Gabbiadini: Southampton can be my turning point

Not with 10 000 men could you do it. It is a folly.

 

I think that is probably because the Academy overlaps here, and the players are unknown. its unarguable that we have a habit of signing players who will be known to the scouts, but how many times have I read on here that, "his YouTube stuff looks great, but I know not much about him"? I don't think that it's lazy journalism to point out that we sign players that most people didn't know or particularly rate. How many people actually thought that Pelle, Mané et al would become successful in the EPL and couldn't understand why Man U hadn't snapped them up, before they arrived?

 

I agree it is cheap journalism but they are basing their speculation on how our club runs, if Manolo keeps scoring this season and we climb up the league then no doubt they will speculate that if he does the same next season we could finish higher.

 

Look at who reacts quickest when Redmond scores, thinking there's a chance it might come back off the post...

 

I'm not bashing our scouting; it's just that what has gotten us the best talent isn't signing players who are off the radar...it's that we committed when other teams didn't. Pelle doesn't fit the overall pattern, but Mane got a fair bit of attention the year previous when he ran roughshod in Europey, to the extent that you can find articles from that time frame linking him to every team under the sun. To wit:

Man City: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/manchester-city-transfers-sadio-mane-3247039
Tottenham: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/24/football-transfer-rumours
Chelsea and Newcastle: http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/24/totte...an-city-and-newcastle-for-sadio-mane-4674479/

It's also been claimed that Liverpool had an actual deal in the works that was nixed. Now, are many of those probably nonsense? Yeah. But he had enough profile to be a go-to paper-filler in the months leading up to his transfer.

That, to me, is a good thing. We aren't feeding on scraps; we're buying known quality while other teams hesitate because they don't want the blowback of a flop signing from the Swiss league, or a guy who was squeezed out a bit at Napoli owing to circumstances, etc. Because such is our buying power: we have that sort of money, we can take those sort of risks, and we prefer them to buying lesser talents solely because we'll have cover if they fail (as I'm fairly convinced is the primary motivation for spending big on mediocre PL players...the cost of 'established' is extraordinary).

 

^ That's all true, established is everything to the teams who would rather throw money than do work. Not a player but Everton taking Koeman is the most obvious to me.

The other half of the fallacy (by the meeja not you lot) is that these players turn into outstanding footballers by magic. Wrong. If Mane went straight to Liverpool, Wanyama to Spurs, Van Dijk/Gabbiadini to wherever, they wouldn't be as good as they are now. All we sign good players opportunistically, and then play them.

 

Where we struck lucky with Gabby was that Napoli didn't want to sell him to an Italian club who would have paid more for him. Faced with having to leave Italy, he insisted it was to an EPL club. So he needed an EPL club with money desperately seeking a striker In January....enter Les stage left.

 

Or Ross.
No doubt we had been tracking him for about 3 years.

 

All logic points to Schad being correct. If any PL team hadn't heard of the players we have signed then they are doing something catastrophically wrong in their scouting teams. Yes they may be unknown to your average fan but these people's jobs is to know about players from all over the world. They may have looked at say Mane and thought he wouldn't cut it in a higher league but every single one of the PL clubs will have known about him. It was one thing that pissed me off with the media lauding Swansea over Michu, saying they signed him when nobody had heard of him. He was one of the top (possibly the top, can't remember off the top of my head) scoring midfielders in La Liga the season before joining Swansea, for a struggling team aswell. Everyone will have known about him. It was just Swansea who pulled the trigger on signing him, I think he was linked to a number of clubs before hand aswell, including us

 

I think Schad gets pretty close. One can debate over exactly why Saints are able to go for certain players while other clubs stand and stare. I think we are able to minimise the chance we take on them because we grind the fine details on players. Saints are always banging on about how much detailed work they put in to select players and zero in on them at the right time. Even a doubting Thomas must accept that there has to be an element of truth in that because they get so many acquisitions right. We can't just fluke it every time. Maybe it's this which gives us the significant leg-up over other clubs. Effectively, we get 2 to 3 seasons out of star players and then sell them for more than we paid, having improved them at the same time. We are also not afraid to buy players who are not in 100% good nick, but will recover.

 

Mustn't forget that some players may suit one team more than another*. However, good Gabby is, only teams that need a striker like him would use up limited resources on him....we may be looking at other strikers as we speak, but that's for the future...our needs in the summer may be in defence even if Gabby Mark II becomes available.

*This is also the explanation for some of our players looking good at Saints but not cutting the mustard elsewhere.

 

Well, that's the thing that I hear at Saints but never hear elsewhere. I can remember back to Nigel Adkins, and him talking about Saints having a list of players who they will track for acquisition in 2-3 seasons time, or even longer.
And I'm sure you are right about players that look good playing for Saints and not looking the part once they move on. Of course this can happen to Saints too, but I think we reduce it with our attention to detail. The last player we got properly wrong was Juanmi, but he's only 23 still, and just because he didn't make it with us doesn't mean he is a bad player. Doing fine for Real Sociedad now.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal.../manolo-gabbiadini-southampton-nathan-redmond

Article from Guardian talking about the effect Gabbiadini has had on the team especially Redmond. Two errors....Virgil apparently leaving and we lost to Southampton in January.

 

Actually, whilst I stand by my "water off a ducks back" statement, if you don't mind me mixing my metaphors, one thing does get my goat and rubs me up the wrong way, until I am spitting feathers; it's when journalists air-brush Saints out of a players history. I get fed up with hearing how, for example, Klopp has got Lallana playing well, as if he had not already been called up to the national side before he turned his coat.

 

Well it wouldn't be the Gaurdian without some errors.

 

and we lost to Southampton in January.

___________________________

Felt like we lost to everyone in January!

 

Oops.!

With The Guardian, at least you never get impression that Saints are a plucky team from Down South who should be grateful for just making up the numbers. Which is slightly odd because The Guardian hails from Manchester.

 

That was intentional in reference to their well known spelling mistakes. Maybe I should have put Grauniad.

 

Oh OK. Seeing as it's you.

 

Doesn't do to be subtle. I actually automatically read it is Grauniad even when spelt correctly.