Ralph Meets Ralph
With the World Cup break being here, I have time to look at the last 4 years under Ralph Hasenhuttl.
The end finally came to Ralph Hasenhuttl’s time as
manager of Southampton, with the final straw being the 4-1 home defeat by
Newcastle. That game in isolation was not a problem – amongst other things, it
was that in addition to the 25 games that preceded it, in which we have only
won 4 times. 4 wins in 26 would get any
manager sacked. There is always a
certain sense of triumphalism among certain elements of the fan base when a
manager gets sacked. This of course is not needed and not merited for a manager
who has been with the club for four years and has left things in a better state
than how he found them, whilst having an unfavourable set of circumstances to
work with.
When Ralph took over from Mark Hughes in 2018, we were lucky to have him. He wanted to make a name for himself in the
Premier League and we were getting a manager who had managed in the Champions
League and had taken Leipzig to 2nd place in the Bundesliga. How did we get this guy when we had just had
the Puel, Pellegrino, Hughes triumvirate of dreadfulness? Dumb journalists christened him 'The Alpine Klopp' because of his style of football and because everything has to be about Liverpool doesn't it? When asked a dumb question
by a journalist, he responded with “if you want a guarantee, buy a washing
machine”.
I liked the fact that he knew
that he had no magic wand or right to be successful. He knew he had to work at it and that the
players would have to work. The fact
that he said that we would eventually be playing ‘pressing’ football and that
some players would fall away was music to my ears as Ralph inherited an average
squad full of overpaid crap and poor attitudes.
The work began with a bit of humour and humility and he steered us to an
11th place finish, including very good home wins against Arsenal and Spurs. In not very much time at all, he got us
believing again that we could be a half decent Premier League club and after
those three managers, it was amazing to feel that we were going places again as
he overachieved with what he had to work with.
Final Whistle, Fratton Park
The start of his first full season saw a fanbase full of optimism and bang, a really jarring 3-0 defeat at Burnley on the opening day. We rolled on in inconsistent fashion and had the present of a League Cup draw at Fratton Park against the Skates, which Ralph took very seriously, and we thrashed them 4-0. After that game he was a God walking among us. Soon enough though, the first period of confusion followed, when Ralph seemed to be overthinking things with new formations and there was none of the high-octane pressing style of football which he had become synonymous with during his stint at RB Leipzig before he joined us, and things went downhill rapidly and then off a cliff in the 9-0 defeat at home to Leicester. He survived, with the board backing him over the crap players we had and after an international break, back came the press and the 4-2-2-2 formation and back came some decent results – 6 wins, 2 draws, 2 defeats in 10 games, including beating Leicester away from home and then the Covid-affected end to the season was negotiated with us beating Manchester City at home and being one of the form teams in the country and we finished 11th. The Covid break saw us heralding Ralph’s SFC Playbook, which was Ralph’s blueprint for the entire club from the first team on down. We looked the fittest team in the Premier League and whilst we tended to really struggle in the last 20 minutes, we in the main were entertaining and just too much for some teams to handle.
The German Hasenhuttl Shows a Human Side
More optimism for his second full season in 2020/21, which was again Covid
affected and after 8 games we found ourselves top of the league for a day and
we stayed decent (losing just 2 out of 15) until just after New Year when we
beat Liverpool 1-0, which became memorable / infamous for Ralph crying on the
touchline at the end. At this point I
felt that we had the best manager that we could possibly have but the Liverpool
win signalled the wheels to come off and down the league we went with 6 defeats
in a row which stretched out to 1 point in 9 games. In the middle of the 6 defeats of course, we
literally ran out of players, getting demolished 9-0 again, this time by
Manchester United.
9-0, Again
Just as we began
looking over our shoulders, we did enough to scrape into 15th. It was alarming how we got into these big
slumps and the manager seemed powerless to do anything to reverse it. One thing had become obvious - the 4-2-2-2 only worked if the players were 100% at it. Any slacking, particularly when we didn't have the ball was a massive problem and the team was too strung out. In amongst our disastrous end to the season,
we played in the FA Cup Semi-Final against Leicester… only we didn’t play, we just
turned up and were shit as Ralph went experimental. The fact that he picked Nathan Redmond ahead of Che Adams in that game has always rankled since.
The FA Cup was there to be won that year and Leicester of course, beat
us in the semi-final and then won it.
Cracks looked like they were beginning to happen with the experienced
players with Ryan Bertrand never playing again after that semi-final.
This Particular Ralph Look Didn't Really Catch On
Ralph was backed again in 21/22 as the mitigating factors and lack of players
from the end of the previous season, meant most kept faith with him. Danny Ings moved on and with him, went most
of our goal threat and after a shaky start, we had a golden period in the
middle of the season, culminating in a fantastic 3-2 away win at Spurs. We had a settled team, everyone knew their
role and we were a match for anyone. Bizarrely, around that time Ralph
announced that he’d retire at the end of his contract in 2024. Could Ralph steer us to push on? No - from March onwards, we began phoning in
performances, suffered a 4-0 defeat at Villa, which was seen at the time as
just a bad day at the office. Following
that pretty soon was a 6-0 home defeat by Chelsea, which honestly could have
been double figures. With that, the team
selections went random, the press disappeared completely and with it went
Ralph’s bottle. His only answer appeared
to be to defend deep with nine players which led to tedious, “Puel-Ball” and no
improvement in the results. 15th again. Once again, we’d had a big slump but with no
mitigating factors this time (apart from being relatively safe) and absolutely
no sense that Ralph knew how to get us out of it and we were all just waiting
for the end of the season, just so it would all stop. The last three games were a pathetic 3-0
defeat at Brentford, a 2-1 home defeat by Liverpool Reserves and a dismal 4-1
defeat at Leicester. At this point, I
was thinking that I didn’t really care whether Ralph stayed or went – I certainly
didn’t feel that it would be the end of the world if he had gone.
