Southampton: Jason Wilcox must be thinking "what if?" when looking at Leicester City - View | OneFootball

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It was clear to see that Southampton needed a big reset over the summer following their relegation from the Premier League - but did they get the wrong manager?

The 2022-23 season was disastrous for the Saints, whose gamble of appointing Nathan Jones midway through the campaign failed to pay off, and interim boss Ruben Selles then failed to keep the club in the top flight of English football.

Southampton needed fresh ideas going into the second tier of English football, and they ended up going for a head coach whose experience in management only consisted of four full seasons in League One and the Championship.

Russell Martin's style of football at MK Dons, whilst only guiding them to finishes of 19th and 13th in the third tier - albeit his first season he only took over 16 matches into the campaign and it was ended after 35 games due to COVID-19 - earned him a chance to manage Swansea, who had just been in the play-off final a couple of months prior in the Championship.

Two mid-table finishes later in South Wales and Martin was courted yet again, this time by Southampton, and after a long, protracted pursuit in the summer amid disagreements over compensation, the south coast club finally got their man.

It hasn't been a fantastic start to 2023-24 for the Saints under Martin, and there has been plenty of teething problems in regards to his style, but they are gathering momentum now and eyeing a top six berth, at the very least.

What could have been though if Southampton landed what appeared to be their top target at one point in Enzo Maresca?

Southampton's pursuit of Enzo Maresca

Back in May, it was reported that Southampton had made an approach to Man City to try and get Maresca as their new head coach for their upcoming Championship season.

However, Football Insider claimed that the Italian coach rejected the Saints, and that is when they turned to Martin as a second choice.

Journalist Ben Jacobs told GiveMeSport that Maresca essentially did not think that Southampton had a stronger nucleus than Leicester did, with the Foxes also keen on him at the time to take over from Brendan Rodgers, after Dean Smith took charge in the interim until the end of the 2022-23 season.

That led to Maresca giving the Saints the cold shoulder, and a few weeks later he was announced as the new head coach at the King Power Stadium.

It was no shock though that Southampton were looking at Maresca given the dealings that they had already done with Man City in the previous 12 months.

The Saints had hired City's former head of academy recruitment Joe Shields, who was a key figure in bringing Romeo Lavia, Samuel Edozie, Gavin Bazunu and Juan Larios all to the club last summer, and in January of 2023, Jason Wilcox was hired as director of football, having previously being the academy director at the Etihad Stadium.

Wilcox will have known Maresca for a number of years, having been Pep Guardiola's assistant and also a manager of City's under-21's once upon a time, so the 43-year-old being targeted makes complete sense.

Will Southampton and Jason Wilcox regret not pushing for Enzo Maresca harder?

If Leicester were directly in the conversation at the exact same time, then Southampton may not have been able to do much more to tempt him to St Mary's Stadium.

But considering Maresca worked with Wilcox at Man City for a number of years, the latter probably imagined that he would have some kind of pull when it came to trying to entice him to Southampton.

And when you see how much of an impact he has had at Leicester, it must sting Wilcox to see what is currently happening.

Maresca has been able to seamlessly implement his own style onto the City squad without any real troubles, using Guardiola-inspired tactics such as inverted full-backs and the like.

Leicester of course probably had a better squad anyway after all the sales of first-team players for both clubs, but head coaches don't always work out - Maresca however is doing very well in his first English managerial job and Wilcox is probably having nightmares over it.