Southampton beat Leeds in the Championship play-off final in 2023/24 to book their instant return to the Premier League for the 2024/25 campaign. 12 months earlier they had finished rock bottom of the PL to end a lengthy stay in the top tier of English football that stretched all the way back to 2012, when a certain Mauricio Pochettino was at the helm.
The Saints were founder-members of the Premier League too, in their glory days of the magical Matt Le Tissier. The club was founded way back in 1885, making them much older than clubs, such as Chelsea, Leeds, Crystal Palace, and south coast rivals, Brighton, all of whom were formed in the 20th century. However, despite that long history, Southampton have never won the league title – by which we mean the top-flight championship. That includes the Premier League era, of course, but also the many years prior to that. But have the Saints ever come close to Premier League glory? Let’s take a look at their best finish since the top tier was rebranded ahead of the 1992/93 campaign.
Sixth as Good as It Gets for Saints
Whilst we have suggested that the 1990s were a period of success for Southampton, it is perhaps not entirely true. They had some great players, in Alan Shearer and (for much longer) Le Tissier, but they never really managed to establish themselves as a top-half side. Le Tissier scored a host of truly magical goals and played football for the gods, but it was never enough for the Saints to really challenge for any silverware, or even European qualification.
Le Tissier not only scored great goals, but he was, for a time at least, a great goalscorer. His sustained excellence saw him net a prolific 20+ goals in four seasons out of six between 1989/90 and 1994/95. In the two campaigns in which he failed to reach 20 he still got 15 and 18, whilst in 1994/95 he recorded a highly impressive 30 from 49 games. Despite this, however, the best finish the club managed was seventh, in 1990, before the PL began. Indeed, their best finish in the top flight aside from that was 10th, in 1994/95 and 2000/01, until Gordon Strachan led them to eighth place in 2002/03.
The Scot did a brilliant job at Southampton for a time but they were relegated in 2004/05, then went down to the third tier in 2009 but bounced back quickly to be back in the Premier League by 2012/13.
Steady, Sustained Progress
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The following five years were probably the best in the club’s history, aside from their second-place finish in the 1980s. Nigel Adkins guided Saints to successive promotions but the hierarchy decided to dismiss him and appoint young Argentine Pochettino as boss instead. Hugely controversial at the time, it soon seemed like a masterstroke.
Poch took them up to 14th, then guided them to eighth in 2013/14, despite losing some of their best players, all whilst playing brilliant football. That attracted the attention of Spurs, who brought Pochettino to north London, but Southampton kept on improving.
They replaced the former Espanyol boss with Dutch ace, Ronald Koeman, and it was the former Barca star who guided Southampton to their best finish in Premier League history. In 2014/15, they won 18 PL games to finish seventh and then the following year did even better.
2015/16 and Saints Finish Sixth
They again won 18 of their 38 top-flight matches, but drew three more games, improving their points tally from 60 to 63 and their position from seventh to sixth. Sadio Mane was their star man at the time as the Saints played attractive, counter-attacking football and began to challenge the established elite. They were defensively sound, with Portuguese defender Jose Fonte a rock at the back, alongside a certain Virgil van Dijk.
At this time, the club had so many good players, with the likes of Mane, Van Dijk, Dusan Tadic, Victor Wanyama and others all going on to play for bigger clubs. Saints played in the Europa League in consecutive seasons and when Koeman left to join Everton, they continued to thrive, finishing eighth and also making the League Cup final in 2016/17 under Claude Puel.
Ultimately, they were forced to sell too many players and results gradually began to slide. The relative success they sustained, despite seeing two managers and countless top players poached by richer clubs, was hugely impressive. But it couldn’t last forever.
Since finishing eighth, the season after their best-ever PL finish of sixth in 2015/16, they have managed no better than 11th. Between 2017/18 and relegation in 2022/23 their average finishing position was 16th and they at least flirted with relegation in most of those seasons.
What About Before the Premier League?
Since 1992/93, when the Premier League was created, or as Sky might have it, football was invented, Southampton have never enjoyed a top-five finish. But what about during their entire history of top-flight football? Can they better that fine achievement of 2015/16? Yes, yes, they can.
In terms of the number of campaigns spent in the top division, Southampton rank 26th out of all the English (and Welsh) clubs to have made it to the top of the football pyramid. The 2024/25 season will be their 47th competing against the best and on two occasions they have managed to finish in the top five.
Their best performance ever came in 1983/84 when they managed to finish second in the old First Division. Back then only Liverpool were too good for them, the Reds, kings of the 1970s and 1980s, amassed 80 points (from 42 games), with the Saints just three back on 77. They also made the semis of the FA Cup, where another Merseyside giant, Everton, who went on to win the cup, beat them.
Club legend, Lawrie McMenemy, was the manager at the time, with Steve Moran the chief goal-getter and the world-class talent of Peter Shilton in goals. 12 months on from their runner-up finish, the Saints made it back-to-back top-five finishes too as they finished fifth. Everton won the title that year, with Liverpool, Spurs and Man United the only other sides to get the better of Southampton.