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The New World 2022: Three of these no longer at Club.
He stayed however and if anything, became more powerful with the backroom staff changed in the summer and a significant amount of money spent by the new owners, Ralph wanted to make the team more solid (fair enough) and he tried to implement a system that had three central defenders and played a lot deeper. It was almost like he was insisting that the crap style of play implemented at the end of the previous season was going to work. He prioritised our work ‘against the ball’ which was all encompassing, mentioned in every single interview like an obsession. The trouble was that there was no discernible attacking plan and given the lack of natural goalscorers and creativity in the squad, it was desperately needed.
Pre-season games had looked worrying and any hope that the real games would be fine, disappeared in a dismal opening day defeat against Spurs. The pre-season plan was then abandoned after a game and a half of the new season as we were 2-0 down at home to Leeds and desperate, and we went 4-2-2-2 and pressed them high. We scored twice and nicked a point but the real point for me was that Ralph had spent all summer working on a plan and we were canning it already, in favour of throwing stuff at the wall and hoping that it worked. We we had got a point and it felt like a win, which I think we all revelled in it at the time, but looking back, I do feel that this was the point when I felt that I really wasn’t happy with the way things were going. Stories leaked that Ralph didn’t talk to the players, especially when things weren’t going well and whilst never really confirmed, it’s not great, especially when you have a squad of young players.
Since the Leeds game, we’ve tried about 4 formations, none of which worked particularly well, long ball football and a passive approach to games against poor sides, leading to 1-0 defeats where we basically did nothing all game. After a particularly bad home defeat by Everton, stories began leaking out that he was a dead man walking and it was only a matter of time. It took a few more weeks but by the end, the aforementioned Newcastle defeat, there didn’t seem to be any facet of the team that was working properly and that is always going to bring the axe down on the manager.
Yes, he has been let down in the recruitment department with very little in terms of serviceable creative players and also the lack of a genuine goalscorer to finish off any chances that we do create. The bravery which characterised his approach when things were going well, disappeared as we tried to be pragmatic but what we ended up with was long ball football and passive defending and we lost most of the games anyway. There’s nowhere to go when you reach that stage. Down came the curtain the day after the Newcastle game and relief all round for all parties.
Newcastle At Home, 1 Day to Go
I also feel that the fight got kicked out of him with all the knock-backs you get as manager of Southampton. Being manager of Southampton is fucking hard work. You are against it for all sorts of reasons - having smaller budgets, having less good players generally, having more than your share of bad VAR or refereeing decisions and further to travel and all that sort of stuff. Overall, it’s a tough gig. I questioned at the end of last season whether Ralph had the energy and a stomach for the fight anymore. I generally think that it had all got too much and he never really gave the impression this season of someone who was relishing the job and enjoying it. Announcing your retirement for a date in the not-too-distant future wasn’t perhaps the smartest thing to have done. If you’re looking at the finishing line yourself, how motivated are you going to be? The fact that you’re looking to the end kind of suggests you’ve had enough. As a manager you set the tone for the whole team and if you are lacking in energy or seemingly tired of all this shit, then you can’t be surprised if it translates.
I find it interesting that being called stubborn is something that seems to follow Ralph around. And some regards that is true because for a while he’s stubbornly refused to countenance any suggestion that the pressing football was too difficult to maintain for a club with our resources. He then decided to change that and this season in particular, there seems to have been a lack of stubbornness and we have been throwing different things at the wall on virtually a weekly basis in the hope that some of it works. I expect the club expected more than that for the £6 - £7 million a year that we were allegedly paying him.
There was however, never a question with Ralph that he wasn’t giving 100% to the club. I don’t feel that he was like a Koeman or a Pochettino, who always had their eye on their next move though maybe he would have, had he been more successful. I think that in time he will go down as one of our better managers that we have had, due to the outside factors he had to put up with – poor squad, no investment from Gao, no striker this season etc. I also think he was slightly unfortunate that one of our better periods in terms of consistent form, came when there were no crowds allowed, so fans didn’t really see it. You could argue of course that we didn’t get to see us lose 9-0 at Old Trafford!
He leaves the club with my best wishes and if he wants to jump back into the world of football management, I think he’ll be able to do that with his decent reputation still intact to the world outside Southampton and the fact that he is very highly regarded still, in Germany and Austria. Good luck to him and thanks for the four years. It is a real shame that he has ended up not leaving on his own terms but we had reached a point where it was very difficult to see how things were going to improve with Ralph in charge. There is really no way you could argue that it hadn’t reached a natural end.
Ralph leading the Celebration in His Final Win, Away at Bournemouth
All the best to Ralph Hasenhuttl – onwards and upwards for everyone.
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