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Southampton V Fulham The Verdict

Saints fans arriving at the stadium hoped that they would see a performance by their team that they had just watched Leeds put out in the lunchtime kick off, sadly though that was not to be and we got the same gutless offering that has been mainly the case since the arrival of Nathan Jones.

The game against Fulham at St Mary's was not why we were relegated, it offered a lot of evidence of why though, a team that lacked leadership from the sidelines and a true leader on the pitch.

Fulham are no better than Saints, but what they have is organisation and leadership, they go out on the pitch knowing the job they have to do and how to do it.

We send out eleven players knowing that by then end of the game half of the 10 outfield players will have changed as the manager tries to find a solution to a problem he does not have the experience to solve.

The truth was it did not have to be like this, the depth of the squad was good enough to keep us up, indeed in his first games in charge many believed that Ruben Selles might be the answer, but that proved to be a false dawn, the players were good enough to keep us up, but they needed leadership.

The fact that it took this long to confirm relegation after gaining only 1 point in our last 8 games showed just how bad our collapse has been, we were in freefall and we could not stop it, if we had got just five more points in that run, it would still have been a poor return, but we would have had something to fight for in the final 4 games of the season.

As it was we had nothing, it was just eleven players going out on the pitch, some of whom I suspect wished that they had not been picked to start the game. You could count those with fight in their bellies on one hand.

I'm sad to blame the manager, after all he was plunged into a position he was not ready for and as an assistant was given the B team manager, but he did not help his cause, even in this game it was about looking to the past and not to the future.

His bench was full of those who were punch drunk, Elyounoussi, James Bree, Joe Aribo & Moussa Djenepo, where were the youngsters, why no Dominic Ballard or Tyler Dibden, someone who would excite the fans.

We went down with a whimper, no fight and no leadership both on and off the pitch.

But now we can move forward, relegation is done now, we can look to the future not the past, the one good thing from the weekend is that at least Sports Republic have been proactive in releasing a statement, some will sneer at this, but the recovery has to start somewhere and this statement was at least a line in the sand showing that they are aware of the problems.

We have a new Director of football who will hopefully spearhead the revamp, the job starts now.

Every season three clubs get relegated from the Premier League, someone has to go down, that doesn't mean that every club that makes the drop is rotten to the core, as I say someone has to go down.

This season it was going to be us and it was clear after the defeat on Monday at Nottingham Forest that the only thing that would save us in the final three games was an act of parliament decreeing that no team who's name began with South and ended in ampton could be relegated.

The rebuild can now begin and I think that although we will lose a lot of the squad, that will bring in money, more money than we will need, a core of the youngsters remaining and some senior players will form the basis of the squad, we just need to do what we failed to do last summer, sign a leader at the back and a proven goalscorer, although at Championship level we already have several who have scored in this division.

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