Southampton’s manager went for the jugular with three centre-forwards and Saints are as good as safe after a wonderfully chaotic relegation showdown

It is a league of billions, of the most famous managers in the world, which prides itself on being the shiniest show in town, that moneyed owners seeking a splash of reflected glory flock to. Who knew the biggest game of the season would be between Swansea and Southampton?

It was not so much a game of football, more a 90-minute test of constitutions. The top division of English football hasn’t seen a relegation play-off match in 30 years but purely on the basis of this chaotic affair it might be an issue to reconsider. Because this was essentially a play-off, and panned out like one. The volume inside the ground was that sort of loud you get when a stadium of people are too nervous to do anything but scream unintelligibly. The atmosphere was almost unbearably tense. In the corner where the noisiest Swansea fans sang, a steward tried to get them to sit down. He didn’t keep trying for long.

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Before the game, the whiff of dirty tricks was in the air, after first Southampton were told they could no longer stay in their chosen hotel and then the police escort they apparently expected from their new lodgings in Cardiff didn’t materialise. “Actually, they’ve done us a favour,” pouted Mark Hughes before the game. “The Swansea Marriott is one of the poorest hotels we stay in.”

Of course nobody suggested Swansea themselves were the dark hand behind it all but even the inference of subterfuge indicated what a colossal match this was.

Carlos Carvalhal had on the winter coat that is as crucial to his personal brand as those wacky analogies done up right to his chin, hands thrust into the pockets. Hughes’s hands were clamped to his hips, carrying the miffed look of a man who had arrived home to find a stranger’s car blocking his drive.

Both managers seemed entirely vexed throughout, perhaps because of their respective teams’ inability to produce much competent football. It would be easy to put the lack of quality down to the tension but it was an accurate representation of the teams seasons. Stoke and West Brom must have watched on and wondered how on earth they had managed to be worse than these two.

But it was also a good example to show anyone who equates quality with entertainment. Aside from a terrible film you may like “ironically”, sport is probably the only form of public entertainment that can hold your attention even when the performers are not actually any good.

The visceral thrill of games like these is at least on a par with, if not preferable to a display of technical excellence. Chaos is more fun than order, even if most managers will heartily disagree with you.

The teams seemed to take it in turns to go hell for leather, as if they had come to some sort of unspoken accord that they couldn’t both keep up the pace so it was best to share the workload. Swansea raced out of the traps, piling on pressure and throwing cross after cross into the box. But, as on many occasions this season, they could not break through, their anaemic total of 27 goals as big a reason as any for their plight.

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In the second half Southampton took up the baton. Hughes is not a man one usually associates with casting caution to wind but as the clock ticked over to the hour mark he had three centre-forwards on the pitch. A draw wasn’t much use to anyone, so it had to be full throttle.

Ultimately it worked, Manolo Gabbiadini scrambling home a goal that seemed to fit the game, messy and uncoordinated, a scene that then moved into the away end, the Saints fans briefly ceasing to be people and becoming a single, undulating mass of limbs and uncomplicated joy.

Far from spurring Swansea on, their own doom staring them in the face seemed to paralyse them. Tammy Abraham came on to cause a little havoc but he could not cause enough. Swansea now have to rely on Huddersfield losing their last two games, and beat Stoke on the final day to survive. It could happen but prospects look grim.

Still, if it’s any consolation to them, the neutrals among us thoroughly enjoyed the match.