Sam Tighe: How Southampton rode the five stages of grief to promotion

The story of Saints' looping arc over the course of a long, gruelling season.

Sam Tighe is a freelance writer and broadcaster, and friend of NTT20. For six years, he was a tactics writer for Southampton FC’s match day programme.

Life in the Championship as a freshly relegated club is incredibly complex. You’re automatically viewed as one of the strongest in the division, one of the favourites to go up, and if football were played on paper, that would likely be fair.

But the reality is often so different. It’s a rollercoaster, a slog, inclusive of epic highs and trying lows. Often, these teams start the season disorientated, still somewhat perplexed as to how they even got here in the first place. You might lose half of your players in August and be forced to forge an entirely new identity by October – and if you don’t, you’re left trailing in the wake of others.

Countless clubs have experienced this and it’s very, very tricky to navigate. On Sunday, Southampton became the latest to do so successfully, lowering the curtain on a truly wild single season in England’s second tier by beating Leeds United 1-0 at Wembley.

Their road to that stage curved and bent in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, and in mapping out their 49-game journey, it follows the traditional 5 stages of grief – hereby rebranded as the 5 stages of promotion.

Here’s how Southampton moved through the steps.

DENIAL

Remember the team that Southampton rolled out at Hillsborough for the opening game of the 2023/24 Championship season? It was ridiculous.

James Ward-Prowse in midfield with Carlos Alcaraz and Will Smallbone; Nathan Tella on the wing, complementing Adam Armstrong up front; Kyle Walker-Peters dominating a flank single-handedly; and Ché Adams and Roméo Lavia sat on the bench if needed (Ché was).

Of course, not all of these names stuck around. They never do. A relegated team’s opening XI never looks the same as the one that takes to the field in September. But in playing JWP and Tella, Saints were effectively in denial, grasping tightly onto those wafer-thin straws, hoping beyond hope that their star academy products would lead them back to the big time.

They didn’t. They next shared a pitch six months later, in a Europa League quarter-final between West Ham and Bayer Leverkusen. Lavia went to Chelsea and Alcaraz opted for Juventus in January, dulling the star-studded edge that Southampton had threatened to have when the campaign began.

ANGER

September was, for the most part, an absolute horror show for a Southampton side shorn of star talent and still adapting to Russell Martin’s radically different style of play. Four straight losses followed the closure of the transfer window, two of which were real thumpers. 

The 5-0 defeat to Sunderland was truly alarming, as was the 4-1 loss to Leicester City, with both games showcasing two clear issues: a) some of the worst set-piece tactics in the division (how do you concede from an attacking corner more than once in a month?), and b) an inability to play out from the back without shooting themselves in the foot.

It left Saints dwindling in 15th place with a hair-raising goal difference of -7 – the fourth-worst in the Championship. They briefly occupied a ludicrously contradictory position in football by averaging more possession per game than any other team in the league, but having conceded the most goals. Even worse, they were already 11 points off Ipswich Town in second, who, along with Leicester, were setting a ferocious pace at the top of the division.

With the style imprinting poorly, Martin faced real fan wrath and endured some calls for his head. Anger flowed and it became clear that a turn in fortunes was needed – and fast.

BARGAINING

It came, somewhat ironically, against Leeds United. Southampton flew out of the traps and were 3-0 up after 35 minutes; Adam Armstrong put on a finishing clinic as Walker-Peters and Kamaldeen Sulemana tore up the flanks. The game ended 3-1 and began a 22-match unbeaten streak in the league, from the end of September all the way to mid-February.

It wasn’t necessarily that they looked invincible – a loss would eventually come and no one got so carried away as to believe otherwise. But they looked as though they had started to come to terms with their position. No longer was this a team whose heads dropped when things went askew; instead, the players dug deeper, fought harder and scored an almighty amount of late goals to rescue points and wins. 

Those, alongside some thumpings dished out to the likes of Blackburn Rovers, Swansea City and Sheffield Wednesday, cemented belief that Russell Martin’s men could win in multiple game states, and cemented the determination to do so. If Southampton were down a goal, the game was never over – a goal could come from any direction. Even goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu practically scored at Preston North End, although Opta eventually ruled it an own goal.

---

---

DEPRESSION

April 20, 2024. A grim day at the Cardiff City Stadium. Proper grim.

The unbeaten streak had ended two months before, but Southampton were approaching the run-in in fine fettle regardless: nine points from fixtures against Coventry City, Watford and Preston led them to South Wales… where they melted in the sun.

Every part of it was agonising. Saints missed enough chances to win the game by five goals, then they not only let the lead slip, but conceded a 95th-minute strike that ending their hopes of automatic promotion. Stuart Armstrong, so influential over the course of the season, was stretchered off the pitch late on. 

F***. It was gone. 

Martin took it badly. He had become more and more emotional as the season had worn on – as the pressure had ramped up – and the combination of that loss and the serious injury to his good friend, Stu, tipped him over the edge. His usual calm, steadfast demeanour was replaced by one that could only be described as morose.

That may well have been the lowest point of Southampton’s season. Lower than losing 5-0 some 300 miles away at Sunderland; lower than the 5-0 defeat to Leicester that would come three days later; lower than the moment Ward-Prowse held up a West Ham shirt back in August – lower than all of it.

Few fans genuinely believed that this team, who played dazzling football but struggled to kill off teams and see out games, had the guts to win the play-offs. The loss consequently felt terminal, and the depression that crept in was all-consuming.

Questions were asked of the squad’s character; of the forwards’ finishing; of the team’s ability to function without Flynn Downes; of Martin’s substitutions and lack of tactical flexibility. Fans mourned Stu and, in some quarters, mourned a lost season. 

ACCEPTANCE

Glass-half-full fans will tell you that nightmare in Cardiff was actually a blessing in disguise. Looking back on it now, they may have a fair point.

With Southampton’s play-off fate sealed, they had three weeks to accept and mentally process the challenge ahead. That’s two weeks more than Leeds, whose automatic promotion hopes were still alive head into the final day of the regular season. That the two clashed at Elland Road on that final day was curious and added an intriguing layer to Southampton’s gameplan in particular: aware that if they were to make the play-off final, they would likely play Leeds again, just how much was Martin willing to give away tactically?

It led to something a little different, perhaps a little experimental, with Martin essentially tying his fate to club captain Jack Stephens playing a hybrid left-back/left-centre-back role. All season long, he had tried to fit him into the team in various ways (largely failing) and this was a final stab at something workable, pushing it through because he knew that Stephens’ mentality and leadership would be vital in the play-offs.

It worked. Southampton won 2-1 and looked good. Then came the final at Wembley and Martin used something similar. And it worked again.

No Championship team averaged more possession per game (62.3%) over the course of the season, yet against Leeds they had just 43% possession in each game. There was an acceptance from Martin that Southampton needed to prioritise being harder to beat than playing free-flowing football, and an acceptance that the way to achieve that was to compromise heavily on his principles.

It completed a fine, looping character arc for both manager and team over the course of a long, gruelling season, in which, fittingly, they played both the first and last match of the 2023/24 campaign. Southampton started it as if stumbling through fog, confused as to how they got here. They ended it as a battle-hardened, streetsmart group fully deserving of their prize.

The journey along the way? A lot like the 5 stages of grief.