He took over a losing team that had several players who were beginning to lose hope that this might be their last season and needed to find a way to encourage them to believe differently.
Key decision maker Rasmus Ankersen’s long-standing interest in Jones, which dates back to the former’s Brentford days, overshadowed the strong support for Torino manager Ivan Juric among others, making Jones’ selection by the Southampton hierarchy not unanimous.
Then there were the fans, who were unimpressed with the hiring of a manager from a Championship team and did little to disguise it. Jones was taken aback by some of the hate he received from the stands before he had even made it halfway through his first Premier League home match.Jones has not been able to provide the outcomes that would have enabled him to get over those major setbacks.Supporters were relieved when his reign came to an end after just three months and fourteen games, as Southampton had to admit their risk in selecting him had not paid off.
In November, after firing Ralph Hasenhuttl, they looked to Jones. Though many of his players thought the Austrian was a fine coach, others felt they could not communicate to him as a manager.
Jones was seen as a bit of a breath of new air in that regard.
The Welshman and his coaching staff were well-liked by the team because they engaged with their players on a personal level.
The majority of the team also thought well of him as a coach.
However, the main issue was the discrepancy between what hewas attempting to coach and the players he could use to carry out that instruction.
Jones was given the task of imitating his excessive success and fashion sense at Luton.
They were excellent at pressing, getting into the box, protecting their own territory, being aggressive, getting shots on goal, and set pieces, as he recounted, possibly in an iconic way now, after the 3-0 thrashing at Brentford that nearly brought him to his knees.Jones was left torn, or “compromised,” as he put it after Brentford, since it was what he was brought in to deliver, a demand he was being reminded of from inside his own coaching team too. He realized fairly soon that he did not have what he needed for that assignment at Southampton.
Jones’s team was aware that they lacked sufficient athletic players for the job, and many of them were eager to adopt a different approach to their play. But in their opinion, there was a delay in any attempt to implement those modifications.
And in the end, there was no compromise reached, and Southampton’s most significant outcomes—one victory and seven losses in—reflected the absence of coherence in the strategy.Eight Premier League games for Jones.
Jones’s attempt to duplicate the anticipated defensive improvement was hampered by injury.
After the World Cup, Jones was prepared to switch goals and bring Alex McCarthy back.
The belief was that, at this point in his career, veteran McCarthy would be able to manage Southampton’s defense a little more skillfully than youthful prospect Gavin Bazunu.However, McCarthy injured his ankle right before he was supposed to return, and he hasn’t played for the squad since.
Due to his struggles with injuries, Armel Bella-Kotchap has occasionally been sidelined for five days straight from training.
Duje Caleta-Car made an appearance on the B team recently in an effort to get himself up to speed. He has been attempting to manage hamstring and other fitness issues.
The fitness of January addition Mislav Orsic has also been questioned.
Prior to all of that, Jones needed a few early victories to defuse the situation and allay his players’ suspicions about whether a manager selected from the Championship could maintain them in the Premier League.
They never did, though, and he lost hisfirst four league games before ultimately winning his fifth and only one against Everton. When the team’s performance did not support the tactics, the initial excitement surrounding his appointment gave way to a waning sense of faith in him.Another thing that worried people was that he was occasionally regarded as being overly emotional in his response to sports. It was claimed that following one specific game, he looked upset.
That was made more evident by his post-match reaction to the Brentford loss, and in retrospect, Jones might feel some remorse for some of his media appearances.
That Brentford incident featured Romeo Lavia, a gifted midfielder, being played down after his substitution sparked anti-Jones shouts. It also prompted questions about how he handled discussing a young player in public.
Sadly for Jones, there was much less surprise when the axe fell on Sunday morning shortly before 10am because of Southampton’s performance and the unavoidable criticism in the stands.
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