The numbers tell one story. The noise tells the real one.
Since Tonda Eckert walked out of the academy and into the eye of Southampton’s storm last November, St Mary’s has changed character. Once tense, flat, and suspicious, it has become one of the most unforgiving home venues in the Championship.
Forty-seven points at home since his appointment. No side in the division has done better in that period. Three wins from three to start the new campaign on the south coast. The turnaround has been sharp, and Eckert is in no doubt what sits at the heart of it.
Their bond with the stands.
“You know the condition the club was in when I came in and you know the condition our supporters were in the moment I came in,” he told BBC Radio Solent, recalling the bleak scene he inherited with Saints languishing 21st in the table and Will Still gone.
It was not just a struggling team. It was a fractured relationship.
“It’s not easy to play home games if you don’t have that connection. And rightly so, there was not that connection at that very moment for a variety of things going on.”
The 33-year-old German, fast-tracked from U21s coach to head coach, walked into a club bruised on and off the pitch. Results were poor, trust was thin, and the mood around St Mary’s had curdled. The stadium felt heavy.
He knew he had to fix more than a press or a shape.
“Then you need to earn that right to connect again to the supporters, to the city, because it means so much more, the football, to the city of Southampton.”
That word — earn — has defined his tenure so far. No shortcuts, no grand gestures, just a steady accumulation of small, deliberate steps.
Saints surged under his watch to reach the Championship play-offs last season, only for the campaign to implode in the aftermath of the Spygate scandal that saw the club thrown out. Anger followed. Confusion too. It was the sort of episode that can empty a ground and hollow out a fanbase.
But the walkouts never came.
Attendances have held around the 30,000 mark heading into the new season, keeping Southampton among the top 20 supported clubs in the country. The loyalty stayed. So did the noise.
“It’s not one thing that you change,” Eckert said. “There are so many small steps that you need to take to earn the trust and build on a connection and build a relationship back up.”
The effect is visible. And audible.
“St Mary’s just feels completely different than it did a year ago and that is just many, many things coming together.”
The players now feed off the energy rather than shrink from it. The crowd senses a team that runs for the shirt again. The tension that once greeted every sideways pass has been replaced by something more powerful: belief.
Eckert, though, is clear. Home form is not a bonus. It is the foundation.
“I do believe that to ‘win’ a season, you must play a successful season at home.”
It is a simple principle, but Southampton are living it. Win your home, win your year. The league table over the past 10 months backs him up.
Jander’s Return Put on Ice
Not everything is moving at that pace.
Midfielder Caspar Jander remains on the sidelines, his return delayed again as he recovers from a quad injury picked up early in the first pre-season outing against National League side Eastleigh. The 23-year-old has yet to kick a ball this season.
Saturday’s meeting with Bristol City at St Mary’s will come too soon.
Eckert confirmed the setback but pointed to a new target on the calendar: Wrexham on 19 September.
“We’re going to push, so hopefully it’s going to be some minutes against Wrexham,” he said. “We had to delay a little bit, but I think he’s on a good way now.”
The message is the same on every front: patience, then payoff.
Southampton have already transformed their home into a fortress. The next question is whether that noise, that connection Eckert talks about so fiercely, can carry them through an entire season and back to where they believe they belong.
