Southampton Supporters Enjoy A Rare Happy Weekend Monday, 24th Mar 2025 09:15 There haven't been many enjoyable weekends for Saints supporters in this nightmare season, but the last few days was not one of them and the good news is that we are about to have another one. This Premier League season, might yet turn out to be the worst one of any club in the history of the Premier League, indeed I haven't checked the record books, but I think it will probably turn out to be the worst one in our history in terms of games and points won. With only two Premier League wins and three draws, in the League, there haven't been many weekends that we have not had them ruined by football results, discounting the wins in the cup, and the two games in the FA Cup which were hardly convincing with one win and a draw and taking into account just the league, it's been a series of nightmare weekends. Indeed since Ivan Juric took over in December we have truly had just the one, the win at Ipswich being the only time we have had a Sunday when we could bare to look at the football pages of the papers. Prior to that happy weekends football wise were hard to come by.
The draw at Fulham the weekend before Xmas gave us hope and at least we could enjoy out Xmas dinners with some optimism, 3 weeks earlier a draw at Brighton on a Friday evening again gave us hope, that coming 4 weeks after our first and only Premier League home win against Everton. That was on 2nd November and prior to that, in the previous 2 1/2 months of the Premier League season, we had just a single weekend of true happiness, the 1-1 draw with Ipswich in mid September and even that was tainted by their equaliser in the 97th minute. So if we include a couple of International breaks in the first half of the season, in around 30 weeks of football, we have had just 2 were we have been truly happy, another 3 were it's been ok, 3 for International breaks and another where we were out of the FA Cup so didn't play.
So this is only the 9th weekend out of 30, that we have not been hacked off at football and almost half of them have been because we haven't played, if we want to be picky we could include the FA Cup win over Swansea and make it 10. Even so that is far too many and perhaps highlights how bad this season has been, that we have to look to International breaks for a calm weekend. For those Southampton fans that don't travel away. it has been even worse, they have not celebrated even as much as a point at St Mary's since that win against Everton on November 2nd, that will be exactly 5 months ago by the time we play Crystal Palace on April 2nd, yes some of those fans would have seen the win against Swansea in the FA Cup, but there were only around 11,000 Saints supporters present at that game and a fair chunk of them were families who were taking a rare chance of a cheap day out at St Mary's and being able to get tickets.
But there is two ways that you can look at what has gone on, you can moan about it or you can look to the future. What has happened can not be changed, but the future can, things will hopefully different come next season, truth is they should be different come next Saturday, how Ivan Juric is still in a job after 11 defeats and just 1 win in 12 Premier League games beggars belief.
The finger can be pointed at a lack of leadership on the footballing side of the club, if we had had a director of football, then surely he would not have let the debacle under Russell Martin continue, perhaps counselled him about his stubbornness and need to adapt, if there had been someone there to do that, perhaps this season might have been better and Martin still in a job. Perhaps we would not have appointed Ivan Juric and surely we won't be keeping him past the summer, although as I said we should do it now. What has changed in this situation is that we now have an experienced Director of football, but at the moment he has not had time to put his stamp on the situation.
He should do that straight away by putting Juric on gardening leave and letting Simon Rusk perhaps assisted by Adam Lallana in charge for the rest of the season, it won't change much in terms of results, but it will certainly do so in terms of the spirit both in and around the club. So personally I look to the future, if only because it surely can't get worse than this season, but I do believe that we still have the main core of the side that won promotion last season and that we can compete for promotion again. As I have said we just need to concentrate on getting those 3 points that make sure we don't have the record of the worst season, then we can take stock of where we are. All Photos Via Reuters Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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