Only one good thing has come from Southampton’s season – and it isn’t Tyler Dibling

Tottenham Hotspur’s 3-1 defeat of Southampton on Sunday afternoon didn’t so much relegate the Saints as put them out of their misery. Their one season in the Premier League has amounted to little more than a surrender – but there has been at least one player who has shone amid the wreckage. Not that anybody is talking about him.

The only player to have come out of this campaign with any column inches to their name is teenage forward Tyler Dibling, whose directness and dynamism has seen him linked with half of Europe’s biggest clubs for transfer fees for the kind of transfer fee that might almost cover the costs of sliding back into the Championship.

For all his evident talent, however, Dibling has only scored twice and hasn’t proven to be a reliable difference-maker. Another young player has made a difference, though, and there have been times when it has felt like he’s been trying to carry Southampton on his back. He didn’t succeed, but Mateus Fernandes deserves far more recognition.

Why Mateus Fernandes has been the best thing about Southampton this season

Not matter how dismal his side have been this season – and they have been truly abject at times – Fernandes has generally played very well. No matter how clear it was that his team-mates had given up, Fernandes kept running, kept shuttling from box to box, and kept trying to make an impact at both ends of the field.

The 20-year-old was signed from Sporting this summer without an especially vast amount on fanfare. He had only been on the pitch for 26 minutes of his former side’s title win in Portugal the previous year, and while his name had a little bit of buzz around it from the scouting community, his arrival hardly made many headlines.

Perhaps that serves to explain, in part, why the media seems to have paid Fernandes little attention, or perhaps it’s because relatively little of the work he does is especially sexy. Fernandes doesn’t score screamers or produce many breathtaking tricks and flicks. He simply does an immense amount of very good work right up and down the pitch.

There’s a reason it was Fernandes who scored Southampton’s eventual consolation against Spurs – he kept going when other heads sank, and had the energy to find space to pick out a smart finish. He’s had the energy all season.

Fernandes, a true box-to-box player, leads Southampton with the most tackles of any player (by a mile, in fact), while also being second in the squad for most yards made with the ball at his feet (behind Kyle Walker-Peters), in the top five for shooting chances created and having the most combined goals and assists (five).

In short, Fernandes has either been the club’s best player or close to their best player in just about every area of performance that a midfielder might be judged on. He’s a fine ball-carrier who can pick a dangerous ball, but also an excellent tackler who forces turnovers. He both wins possession and uses it better than anyone else in his squad, and he’s still only 20 years old.

He’s got the presence of mind to score goals like the late strike against Spurs, a sufficiently cultured passing range to deftly guide a perfect deep cross in for Paul Onuachu’s goal against Crystal Palace in midweek, and the defensive skills to offer significant protection for the back line (although no midfielder in the world could have offered enough protection for this particular back line).

Fernandes has, by some distance, been Southampton’s best player, even if it’s Tyler Dibling who’s generating more excitement. Maybe Dibling will go further in his career over time, but as it stands Fernandes already looks like the real deal and one of the best young midfielders in the league. It’s a shame, perhaps, that his excellence has been glossed over in part because the team he plays for has been so poor.

Will Fernandes leave Southampton this summer?

Of course, just because the media has largely ignored Fernandes’ achievements doesn’t mean that scouts haven’t taken notice. While hardly a regular feature of the rumours columns yet, a handful of stories from Italy suggest interest from Juventus.

One would expect Fernandes, who has nice caps for Portugal’s Under-21 side, would prefer to move to Turin rather than face a gruelling season in the Championship – and equally, one would expect that Juventus won’t be the only side keen to secure his services.

Southampton have been keen to project absolute determination to keep hold of Dibling, even putting an outrageously optimistic £100m price tag on him (presumably as a deterrent), but it remains to be seen as to whether they have the same appetite to keep hold of Fernandes.

Most of the Saints’ best performers this season – not that there were many who even scratched the surface of mediocrity – are set to leave. Dibling will have interest, Walker-Peters will be off on a free transfer, and Aaron Ramsdale was only here on loan. Taylor Harwood-Bellis, who wasn’t brilliant but whose absence through injury made Southampton’s desperate defence even worse, supposedly has interest from West Ham.

Fernandes will, most probably, follow some or all of those players out of the door, but if they can keep hold of him – and selling Dibling for an obscene sum would certainly ease the financial pressure to flog other players – then they will not only have a star player to build around in the second tier next season, but someone who would be head and shoulders above the vast majority of the players he’s up against.

Fernandes is the sort of player Southampton could build another promotion team around. Unfortunately, one suspects that he’d rather battle for first-team minutes with the Old Lady or a similarly storied club – not that Fernandes has ever seemed to lack professionalism, drive or determination.

In dire circumstances, Fernandes kept running, kept working and kept performing. While all around him lost their heads, he kept his. That might make him the kind of man who wouldn’t kick up a fuss if Southampton decide not to sell. But everything around him would have to be overhauled for keeping him around to be worth it. One gifted and dedicated young midfielder aside, nothing good has come of this campaign down by the Solent.