Southampton hit their ceiling. What do they do now?

Wednesday was a microcosm of Southampton’s season so far — a decent start, a period when they held their own, and then repeated kicks to the teeth to turn a lead into a loss. It also highlighted a major shortcoming in the team, and it’s not their attack: As things stand, Southampton are probably about as good as they’re going to get as far as how they stack up with the rest of the Premier League.

Now, that’s not something that Saints fans are going to want to hear — ever since Southampton earned promotion to the top division in England back in 2012, they’ve enjoyed watching their club’s steady ascent in the EPL hierarchy and have held dreams of challenging for the top four or even more. That goal was starting to look attainable not all that long ago, but circumstances in England have changed, and Southampton’s progress has stalled because of it — and for right now, that means that they need to play the long game instead of trying to climb as fast as possible.

The simple fact is that, right now, Southampton are probably only the seventh- or eighth-best team in England, a fact reflected by their eighth-place standing in the EPL. In previous years we’ve often seen some of the so-called “Sky Six” — Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, and Tottenham Hotspur — struggle to a point where they can get caught out by smaller teams who have hit the jackpot in terms of hot form. That’s a big part of how Leicester City won the title last year, after all — Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez got white-hot and stayed that way, helping lift and propel a team that largely over-achieved for long enough that a not-so-minor miracle came through and saw the Foxes win the unlikeliest of championships.

But this year, the Sky Six have been the power in the EPL — perhaps not playing completely up to their potential, but playing well enough compared to their rivals that they are the clear six best teams in the Premier League by quite a wide margin. With that battle dominating the upper stretches of the table, the only battle left for teams like Southampton is for “best of the rest,” a title that they’re currently in something of a dogfight with Everton over.

And while being the best of the rest is hardly exciting or what fans want to see their team settle for being, right now it’s realistically the best that Southampton can do. Yes, English teams make ridiculous amounts of money compared to other clubs around Europe thanks to the EPL’s jaw-droppingly huge television deals, but the Saints still only have a portion of the spending power that a Manchester United or a Chelsea or a Liverpool can bring to bear. They don’t draw the same kind of attention nor bear the same prestige as those bigger clubs — not yet at least.

In fact, if you look at those Sky Six, there’s one team in there that Southampton fans should look at very closely: Tottenham Hotspur. In 2009, Spurs were in a very similar position to where Southampton are now, as a team on the rise with dreams of more, but struggling to actually break through and make an impact. It took them time, and a lot of frustration along the way in the form of the sales of budding stars like Gareth Bale, but now Tottenham are one of the powers of the EPL and still growing larger and larger.

Southampton look to be very much on the same path, even down to selling major players — Sadio Mané, Graziano Pellè, and Victor Wanyama netted the Saints €70 million between the three of them this past summer after playing huge roles for them in recent years, with Wanyama appropriately landing at Tottenham. Those sales stung, but other players like Virgil van Dijk, Cédric Soares, and James Ward-Prowse to step up into bigger, more apparent roles.

Then look at the three players Southampton bought to replace that departed trio — the high-upside trio of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Nathan Redmond, and Sofiane Boufal average a little over 21 years old compared to the more than 26-year-old average of Mané, Pellè, and Wanyama, and cost over €20 million less on the transfer market. The rest of that money can be used by Southampton to help shore up the team this winter in the January transfer market, as well as get invested into other areas of the team — like coaching, training facilities, and their academy — to reap further improvement in the long term.

Southampton are clearly building for a longer-outlook play, one that, with a couple of lucky breaks and a lot of hard work, can hopefully reap similar rewards that Tottenham enjoyed from their own slow climb into the EPL elite. It’s likely that Southampton are still several years away from seeing real success from this approach, especially in the current climate of the EPL — but they’re on the right path, and it’s one that can bring the team a lot more stability and reliability than a lot of the other teams around them in the table can boast. That stability may not be sexy, but it does mean that the next time some of the Sky Six slip up, it won’t take much for Southampton to step into their place — and with a little bit of luck, they might even be able to stay there and finally take that big stride forward in development their fans crave.

Until then, though, they need to stay the course, and not panic about not making progress. That’s not easy, but it will be well worth the effort down the line.