#PLStories- New manager Nathan Jones ready for Southampton managerial demands #SAINTSFC

If you ask Nathan Jones what kind of manager he would like to be for Saints, he’ll paint a picture of something he never experienced. A 23 year playing career took Jones from his home in Wales to Spain and back to the UK in the English lower leagues. Yet the manager he wants to be is based just as much on what he didn’t experience in that time. READ MORE: Nathan Jones' first and biggest task is to solve Saints' identity crisis Speaking to the media just 24 hours after his unveiling as Saints manager and a further 24 hours before his new side take on Liverpool to end a whirlwind week, the former Luton Town boss outlined what kind of relationships he wants to develop with his new group of players. “Being a football manager has many facets,” Jones explained to the Daily Echo when asked about his approach to dealing with players on and off the pitch.  “When you’re asking people to sacrifice certain things, when you’re asking people to metaphorically run through brick walls, when you’re asking people to buy in to something, you have to make them believe that.  “Now if you just dictate to them, that’s not my management style. What I want to do is get them to buy in to something and see the reasoning behind that, and then with my passion for what I do, with my work rate, they can see I believe in something.  “If I believe in a way of doing it and I can transfer that onto the pitch and I can get those to buy into that…and then see that I have an empathetic side when maybe they don’t play as well, then that will give them a real impetus moving forward.  “I manage like I want to be managed. I craved a manager to care about me, I craved someone to want to make me better, I craved someone to say ‘you can be this, you can be this player if you really want to, if you buy in.’ And then guiding me to be that. And then putting me in a team-framework that suited how I played, I craved that as a player. I never had it - which is ironic because I played for 23 years - but I never had it. But I want to be that manager, that coach, that basically changes their life.” ‘Buy-in’ is a phrase Jones regularly throws out in relation to pretty much all areas of his management whether it’s about himself, his players, or his team’s fans. We’re still zero games into his Saints tenure and just one press conference down, but Jones appears to understand his role as someone who both demands from his players while also believing in them through difficult moments. This group of players won’t be at their best every single time they step onto the pitch and that's especially true when considering the age and experience of this squad. They don’t have the track record and timeline of experiences to deal with each new challenge that comes up on the face of it. Some challenges will end in failure, but it's how they then learn and adapt. This squad needs a human manager just as much as it needs a tactical mastermind on the pitch and hearing Jones speak about his endeavors to understand and coach the human side of his players provides great understanding into part of why the club has made this switch. In some ways, it's reminiscent of the early days of Ralph Hasenhuttl's management carer. Described as a “human-catcher” - someone who people naturally gravitate towards and want to fight for - by those who knew him at the start of his first club Unterhaching, it’s noted that some of that personal approach disappeared by the time he departed St Mary’s. Reports claimed that out-of-favour individuals at times received no encouragement or explanation of what they had done wrong while he was never one to coddle his players. Hasenhuttl’s methods weren’t necessarily wrong, they worked for the best part of four years after all, but football works in cycles. When one style of management - or manager - stops working, you have to find a change. That doesn’t just mean a different human at the top calling the shots, but a different method of calling those shots altogether. Only time will tell if Nathan Jones is the right person to lead this next phase of Sport Republic’s Saints ownership. But it appears that much of Jones’ success will be determined by Jones the human, rather than just the football manager. And that is exactly what this Saints team needs right now. A message from the Editor Thank you for reading this article - we appreciate your support in reading the Daily Echo. Subscribing to the Echo means you have unrestricted access to the latest news, features and Saints coverage - all with an advertising-light website. You will also have full access to Saintsplus, your new home for Southampton FC tactical analysis, features and much, much more. Don't take my word for it - subscribe here to see for yourself. Follow the latest breaking news in the Southampton area by joining our Facebook group - Southampton News - Breaking News and Incidents Follow the latest court and crime news on our dedicated Facebook group - Hampshire Court and Crime News