Exclusive: Don Goodman names 'massive issue' facing Will Still at Southampton | OneFootball

Speaking exclusively to FLW, pundit Don Goodman has discussed the increasingly perilous-looking position of the Southampton head coach Will Still.

Sky Sports pundit Don Goodman has spoken exclusively to Football League World about the increasingly perilous-looking position of the Southampton head coach Will Still.

Southampton have had a dismal start to the 2025-26 season. With just two league wins from their opening ten matches, the Saints are languishing in 16th place in the Championship table, as close to the relegation places as they are to the play-off spots.

All of this is starting to put considerable pressure on head coach Will Still. Appointed upon Southampton's relegation from the Premier League, Still was charged with the task of returning the Saints to the top flight. But this has shown few signs of happening so far, and with almost a quarter of the League season now played, questions are starting to be asked about whether Still is the right man for the job.

"They need to start winning games" - Don Goodman lambasts Southampton's record in front of goal in 2025-26

With all of this in mind, Football League World have spoken exclusively to Sky Sports pundit Don Goodman on the subject of the growing impatience with Southampton's slow start to the season. "There's no doubt about it, it goes down as a mediocre start by Southampton," he told us, "And yes, I think we all would have expected them to do better. But when you take a look at Saturday's game, for instance, a 0-0 home draw against Swansea, it was one-way total domination and they created enough chances to have won two or three games and missed every single one of them."

Don feels that there is one particular issue that's hurting Southampton more than anything else this season: "So clearly goalscoring has been a massive issue, just 11 goals in ten games is nowhere near enough to get you anywhere near the top of the table. That has to change. There's only Coventry City over the course of the season that has generated a higher xG, and if you look at the data, in the xG table they would be second only to Coventry City."

And he feels that while their current troubles are resolvable, that resolution needs to present itself soon: "So there's a bit that they're doing right, but the things they're doing wrong are proving really, really costly. I'd be more worried about them if performance levels were worse than they actually are. Based on performance levels, you would expect them to start climbing the table, but they cannot afford to let the good teams at the top of the table too much of a head start. So they need to start winning games. Six draws out of ten and just two losses, but the draws are really hurtful.

Goals have been the big Southampton problem in 2025-26

With just one win away to bottom of the table Sheffield United since the opening weekend of the season, there's little question that Southampton's start to 2025-26 has not met the expectations of either the club's senior management or fans. Only three players - Adam Armstrong, Ross Stewart and Ryan Manning - have scored more than once for them in their opening ten league matches, and two of those players - Stewart and Manning - have only scored twice.

And it can hardly be said that they didn't invest in attacking options during the summer, with attacking midfielder Finn Azaz, wingers Tom Fellows and Leo Scienza and striker Damion Downs all arriving at St Mary's during the summer. But none of these players have scored a single goal for the Saints so far, and that is an extremely obvious problem.

This has been reflected in their results. Six draws and eleven goals in ten matches speaks volumes about a team that has failed to convert opportunities to win games, with the Swansea match being a particular case in point. Southampton ran up 21 shots on goal and an xG of 3.26 in this match, but only eight of those attempts were on target, and if a team can't put those chances away, they're going to drop points that should have been easily attainable.

It is clear that Southampton are defensively competent, this season. They've failed to concede more than a single goal in their last four consecutive League matches, and that is a platform that can be built upon. But those goals need to start flowing more smoothly again soon, or Will Still may find that his first managerial spell in England doesn't last anything like as long as he expected it to.