2 pros and 2 cons to Southampton FC appointing Will Still instead of Danny Rohl | OneFootball

With Southampton said to have narrowed their managerial search to Danny Rohl and Will Still, FLW weigh up the pros and cons of the latter.

Southampton have a busy summer ahead with a new manager required following the sackings of both Russell Martin and Ivan Juric this season as Saints prepare themselves for another campaign back down in the Championship.

The Saints have managed to narrowly avoid being statistically the worst team in Premier League history, having collected a solitary point more from their 37 games than the current record holders

Derby County, who only earned 11 points in their 2007/08 top-flight campaign.

Simon Rusk is in interim charge of the south coast outfit for a second time this season, but it has been reported that they have narrowed their managerial search to Sheffield Wednesday boss Danny Rohl and Lens’ English-Belgian coach Will Still.

With that, Football League World has weighed a couple of pros and a couple of cons of the potential appointment of Still as Southampton seek an immediate return to the Premier League, once again.

Pros

Will Still’s ability to develop young players

One thing that will be of major interest to Southampton is the impressive development of young talent that Will Still has shown in his coaching career, which is something that has been of paramount importance for Saints’ ownership group, Sport Republic.

Perhaps the most notable example of this would be former Arsenal striker Folarin Balogun, who shone under Still for Stade de Reims during the 2022/23 campaign and earned himself a big-money move to Monaco.

Southampton may well see the departure of the likes of Tyler Dibling and Mateus Fernandes, but the young talent is not limited to those two and getting the best out of those sorts of players is something that Still should be capable of.

Will Still’s impressive tactical pragmatism

Whilst an archetypal modern-day coach in terms of a desire for cohesive patterns of play and an overarching progressive style of football, Still has shown a flexibility and versatility to adapt his style – perhaps best shown at Lens, which suggests an ability to learn and develop himself, too.

That would likely be music to the ears of many Southampton supporters after the Russell Martin era.

A tactical ideologue and wedded to his extreme possession-based style, Saints achieved success with promotion under Martin but, at a higher level, the inability or seeming lack of desire to slightly adjust left them badly exposed this season.

Cons

Southampton looking at inexperience

After becoming a video analyst at Sint-Truiden whilst studying at Myerscough College, Still eventually rose to prominence and fame when he took charge of Reims during the 2022/23 campaign without a UEFA Pro License – something that Reims had to pay a fine of 25,000 euros for every time he took charge of a game.

The former Lierse assistant coach has only ever completed one full season as a head coach, leaving Reims before the end of the 2023/24 season after short stints in charge of Lierse and Beerschot in the Belgian second-tier, so this first season at Lens is his only full campaign as the so-called ‘main man’.

In that season, he finished lower with Lens in Ligue 1 than they had in the four previous seasons before his appointment under the management of Franck Haise, following their appointment back to the top-flight in 2020.

So, effectively, Southampton would be appointing someone that has only ever coached one full season as a coach, without having to leave before the end, and that itself ended up being something of an under achievement – not even taking into account his lack of experience in English football itself.

Still’s frustrating self-promotion

What became clear at Stade de Reims most prominently was Still’s eagerness to move on to another club, and it was something that irritated the board at Reims, eventually leading to him leaving the club via mutual consent.

Talks with Sunderland and his openness to a move away frustrated Reims and his habit of ensuring he remains within the media discourse has also continued at Lens, recently featuring as a guest on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football.

Still has achieved an impressive career from his unusual background, but his desire to often openly discuss his future plans and his own level of personal ambition is not necessarily the most endearing characteristic for supporters.