FEATURE | What can Southampton expect from Will Still? | OneFootball

Southampton had been in no rush to find a new permanent manager after Ivan Jurić was sacked in April, following the club confirming their relegation back to the Championship. However, Will Still’s announcement that he intended to leave RC Lens at the end of the season has accelerated their process, and the English side have reportedly agreed a three-year deal.

The 32-year-old shot to international recognition during his first year as head coach of Stade de Reims when he took them on a 17-match unbeaten run in Ligue 1, while not yet having his coaching badges. A fact that meant the club were swallowing a €25,000 fine for every game he took charge of – a price they were very happy to pay.

It was a story that lent itself well to an anecdote that he was first inspired to get into coaching after playing the video game Football Manager. It created this image of him as a young maverick (or “spotty geek” in his words) who had wandered into the world of professional football and was learning his trade on the fly rather than through the more orthodox coaching routes.

It was a fun but inaccurate image, and it is one that the Anglo-Belgian manager has tried hard to distance himself from. And with good reason, as it completely ignored the decade of work in various coaching roles that he had put into football before being promoted to head coach of Reims midway through the 2022/23 season.

Trouble bubbles in the Champagne region

Three games before the end of the following season, Still would leave Reims by mutual consent. The 2023/24 campaign had started well, and by Christmas, the club was in the hunt for Europe; however, results would plummet after December, with Still picking up only 14 points before departing the Champagne club.

The dip in form can largely be seen as a reflection of the tensions between Still and the club hierarchy, with the Anglo-Belgian manager making frequent public criticisms of the transfer policy during the January window. In particular, the decision to sell Azor Matusiwa when the board had refused his pleas to strengthen the squad grated on him.

Much of the goodwill that Still had built up during his time at Reims was burned during an interview with The Athletic when he dropped an unsubtle come and get me plea to English clubs. “I want to come home,” he told them, “I’ve been abroad all my life, and I’ve been working in an environment that isn’t quite mine all my life. And I just want to come home.”

January strikes again?

It was clear to see why the expectation was that he would be moving to England after leaving Reims; however, last June, he shocked French football by taking over from Franck Haise as the Lens head coach. In his one season with Les Sang et Or, Still has been fully tested on his ability to adapt his team on the fly.

This season would reflect parts of his last year with Reims. For the first half of the campaign, Lens were flying high and looked to be challenging for Champions League football. However, a bleak financial situation in France means that it is a seller’s market, and Lens could not afford to turn down transfers for key players in January.

In the winter window, Still lost both of his first-choice centre-backs with Abdukodir Khusanov sold to Manchester City and Kevin Danso to Tottenham Hotspur, while Brice Samba, his goalkeeper and captain, was allowed to leave for Stade Rennais. It was no surprise that the upheaval saw Lens lose four in a row after the window closed.

Can Southampton avoid Will Still’s January blues?

But Still managed to rejig his team in their absence, he shifted away from a back four to a back three, which saw the club win six, draw one, and lose three to end the season. As he told Sky Sports, “You have to adapt [to the profile of players], you have to constantly adapt, the way you think, the way you set things up, and even if it’s minor changes, you have to be ready to adapt.”

Despite having lost three pillars of their defence, the club were able to finish the campaign with the third-best defensive record in the league, having only conceded 39 goals (just four more than Paris Saint-Germain). However, the midseason blip would ultimately cost Lens the chance of clinching a European place as they finished in 8th, five points behind Olympique Lyonnais in the Europa Conference League spot.

Regardless of this disappointment, what Still has done throughout his three seasons in Ligue 1 has been extremely impressive. He’s been at the vanguard of this new generation of managers coming through Ligue 1 who play an attractive and intelligent style of football, and while it’s a shame for France that his stay has come to an end, it’ll be exciting to see what he can build at a club which can hopefully avoid selling midway through the season.

GFFN | Nick Hartland