By Nick Mabey.
Russell Martin’s unsurprising sacking as our manager this week gave me no pleasure at all. Optimism has always been a superpower/Achilles heel for me and I really wanted Martin to turn things round at Saints. I’ve been fighting myself about this for most of the season, trying to convince anyone who would listen that things would end well and if not the Championship would be a lot of fun, while at the same time turning a blind eye to signs of what might end up being a record breaking season – and not in a good way. It’s left me with a feeling of sad inevitability.
Dealing with inevitability first. For most of this season we’ve been competitive in games and, with a little luck, could be in a better place. However, the last three games, a self-induced capitulation hosting Chelsea, a blunt, pedestrian defeat at Villa and finally an embarrassing thrashing at home to Spurs, ended up severing the fragile thread by which Martin’s tenure was hanging. These performances, piled on top of a depressing set of results, meant the swift post-match dismissal was perhaps the least surprising news of the weekend.
The Tottenham game was the first time I noticed the fans turning against the manager in large numbers. The inept display on the pitch brought a strong message from the fans. “We want Martin out” was delivered by the board even though “you’re getting sacked in the morning” proved to be an under-estimation of how ruthless the owners could be. By the time I got home and watched Martin’s sombre post-match interview, the man himself was history.
It’s hard to make a case for any other decision and I’ll not try to do that. But I found some of the euphoria and righteous triumphalism at Martin’s sacking to be embarrassing and, I think, misplaced. There’s a cultural norm in football that the manager must go, but complex problems rarely get resolved with simple solutions and I’m still not convinced that it’s the right choice. I know I’ll get jumped on for saying that, and I completely accept the logic and inevitability of the decision. I guess we’ll never know now and it just makes me sad. Why?
Firstly, Sunday 26th May 2024 ranks in my top five favourite days as a Saints fan. It is so recent I can still see it, hear it, feel it in my bones. Beating Leeds in the Championship play off was relatively straightforward but the day itself was still magic. Something about having promotion decided in such a monumental way is really special. (Just ask Man City fans about 1999 and Gillingham – many talk about this more fondly then any of their recent triumphs). And Russell Martin was a big part of making that happen.
Secondly, when I started watching Saints were we renowned for long tenure managers. Bates, McMenemy and Nicholl managed the club for 36 years between them. Since Chris Nicholl, we have had 32 managers in 33 seasons, which I’d like to hear anyone try and convince me is a good thing. I know this includes six caretakers, and I appreciate some were poached after a successful spell with Saints (Hoddle, Pochettino and Koeman come to mind), but it’s not a great advert for sustainable success, leadership decision making or fan mental health.
And finally I am sad because Russell Martin seems to me to be a decent human being trying to do his best to bring joy to the lives of people like me. I’ve never met the guy, so accept I could be misreading him, but my memory of him as a player and my experience of him managing my team have lead me to warm to him and I wish him well.
For us the pantomime continues. We are now in the chaotic bun fight of rewriting recent history to suit our narrative while contemplating myriad social-media-inspired candidates for the job, which range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Meantime, the football continues like a relentless steam train that can’t be stopped, slowed down or knocked off course.
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