Southampton’s turnaround since Tonda Eckert’s promotion to first-team head coach in November has been nothing short of brilliant.
Eckert boasts one of the highest win rates of any Saints manager to take charge of over 25 games, and is inspiring the club towards promotion, despite looking like a relegation contender under previous manager Will Still.
A seven-game winless run in the late stages of December and early January has been separated by two spells of brilliance, but the Southampton side that has emerged from the other side is a polar opposite.
Better defensively, more consistent and tactically versatile – you name it, Tonda is solving it.
The interim tenure, during which Tonda Eckert first took charge, was encouraging.
In the first seven games of life without Will Still, Eckert’s Saints won six, scoring 21 goals in the process. The players looked revitalised, with the ability to score past any team.
Despite the upturn in form, many issues stayed apparent – especially in the eight league games that followed – Eckert’s side could not maintain a performance throughout ninety minutes.
A big part of this was down to a number of questionable in-game decisions from a young manager learning on the job.
Eckert’s first senior managerial role, after various academy jobs and assistant roles, at the age of just 32 (now 33), was never going to be an absolute walk in the park.
But getting a group of players onside, which Eckert’s predecessor Will Still failed to achieve, has been an extremely important asset in his Southampton tenure.
Despite time in a long and winding season not being a virtue, Eckert did the best with what he had. A team that was forced to rely on 5’8’’ Adam Armstrong as a hold-up player up front, and liability Gavin Bazunu between the sticks, the winter transfer window was going to be important.
Sporting Director Johannes Spors made some smart transfer decisions in the summer of 2025, but failing to sign a goalkeeper or striker has cost them a potential place in the automatic spots.
This was rightly fixed in January 2025, and a window that many Saints fans saw as weakening the squad, in fact, set them up for the 14-game unbeaten run that they find themselves on now.
The signings of Cyle Larin and Daniel Peretz have been the springboard to a play-off push for Southampton and Tonda Eckert.
Since Adam Armstrong’s departure, one of Larin or Ross Stewart has started every game. Various formations have been utilised, but the main change to a 4-2-3-1 has made a team full of great players a good watch.
Performances have been sustained throughout ninety minutes, and recent performances in games that they were not expected to win, against Coventry and Fulham, have showcased how much the Saints squad has bought into Eckert’s ideas.
From Southampton fans berating their team as ‘not fit to wear the shirt’, in Will Still’s final game, where the club sat 21st in the Championship, to being fully behind them just five months later, it’s been a remarkable turnaround.
“Our standards were not high enough,” said Spors, Southampton’s Sporting Director, about life before Eckert. “That’s not a surprise when you get relegated as the second-worst team in Premier League history. Tonda was just able to raise the standards quickly.”
It would take a dramatic turn of events for the Saints to miss out on the play-offs now, and the club has finally rallied together after a disappointing 18 months.
Eckert has seemingly done enough to warrant another season in charge. The question is: can he guide Southampton back to the promised land?
