It turns out it wasn’t so hard after all. Southampton stopped giving the ball away in their own half, adopted an approach rooted in expediency and kept their second clean sheet of the campaign. Salvation remains a long way distant but a point, just the second they have taken away from home this season, means there is at least something to build on in the post-Russell Martin era.

Southampton’s new coach Ivan Juric, who signed an 18-month contract on Friday, was in the stand at Craven Cottage, peering through the bitter rain driving down the Thames as Simon Rusk conducted affairs from the dugout. What he oversaw was 90 minutes of very little. Even the arrival, for his league debut, of the winger Martial Godo, for which everybody has been waiting, failed to bring anything approaching resolution.