Southampton’s failure to secure an immediate return to the Premier League last season necessitated some harsh decisions to reduce costs and protect the club’s long-term viability.

The Saints were kicked out of the play-off final last month after being found guilty of spying on Middlesbrough’s training session ahead of their semi-final first leg meeting, denying Tonda Eckert’s side the opportunity to gain top-flight promotion.

As a result, Southampton will play successive Championship seasons for the first time in nearly 20 years. Their Premier League parachute payments will be reduced this summer, and the club’s commercial top-flight revenue, which they had been used to for the better part of a decade, remains elusive.

As a result, Saints owner Dragan Solak opted on Monday to downgrade St Mary’s women’s academy from Category One to Category Two, allowing the club to operate simply an under-21s squad rather than an under-21s and under-16s group.

The club will then move their existing under-16s, as well as their under-15s and under-14s, into an Emerging Talent Centre, which requires only 1.5 hours of development time per week, as opposed to the mandatory 8-12 hours that an under-16 team in a Category One academy must provide.

Southampton women’s academy decision left parents distraught.

Finally, the decision will result in a reduction in the number of full-time personnel and academy players, allowing the club to save costs.

Southampton stated that the decision to downsize the programme “should not be seen as a step away from the women’s game, but rather an attempt to create a structure that can be supported responsibly and sustainably in the years ahead.” However, it has left those impacted feeling as if they have “nowhere to go.”

According to the Southern Daily Echo, girls in the academy pathway who were playing below the under-14 level had their offers to join the older age groups removed without warning. Some family referred to the judgement as “cruel” and “devastating.”

One father, who had been driving his 14-year-old daughter from Aldershot to Southampton for the previous two years, said she “burst into tears” when she heard the news, and that they are now “scrambling about at the last minute to find another team.”

According to the report, trials for other clubs began in early June, making it impossible for these young ladies to find another Category One team to play for. Understandably, this has called into question equality in the girls’ game at St Mary’s.

A grandma of one of the players described the decision as “staggering,” adding that the family “struggled to understand [it], especially since this is part of the England Lionesses pathway for young girls.”

Questions raised at Southampton following recent decision.

Southampton have stated that the decision to downgrade the women’s academy is the consequence of a larger sustainability assessment at their training facility at Staplewood, but with the men’s development pathway untouched and continuing in category one, doubts are obviously being raised.

Last season, the Saints women finished fifth in the WSL2, seven points behind the promotion play-off slot, and scored the third most goals in the division.

Milly Mott and Megan Collett have progressed through Southampton’s junior system to join the squad, and current Lioness Lucia Kendall grew up on the south coast before moving to Aston Villa last year.

Those success stories will have inspired the young ladies in the academy setup, making them believe that they, too, can make it into the WSL and possibly break into England contention, but now they’ll have to find another place to play on such short notice.

Cost-cutting is an undesirable element of preserving a club’s long-term viability, but Dragan Solak’s timing will undoubtedly raise eyebrows.