Nottingham Forest’s Taiwo Awoniyi’s goal held Southampton to a 1-0 home loss on Wednesday to keep the Saints bottom of the Premier League.
Nathan Jones has lost every league game as Saints manager since his appointment on 10th November from Luton Town.
“We as players know and understand their (Saints fans) frustrations,” said club captain James Ward-Prowse, after the Saints sixth loss in six league games. “They have to bear with us, it’s a different squad to the one we have had before.Embed from Getty Images
“We’re in early days with the manager and it’s going to take a bit of time. Obviously, time is not our friend, and we need to turn it around quickly.”
Southampton have only 12 points from their 18 Premier League games this season, with only three victories and only one of them coming from their Saint Mary’s Stadium.
Jones attempted to applaud Saints fans after the match but was met with boos from a toxic atmosphere.
After nearly two months in the job, Jones responded with, “Especially where I’ve come from (Luton Town), I can understand why they’re sceptical. You have to show real characteristics when you come through this.
“I’m from a Welsh mining community. Everything I’ve done in my life is a challenge. I’ve never gone into a place like I left at Luton where everything is on a high and on the up.”
Jones guided Luton to a Championship play-off spot last season and narrowly missed out on the final at Wembley to Huddersfield Town. In 133 games in charge of the Hatters, Jones won 54, drew 36 and lost 43, averaging 1.49 points per game.
Nottingham Forest climbed out of the relegation zone and into 15th with their victory over the Saints. Three months ago, the Reds sat bottom of the table themselves but backed their manager, Steve Cooper, who won last season’s Championship play-off final, with a new contract.
“There was probably a lot of talk about ours and Southampton’s league position before the game,” said Cooper after the match. “But we didn’t even mention it. It’s just about us getting better at who we want to be.”
Forest were promoted England’s top-flight for the first time 1998 last season. Having now played half their matches in 2022/23, they’ll need to battle it out against the Saints, Wolves, Everton, West Ham, Bournemouth, Leeds United and Leicester City in what looks to be a wide-open relegation fight.
“We have to make it (victory over Southampton) significant,” added Copper, who recently lost 3-0 to Manchester United and drew 1-1 with Chelsea. “We’re not going to look too far ahead. I know we’ve had (Manchester) United and Chelsea but if we’d won those games, we would have come out of the bottom three and we want to be out the bottom three.
“So now we are out, and the chance is an obvious one. Not just stay out of there but try and step up the league.”
Cooper will now prepare to face Blackpool in the FA Cup and Wolves in the EFL Cup quarter-final, before hosting Leicester in the league on 14th January.