Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan says he does not think that “sensible” Ruben Selles should get the full-time Southampton job next season.
The Spaniard joined Saints last summer as first team lead coach to assist Ralph Hasenhuttl and kept his job after the manager was sacked and replaced by Nathan Jones last November.
When Jones too was sacked in February following a run of poor results, Selles was handed the reins until the end of the season, but he couldn’t manage to keep the club in the Premier League, losing nine of his 14 league matches before relegation was confirmed on Saturday with a 2-0 defeat against Fulham.
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The 39-year-old’s contract expires at St Mary’s at the end of the season, though Selles himself has already expressed a desire to keep his job into next season and attempt to lead the club back into the top-flight from the Championship.
A lot of Southampton fans would be keen for a fresh approach, with many hoping that a summer exodus of players and a new manager at the helm would give them the reset needed to tackle life in the second tier.
And former Palace owner Jordan agrees, saying on Tuesday morning on talkSPORT that Selles was “not the answer” to the club’s problems and that a change needed to be made ahead at the top of the new season.
He said: “Should he [Selles] go, or should he be given an opportunity to continue to manage them in the Championship? And my answer probably would be no.
“I think he talks a very good game. I think there may be a possibility that he will become a manager at a later stage in his development, but I don’t think he’s the antidote to Southampton’s particular ails at this moment in time. I think he interviews well, I think when you listen to him on the side of the pitch with Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher, he sounds sensible. They all came away thinking ‘he sounds like a sensible lad’. But it’s one thing being able to say something and it’s another thing being able to execute it.
“I realised that picking up from what he picked up from Nathan Jones, the problem for Southampton was a decision about Nathan Jones. Not because Nathan Jones isn’t a decent manager, but he was out of his depth for this particular challenge. So when they decided to fire Ralph Hasenhuttl – and there’s also people looking around now going ‘well hang on a second, was that the right decision?’.
“Let’s get it right there. He was teetering on the brink of Southampton for several years, Hasenhuttl, and the fans themselves, or a significant portion of them will probably forget that and have plausible deniability, but they wanted Hasenhuttl to be gone.
“What they didn’t necessarily want was somebody like Nathan Jones that came in, that was full of endeavour, but lacking the idea or the communication skills to work with so called Premier League players in a Premier League experience. So Ruben Selles coming in and being aesthetically and audibly pleasing is not the answer because they’ve got to get back now they’ve got to get back quick.”
But by no means does the blame sit solely on Selles’ shoulders for what has been a disastrous season for Southampton. Fingers are also being pointed at club owners Sport Republic, whose recruitment in both the summer and winter transfer windows has come under scrutiny, together with their decisions over the club’s manager during the campaign.
The club spent more than £150million on new signings across the campaign, though the majority of these were players under the age of 21 with little to no top-flight experience. Those that were allowed to leave included veteran campaigners such as Fraser Forster, Oriol Romeu and Nathan Redmond, with that seniority not replaced in the dressing room.
“[Relegation] is the making of the board,” Jordan added. “We know this. Success is an orphan in football and failure has many fathers. But you can be clear that if the team had won something, it would be just down to the manager and the players and if the team loses something, it’s down to everybody including the boardroom.
“But in this instance, they had a chance to rectify it. They made a transfer policy decision in the summer to buy younger players and not get the balance right between younger and more experienced players. They didn’t have enough strength in the dressing room to be able to supplement it with more younger players.
“Then they compounded it by taking Hasenhuttl out and putting them with a youngish manager [Jones] in terms of his experience. Great at Luton, stunk the place out at Stoke, great at Luton, dreadful at Southampton. And then they found themselves in a situation where they couldn’t react because nobody wanted the job.”
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