Southampton relegated after Vinícius and Mitrovic fire Fulham to victory

Amid forlorn hope, Southampton’s simple formula was to win or go down. Rishi Sunak was lending moral support from the executive seats, but the prime minister will be watching his beloved Saints in next season’s EFL Championship, a place very rarely associated with economic growth and stable governance.

Carlos Vinícius’s goal, early in the second half, and a comeback strike from Aleksandar Mitrovic brought to an end Southampton’s 11 years in the Premier League. They included four successive top-eight finishes and salad days under Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman, when Saints had a widely admired setup and churned out talent for a carrion elite to feed off.

This team, too, will be broken up. James Ward-Prowse, the club’s record Premier League appearance-maker a dead-ball specialist of renown, is unlikely to be a one-club man in the fashion of Matt Le Tissier. Someone will take chances on Carlos Alcaraz’s mercurial talent and Roméo Lavia in midfield. If Southampton by no means fitted the criteria for being too good to go down, they have occasionally shown off a glimpse of sufficient talent to rescue themselves.

But not here, when it mattered. The fateful combination of the disorganised defending that handed Vinícius and Mitrovic their goals, and misfiring attack that failed to land a glove on Fulham, dragged the club down the plughole it has been circling for at least the last couple of seasons.

The prospects for Southampton’s players will be rather better than those club workers – casuals and contracted – whose livelihoods depend on a club now bereft of a £100m-plus Premier League stipend. Within the club’s rank and file, there will be uncertainty over the response of Sport Republic.

The majority owners who have put