Of course they could have signed someone. We just couldn't sign the person we wanted. We didn't then go and just sign anyone, as per West Ham strategy. I'd suggest that's the most likely scenario based on history and what we know.
You want me to respond to that? You seem to have wanted to now stop discussing and debating and resort to names. That's a shame. I've usually enjoyed exchanges with you but as often happens after a couple of exchanges someone decides to turn it silly. I didn't once tell you can't have an opinion. That's just silly. I said at he start of the summer, once that happens I won't get involved with the person as I often used to. Never mind. Edit: here's your whole sentence: "Sure, I love the stance on Virgil, but we either didn't try, or certainly didn't rate the value in getting some decent attacking options in should we havesold him." Not sure what the crime was I commited there, but anyway.
The flaw here is that we could've signed most players in world football with the Van Dijk money. I'm not just talking about the last day of the window. We may have taken a risk that we could hold Van Dijk, and also sign an attacking target, only to be priced out of the signing later in the window, sure. We still had the ability to sign someone better than we've got in the attacking positions IF the club had played things differently though. Maybe they valued it more important to retain Van Dijk than sign attacking talent, which is fine. It's just another perspective. My priority would've been to do everything possible to ensure that we signed the attackers we need to score from open play, and sacrificed Van Dijk if required to do so.
I think you're simplifying it by suggesting it's about how much money we could offer. Barca couldn't get Coutinho. City couldn't even get Johnny Evans. We wanted, it seems, Vietto, and I don't believe for a second we didn't get him through a shortage of money.
1. Yes please. 2. What names? 3. You said which in essence questions why should I (or anyone else) have an opinion on anything that's not 100% confirmed. If you want to go down that route, how many things in the world are in fact 100% confirmed? Just because one person/organisation has said it, or you've read it in print doesn't mean something is 100% correct. If that's the case, what's left to talk about? You have to make some leaps, and I don't believe it's too much of one to say that the club had the ability to do something they clearly did (sign attacking players better than our current ones), but at some point in the window deprioritised it in favour of either pursuing other options, or not doing anything at all.
Ok, but Vietto isn't the only player available. How many other reasons are there that aren't money, when you try to apply this to all of the top 40 or so names (10 per position x 4 attacking positions) the black box would've thrown up?
It is ridiculous to argue that saints didn't have the capability and resources to sign an attacking midfielder that would (more than likely) be an improvement on our current options. We have clearly decided against it for one of many reasons. Perhaps, we felt the prices were just silly and we didn't want to over pay despite being capable of doing so. Maybe we didn't want to risk spending such a large amount on a player that isn't 100% going to come good. Did out board/staff feel that our current options would come good eventually. Maybe our owners would rather keep those funds in their pockets! We really don't know WHY we didn't sign an attacking mid, we just know that we didn't. So it is fair game to debate the reasons behind it.
Surely we all know the way Saints do things nowadays? Just because we have a perceived need for a certain type of player, doesn't mean we can just pop down to Tesco's and buy one. There are always a limited number of options, and they aren't always the exact match under the black box specifications. The price is another thing entirely. If we go busting our transfer record fee for a player, the knock on consequences include busting our wage structure as well, and we should know by now that isn't going to happen. Like it or not, and clearly some of you don't, that is the Southampton way. I am sometimes frustrated by this as well, believe me, but I can balance that frustration by this latest quantum change in the way the club deals with threats to the calm, ordered structure that's being built down in SO14.
It's a new day mate (if you're currently in the UK?). Shall we draw a blue line under yesterday's differences?
Yeah, essentially you just wrote what I was going to in response to LD. We could splash £50m on X player, but that would dessimate our structure and philosophy. Not to mention cause issues within the team itself.
Agree with this, LTL & Chilco. It's a very plausible reason that may have crossed some of the names off the list. If it's the reason that crossed all of the names off the list though, we're in trouble, as it's unlikely to fully revert to previous levels in January or next summer. Those fees, they keep a rising!
Rather than any one particular player we're missing i think we're more missing a style right now. I don't really know what our strengths in attack are to try and compliment them. my best guess would be that we have two strikers who can find space. but that's nullified if we give the defence enough to to get back en mass- you cant find space that just isn't there. Personally i would have brought in a fast winger to get in behind and cross balls in from the right, have Tadic for the left and kept Davis/Prowse to recycle possession out to the wings and move players around. More similar to Koemans style. We lack the pace to do that right now, and we can't hit first time crosses anyway because we play inverted wingers for some reason i have not yet fathomed. Our slow style right now might better suit a target man with lofted balls but we don't have one of those and i would be reluctant to add one with both Austin and Gabbiadini here. We certainly need a more creative midfielder if we want to play through the middle, i think Puel suffered with that and Pellegrino doesnt seem to have replaced that style yet by bringing in his own. With the players we have now i would still go for crosses into the box and overlaps with our fullbacks. Tadic on the left is best for that and i think Prowse on the right is the best we have there. he can put enough whip on a cross that he can put them in from midfield as if it was a cross from the byline which makes up for his lack of pace. Then Davis in the middle doing what he did under Koeman. I would also be interested in experimenting with Redmond as an AM, overlapping with the striker and adding some acceleration to the center. i feel he might do better at freeing up some space for Gabbiadini. Might hurt our ball retention too much though. Just the thoughts i've been having over the last week.
I think that a lot of it is just down to confidence. Some of which stems from being a little shaky on the ball at the back. I honestly think that we will improve going forward when vvd/Hoedt come into the side as a natural response to their calm presence. We are short a player, but there are more goals in this side than we are currently producing. It will come - have faith.
Agree with a lot of this VM, it'll be interesting to see if MP2 has any tricks up his sleeve to speed up our attack as the lack of pace in style (and possibly personnel also) is something we've certainly missed since the day we sold Sadio Mane. Sure, Long has pace, but he seems to struggle with the timing of his runs a little more and seems to be more of an impact sub these days anyway.
So it seems we all agree that we kept what we needed and we strengthened 2 out of 3 areas that needed strengthening. We would have been significantly better off with a creative attacking addition. we seem to be disagreeing over whether than makes it a C or a B. Hardly worth calling that a disagreement really. I'm at a loss to explain our goal form at the moment. Tadic, Boufal, Redmond, Gabbi, Austin and Long should be a forward line that gets us goals. For whatever reason we have stumbled into a barren rut. As someone has pointed out I think what needs to be done is get the boys together and say, if you get the ball, get your head up and look for Gabbi because he will be trying to get us a goal and its your job to find his runs.
On a completely unrelated note, Koeman said a week ago maybe that he wanted to buy Siggy when he was at Southampton, but was told that it was not possible. Imagine if we dared to splash out on him at that time? That squad could've ended in top 4 easily.
Individually good players, but don't work very well as a unit. Two attackers (Manolo, Shane) who thrive on the early ball, and support who releases the ball early either rarely (Tadić), very rarely (Redmond) or never (Boufal). Couple that with midfielders who aren't very imaginative and slow the game down and you get what we have now.
We could, but it's highly unlikely that we'd have to splash 50m. We'd likely just have to pay fractionally more for a player that we ultimately end up signing later; one of the patterns we've fallen into is that we sign a player to fill the hole we knew we had a window or two previous, and while we might have gotten them for a lower price, we also might've foregone revenue if we had a more complete team.
Exactly Chilcs, . All along I have said I wanted a creative forward/midfield player too. I just don't let that cloud my view of what has been a good window, not a perfect window.
