A couple of hours after Southampton’s fate was sealed, a manager talked about having the worst season in history. It wasn’t Ivan Juric, either, but Ruben Amorim, with his gift for smiling exaggeration. Although, earlier in the week, candid Croatian Juric had said: “I don't want it to be that we are the worst team in the history of Premier League.”
If everyone needs an ambition, it is a particularly undignified one. Relegated at record pace, mathematically gone with seven games to go, the drama in Southampton’s season rests on their attempts to equal or better Derby’s historic low of 11 points. It all seems to depend on a trip to Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester. They will go there without Juric, sacked for either hopeless results or an honest appraisal of their demise.
If demotion was sealed by defeat to Tottenham on Sunday, it merely confirmed the inevitable. Perhaps, given the struggles of promoted teams, Southampton were down when they beat Leeds in last season’s play-off final. They almost certainly were after their first nine games produced a lone point. The symbolic moment of their season came at the start: facing Newcastle’s 10 men, dominating possession, goalkeeper Alex McCarthy, ordered to do something he cannot, passed to Alexander Isak and Joelinton scored.
