
It was supporters retaliating for being served up a side that ranked 90th of the 92 teams in the top four English divisions over the previous calendar year, averaging 0.86 points per match.
Southampton 0-1 Nottingham Forest: A big, big win for Nottingham Forest and a grim, grim defeat at home for Southampton.
Saints are stuck at the bottom of the Premier League, with their next game coming against Everton (who are currently 2nd from bottom). pic.twitter.com/syp29T098g
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) January 4, 2023
“You cannot change the manager’s personality,” Southampton owner Sport Republic’s co-founder Rasmus Ankersen told The Athletic in November when the Welshman replaced the sacked Ralph Hasenhuttl.
“If he wants to play this way but you want to play another way, it’s not going to work. You have to have 80 per cent alignment, then you teach him 10 per cent and he teaches you 10 per cent.”
“We looked at a lot of people, we looked at the data,” added fellow co-founder Henrik Kraft. “This was not a knee-jerk reaction. It was a long-term thing.”
The data behind hiring Jones away from Luton Town of the Championship perhaps did not account for the fact Southampton would hoof 75 long balls forward, largely aimlessly, during the 1-0 defeat against Nottingham Forest, who had been the worst team away from home this season in the Premier League, without a win to their name.
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Unperturbed, Southampton plodded on with their long-ball ploy, lumping it forward and onto the heads of an increasingly deep defence who were ready-made to deal with the tactics. They have lost all four Premier League matches since Jones took charge and are propping up the Premier League.
“Southampton were quite direct,” said Jones’ Forest counterpart Steve Cooper afterwards, making an early bid for the understatement of 2023.
The decision to appoint Jones perhaps did not account for the new manager, despite being regarded as a coach who could work to the current squad’s strengths, admitting to The Athletic that he does not have the personnel at St Mary’s to play the “shape we’d like to play”.
The fare on the pitch contrasted with that off it. On an evening when Southampton marketed a “groundbreaking” light show before kick-off as an incentive to entice supporters to pay £20 for a ticket in the Kingsland, Sport Republic marked the first anniversary of its takeover by watching the team’s season plunge to new depths. Sandstorm by Darude blared out on the speakers.
This time, the first act of self-inflicted pain, came from Lyanco — the erratic fourth-choice defender Jones decided to stick with in the middle of a back three — passing straight to Forest’s Brennan Johnson, who squared the ball to Taiwo Awoniyi to score with what was the only shot on target for either side all night.
Exasperation combined with apathy among the Southampton supporters, watching a team with the worst home record in the top flight. Che Adams, Southampton’s 5ft 9in (175cm) supposed target man, found himself bearing down on Dean Henderson’s goal after seven minutes but his shot missed the target.
Jones, dressed all in black like his predecessor used to, jumped up and down, and slapped his thighs.
“That’s why you’re going down,” sang the Forest supporters cheerily, with the game still goalless and their heroes 19th in the 20-team table.
Wittily, the home sections responded: “How shit must you be?, it’s only 0-0.”
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Towards the end of Hasenhuttl’s near four-year reign, Southampton players noted their manager’s negative body language. Jones, on Wednesday evening, was no different. A man engulfed in pent-up anger, swaying in the corners of his technical area, with hands resting either on his hips or head.
Jones only broke from this routine midway through the first half, when Southampton won a free kick on the halfway line. The ball ended up back with goalkeeper and chief-ball-progressor Gavin Bazunu. Jones turned away in disbelief, hands over his mouth.
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The players looked lost and are clearly feeling a disconnect with their fans. Southampton no longer have an identity; it started in the final days of Hasenhuttl, when he lost courage in his high-pressing system and has totally washed away in less than two months under Jones, who has changed system nine times in three games.
Southampton’s B team at least still adhere to the ‘SFC Playbook’ and its teachings — such as the 4-2-2-2 and playing into the ‘red zone’ — and are therefore closer to the club’s supposed ideology than the first team now are.
Supporters were not enamoured by Jones’ appointment in the first place, unlike Hasenhuttl who came from Champions League side RB Leipzig and had already established a reputation for his high-octane coaching style. The Austrian carried a magnetism in those early days; Jones appears more pragmatic, more laboured in trying to convince.
“I can’t pre-empt what fans are going to do, that’s entirely up to them,” he said of the booing after the game. “It doesn’t concern me. It surprises me a little, but that’s their prerogative. We need everyone, and that includes fans. I understand their frustrations but that’s not adding any positivity.”
Even in the final 20 minutes, with only the one goal in it, the game felt out of Southampton’s reach. No shots on target and confidence lower than a worm’s belly following six consecutive losses can do that to you.
“You can pick holes in our long balls, you can pick holes in our system — pick holes in anything you want,” Jones said. “But tonight we’ve had 60-odd per cent of possession at home but just haven’t haven’t used it well enough.”
Southampton ended with an expected goals (xG) rate of 0.49. Players began to snap at one another after mistakes or turning down their call for the ball.
Captain James Ward-Prowse, being dragged down with each passing week of this, screamed at Mohammed Salisu to come back onto the pitch after the Ghanaian initially ran straight down the tunnel at full-time.
This is not a team, nor a club, aligned.
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