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LONDON. — Nathan Jones has been sacked by Southampton — three months into a three-and-a-half year contract — following defeat against 10-man Wolves, the club’s seventh in the eight league games for which he was manager.
The Saints sit bottom of the English Premier League football, three points adrift of rivals Bournemouth, and five points from safety.
Jones was appointed manager in November 2022, leaving Luton Town to move to St Mary’s after Ralph Hasenhüttl’s contract was terminated. Though they reached the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup, beating Manchester City in the last eight, and are still in the FA Cup, Southampton’s form this season has been miserable. Since the end of August, they have won only once in the league — against fellow strugglers Everton, who fired Frank Lampard a week later – and with supporters agitating and a succession of difficult games to come, the board have chosen to act.
Jones has drawn attention to himself, not just through his side’s poor results but with his press-conference proclamations. After last week’s 3-0 defeat at Brentford, he advised that, while Southampton manager, he had “compromised in terms of certain principles,” before adding that “Statistically, there weren’t many better than me around Europe in terms of aggression, clean sheets, defending the box, balls in the box, xG, all those sorts of things”.
Then, before the Wolves game, when asked if he had the ability to lead Southampton out of trouble, he responded by saying “I enjoy a challenge, I want to be the best version of me. I could have stayed in a mining community, been a PE teacher and had a nice life, married a nice Welsh girl, beautiful.
But I didn’t. I want to test myself on every level. And that’s nothing against Welsh women.”
Two of Southampton’s first-team coaches, Chris Cohen and Alan Sheehan, have also left the club, with first-team lead-coach, Rubén Sellés, taking charge of training and preparing the team for next weekend’s league game against Chelsea. — The Guardian.
Online Reporter