It turns out it wasn’t so hard after all. Southampton stopped giving the ball away in their own half, adopted an approach rooted in expediency and kept their second clean sheet of the campaign. Salvation remains a long way distant but a point, only the second they have taken away from home, means there is at least something to build on in the post-Russell Martin era.
Southampton’s new coach, Ivan Juric, who signed an 18-month contract on Friday, was in the stand at Craven Cottage, peering through the bitter rain driving down the Thames as Simon Rusk conducted affairs from the dugout. What he oversaw was 90 minutes of very little, which from a Southampton point of view must have come as a welcome change. Even the arrival, for his league debut, of the Fulham winger Martial Godo, for which everybody has been waiting, failed to bring anything approaching resolution.
“The role of interim manager when things haven’t worked out is to quickly assess where the group is at physically, emotionally, mentally and tactically and deliver a way of being in the short term,” Rusk said. “Their endeavour and concentration levels were excellent and hopefully that can give us a solid platform.”
Juric developed a fine reputation in his three years at Torino, but a 12-game stint at Roma this season perhaps hints at the major reason he has been appointed: there was no compensation to be paid. Southampton had held talks with their former assistant coach Danny Röhl but springing him from his contract at Sheffield Wednesday would have been costly.
It’s not entirely clear what Juric gains from the situation. A fan of heavy metal, he has graduated from his teenage love of Metallica and Megadeth to Obituary and Carcass; in the context of Southampton’s season, the gags are too obvious to be worth making. The official line is that he does not take over team affairs until Monday, and Rusk said that in the brief telephone conversation he had with Juric they didn’t discuss tactics, but it was notable that the 3-4-2-1 shape – just about the only formation Southampton had not tried this season – is what Juric preferred at Torino and Roma.
The Croatian may speak of being optimistic and wanting to make the team press harder and be more aggressive, but he’s in serious danger of what might be termed the Jan Siewert Trap. Even if he can improve performances, it would require something miraculous for Southampton to avoid relegation which, almost inevitably, means lost confidence and diminished faith in him.
Siewert, having been appointed in January 2019 to guide Huddersfield through their relegation, was sacked three games into the following season. Plenty of teams have believed there was wisdom in letting a new manager get a close-up view of the squad as they went down, the better to lead their promotion push the following season, only to find that rebirth strangled by negativity.
But there were promising signs here. At the very least, Southampton were not the pushovers they had become. Once Aaron Ramsdale, wearing a modified glove to protect his fractured finger, had tipped an early Alex Iwobi chip over the bar, it was a first half of very little incident. The main interest was seeing just how long Ramsdale could take over a goal-kick without incurring the wrath of the referee, Tim Robinson. But given his namesake once spent a tour of Pakistan batting with Bill Athey, perhaps patience goes with the title.
“Of course we respect them,” said Marco Silva, “but this is the type of game we have to win at home. The game was always under control but our decision-making has to be much better. Players are human beings and sometimes they don’t make the best decisions.”
- Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhone or the Google Play store on Android by searching for 'The Guardian'.
- If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you’re on the most recent version.
- In the Guardian app, tap the Menu button at the bottom right, then go to Settings (the gear icon), then Notifications.
- Turn on sport notifications.
Fulham began the weekend eighth having lost only four times in the league yet, well as they are playing, there is an odd sense that it wouldn’t have taken much for their league position to be even better. They have led against Tottenham, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and Aston Villa without winning. In a different way, this too, as Silva said, felt like a “missed opportunity”.
The introduction of Raúl Jiménez and Adama Traoré to a much-changed side on the hour brought an uptick in their threat, Harry Wilson drawing a remarkable reflex save from Ramsdale as he met a Traoré cross with a firm volley at the back post.
But this was a day for Rusk, a newly pragmatic Southampton and the glory of nothingness.
