How Southampton FC once achieved feat recently matched by Ipswich Town | OneFootball

How Southampton FC once achieved back-to-back promotions from League One to the Premier League, a feat recently matched by Ipswich Town

When Ipswich Town secured promotion to the Premier League at the end of the 2023-24 season, they became just one of four clubs to have achieved back-to-back promotions to the top division in English football since the formation of the Premier League in 1992. You have to go back more than a decade to find the previous club to accomplish the same feat. That club was Southampton. The year was 2012. This is how they did it.

Southampton's fall from grace had been unceremonious. In 2005, under manager Harry Redknapp, the Saints finished bottom of the Premier League with 32 points and were relegated alongside Norwich City and Crystal Palace. A weak 2-1 defeat at St Mary's on the final day of the season against an under-strength Manchester United team sealed their fate.

Southampton: A club on the brink

Fast-forward four years to 2009, and you would have found a club on the brink of bankruptcy and in the hands of the administrators. Penniless, they were heading down to the third tier of English football for the first time in 50 years and with a 10-point deduction.

Few names are sung as loudly at St Mary's these days as that of Markus Liebherr. The German-born Swiss business owner bought the club at its lowest ebb, and he has never been forgotten by the fans. Nicola Cortese, an Italian business owner, was brought in by Liebherr to run the club's business interests on his behalf. Cortese moved swiftly, sacking the hapless Mark Wotte and appointing Alan Pardew as the new first-team manager.

Southampton's goal machine

Pardew's first signing in August 2009 was Rickie Lambert for around £1 million from Bristol Rovers, as reported by ESPN. It turned out to be a shrewd signing. Lambert scored 30 goals in the league and added three more en-route to winning the Johnstone's Paint Trophy at Wembley. Sadly, the -10 point handicap was too much of a gap to bridge and Southampton missed out on the play-offs, finishing seventh.

At the start of the 2010/11 season, Pardew added Jose Fonte to the ranks. Fonte, an elegant and composed Portuguese centre-back, joined the Saints from Crystal Palace, who needed to sell him for financial reasons, as he explained to The Daily Echo: “Alan Pardew wanted me, in League One, so it was a difficult decision, but Nicola Cortese and Alan Pardew managed to convince me.

"I saw the players that we had, the quality in the squad, and it ended up being the best decision of my life.

“When you look back, and you see two promotions, Wembley – we won the JPT, amazing – then we went on and went into European competitions. It’s just special."

There's only one Markus Liebherr

Sadly, Markus Liebherr died from a heart attack in August 2010. His death at the age of 62 came as a shock to Southampton fans. However, Liebherr had made provisions to secure the future of the club in the event of his passing and a representative of the Liebherr family remains on the board to this day.

In addition to Fonte, Dean Hammond, a 25-year-old combative midfielder signed from Colchester, joined forces in the centre of the park with the equally aggressive Frenchman, Morgan Schneiderlin. After a slow start, which saw Alan Pardew sacked as manager, Nigel Adkins was appointed and Southampton's fortunes began to turn for the better.

Products of the academy make an impact

Two products of Southampton's academy, Alex Oxlade Chamberlain and Adam Lallana, contributed 17 goals between them as Saints climbed the table. By the end of November 2010, they were in the play-off positions; in March, they were second.

Adam Lallana (C) - Southampton celebrates scoring his teams fourth goal with Jack Cork (L) and Dan Harding

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Promotion to the Championship was effectively secured with a win away at Plymouth in Southampton's penultimate match of the season. The Saints won nine out of 10 games in the run-in and finished with 92 points, three less than champions Brighton and Hove Albion.

Southampton strengthened again in the summer transfer window. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain left for Arsenal for a fee of around £15million, as per BBC Sport, which provided the funds to sign Billy Sharp from Doncaster Rovers and Jack Cork from Chelsea on a four-year deal.

Back-to-back promotion achievement for Southampton

Nigel Adkins' men started the season just as well as they had finished the last, winning four in a row to propel themselves to the summit. Retaining Lambert and keeping a strong group together for the Championship campaign proved pivotal.

Remaining in the top two for the entire season, Saints sealed back-to-back promotions on the final day of the season with a 4-0 hammering of Coventry City at St Mary's.

A three-year journey that started when the late Markus Liebherr saved the club from the brink in 2009 had taken the club back to the Premier League, where they would remain for the next eleven seasons, earning European football in 2016/17.

The Saints built smartly in the summer, adding Maya Yoshida, Jay Rodriguez, Steven Davis, Nathaniel Clyne, and Gaston Ramirez to the squad. The rest, as they say, is history.

Whilst Southampton's latest promotion to the Premier League hasn't lasted as long as the last, going up alongside Ipswich, who had gone on the same journey as Southampton did between 2010 and 2012, brought back some nice memories and a reason to tell a story worth telling about Adkins' team.