Southampton Football Club face the prospect of suffering relegation to the Championship just two seasons after their highest ever Premier League finish.
With just two games to go, the club are out of the bottom three on goal difference with a trip to Swansea City to come before they welcome the Premier League champions, Manchester City on the final day.
The Saints have won just six of their 36 league games this term in what has been a largely surprising season for everyone associated with the club.
Claude Puel guided the Saints to an 8th place finish last season as well as an EFL Cup final but ultimately lost his job before being hired by Leicester City midway through the current campaign.
The club appointed Argentine manager Mauricio Pellegrino as his replacement last summer, despite him having only managed for short spells at lower placed teams in Spain and Argentina.
It was an uncharacteristically quiet transfer window in the summer, as Jay Rodriguez was sold to West Brom while defenders Wesley Hoedt and Jan Bednarek were brought in alongside exciting midfielder Mario Lemina from Juventus.
The situation wasn’t helped with the problems around Dutch defender Virgil Van Dijk, who was illegally approached by Liverpool some months before, which meant that he stayed at the club despite his wishes to depart.
In my opinion, the club would have just been much better to offload the defender last summer because it caused a lot of uncertainty and extra problems for Pellegrino in his first season at the helm.
The club were handed a fair fixture schedule in the opening periods of the season, as they faced just one of the ‘Big Six’ in their opening 11 matches.
The season began with a visit from Paul Clement’s Swansea City on the opening day at St Mary’s. From my perspective, you could tell that the Swansea game was a sign of things to come with Saints dominating possession but failing to do much with it, playing some conservative football as they drew 0-0.
A narrow 3-2 win over West Ham followed thanks to a late Charlie Austin penalty as Pellegrino registered his first Saints win.
A loss to Wolves followed in the Carabao Cup, with a much-changed Saints side fielded as Pellegrino highlighted his intentions for the competition before another bore draw away at promoted Huddersfield Town in the Premier League
Things went from bad to worse for the club as they were well beaten by Watford 2-0 at home and it was clear for everyone to see that something wasn’t right and even at that early stage, Pellegrino looked out of his depth.
A run of close encounters came next; a 1-0 win at Crystal Palace, a 1-0 defeat to Manchester United and a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Stoke City to leave the club with a mixed start to the new season.
The Saints had a taste of European football last season and they were beating the likes of Inter Milan and Sparta Prague at St Mary’s, but these days seemed a long way in the past.
October was set to be a key month for the club and they claimed only five points out of three games against Newcastle, West Brom and Brighton as the concerns over the manager loosened a little.
Losses to Burnley, Liverpool and Manchester City followed in November while they also played Everton off the park, claiming a 4-1 win at St Mary’s to leave them six points clear of the drop zone with 14 games played.
European qualification looked a long way off for the club at this point as, on a number of occasions, they failed to see the job through and didn’t close games out.
December was set to be another vital month but Saints struggled throughout, claiming just three points from seven games to leave the team looking over their shoulders, just two points above the bottom three.
The start of the new year began poorly, with a defeat to Crystal Palace just days after Van Dijk was sold to Liverpool for £75m.
In my opinion, at this stage of the campaign, it was clearly going to be a long and hard season which involved an inevitable relegation battle. Having been in the Europa League the previous season, Saints’ fall from grace was difficult to comprehend.
Three draws and a loss came in January, as well as two FA Cup wins over Fulham and Watford.
Nothing was changing in the way the team were playing throughout February and March in the league as just one win came about, leaving the club in all sorts of trouble, two points adrift of safety with seven games left to go.
Just two days after the Newcastle game in March, the club decided to sack Pellegrino and bring in Mark Hughes which, from my point of view, was far too late and should have been done much earlier in the season.
From my perspective, the FA Cup run was a nice distraction but was one which hampered the league form in the two months as the club failed to really get any sort of motivation despite qualifying for the FA Cup semi-finals.
Two 3-2 losses to Chelsea and Arsenal respectively kicked off April and in my opinion, the team were playing much better but the results still weren’t coming their way, as they sat five points adrift in the drop zone with just five left to play.
Ahead of the FA Cup semi-final, the Saints travelled to Leicester and picked up a 0-0 draw in what was arguably an important point, but an opportunity wasted given the poor display from the hosts.
An FA Cup semi-final which wasn’t of much significance in the grand scheme of things came next for Hughes’ side against Chelsea, as they lost 2-0 at Wembley.
Southampton returned to St Mary’s for their next game as they faced a critical moment in their season, welcoming Bournemouth and picking up a crucial three points thanks to Dusan Tadic’s brace.
This left them one point from safety with just three games remaining. The Saints then picked up a 1-1 draw at Everton despite being 1-0 up thanks to a Nathan Redmond header until the 96th minute, as Tom Davies netted an equaliser.
The result means that a win against Swansea on Tuesday night should be enough to secure their Premier League status. However, anything aside from a win and the Saints could face the inevitable consequence of relegation.
Nobody could have expected the club to be in this sort of situation at this stage of the season but the bottom line is that they simply haven’t picked up enough points when it has mattered and they now face a real battle to stay in the division.
Saints still face the prospect of trips to the likes of Shrewbsury Town if they fail to resolve their current situation, just over a year after trips to stadiums such as San Siro in the Europa League.
In my opinion, the team need to pick up a minimum of three points from their remaining two matches to retain their Premier League status for next season and to stop the prospect of another summer exodus.
Since returning to the Premier League, Saints have always been forced to sell their best players and it appears as though the mass sales have finally caught up with them.
It remains to be seen if the club will still be in the league next season but it certainly feels a long way away from those European nights at St Mary’s in the past couple of seasons.
