Rival watch

Yes, but he is very very good at it unlike many others.

 

So what are Southampton doing different, do you think they hawk their players around for profit or do you think they sell players that are acting up because their heads are turned?

 

You cannot sell key players on the scale
and frequency that Soton have, and
expect to progress upwards.

 

That was my thinking

 

How do you stop it when the players act up?

I really don't think they want to sell their best players every year but it would do them no good to keep hold of players like Fonte, Schneiderlin, Pelle and VvD just to have to pay them for sulking on the bench.

 

By meeting more of their personal and professional ambitions. A season with Spurs is more exciting than one with Saints.

 

Why is that happening ??

Statistically speaking, I doubt that one club
having so many players that "act up" is
solely down to chance,

 

Ahh, simple then

 

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Southampton had hit their ceiling, as Leicester are finding, too. You can build a team and have it taken from you and it's back to the drawing board. When it happens every year, it's clear that the thing isn't growing any more. It's just dying over and over like Groundhog Day.

For over a decade Spurs have been progressing on multiple fronts - new training centre, new stadium, better and bigger commercial incomes, growing fan bases in the USA, Asia, etc. It's been a gradual process but there's always been an aim to it all that has sustained belief in the owners, fans and most employees and players. Even when we lost that really good team of 2010-13, there was still the hope that the club was progressing meaningfully.

 

It's not, it is because they have had some very good players but are a small club (relatively).
Trust me, if clubs bigger than yourselves really start to come after your players you will lose some. No club is immune to this its just that Southampton are lower down the food chain and have been fortunate/unfortunate enough to have had players good enough to attract teams higher than them.
Spurs are quite high up that chain so only have to worry about a small number of clubs but, as was seen last year with Neymar, no team is safe.

 

Middlesbrough would have a few things to say about that, since he's only been their manager since Boxing Day.

 

All clubs can lose players, but again the
issue is the scale and frequency.

As it stands, Soton have managed to
find a mass of decent players who all
come equally flawed with a desire to go
elsewhere quite quickly.

That is not down to chance, is it.

 

So you think they buy players to sell at a profit and nothing more then?

Could it be that they are too good at finding players and get raped because of it.

 

The difference is Levy. No1 likes to deal with him because he's such a tough negotiator.

 

No.


"Could it be that they are too good at finding players and get raped because of it."

They are good at that, hence their players
are coveted. Yet that does not explain the
scale and frequency of the departures.

 

I know, and this is where I came in. Someone said Southampton is run as a business so would never get anywhere, I just pointed out that you are where you are because Levy is such a good business man.
All clubs are run as a business today out of need, Southampton are a small business who's staff keep getting cherry picked.

 

So you don't think they buy players to make a profit but wonder at the number of good players they sell

What do you think is happening there?

 

There's also the individual vs system aspect to look at.

If a team is reliant on an individual, if they leave the most important thing is they need to replace that player who can replicate their performances or risk the team falling apart. Some teams manage to do this, with Atletico Madrid being the best example off the top of my head, but more often than not teams don't (for example it happened to Spurs twice in the last decade, first when Keane and Berbatov were spirited away in the summer of 2008, then when Bale was tapped-up in 2013 - similarly it hit Saltypool when Suarez left in 2013)

On the other hand, if a team uses a system it is possible to replace a component and continue on, with Southampton and Swansea being examples of this for a few seasons - but once they focused on short-termism that's when the problems set in, because short-termism focuses on the individual player to carry the team, yet if that player leaves we're right back to the problems outlined above.

That being said, Southampton are in a similar position to what Villa were in a decade ago: both were playing above the sum of their parts and were making a genuine tilt at the top six, but their "reward" for it was to have the vultures swoop in and dismantle the squad, and soon Gareth Barry and James Milner were at Man City, Ashley Young at Man Utd and Stewart Downing at Liverpool while the manager dragging them up the table departed and, by complete coincidence, their league position plummeted almost overnight. Yet the departures didn't stop, with Liverpool nicking Benteke and City grabbing Fabian Delph to finish the job that was started a few years earlier.

 

It's a recruitment problem. Soton actually spend most of the money they take in (not including the truckload of dosh for Van dick which they are yet to really dip into), and seem happy to make a modest net profit on player sales. It is the totally naiive expectation that it'll work out fine to continually sell our best 2-3 players at the first sign of trouble as we'll just replace them every year. All it does is create an atmosphere of a stepping stone club. Players join Soton and put pen to paper on a 5 year contract knowing they'll easily force through a move away after 1 or 2 seasons. They aren't playing for the badge, they're playing for themselves. This is abundantly clear when you look at the farcical chain reactions that litter their transfer dealings. Here's them at CB:
14/15: sell lovren
15/16: buy van dijk
16/17: sell fonte
17/18: buy hoedt
17/18: sell van dijk

The way they approach transfers and managers means it is impossible to build any sort of stability or continuity. Every season they press the reset button. Sometimes they get lucky with the manager and the lesser-known replacements of the outgoing players; most of the time - they don't.

 

Their constant turnover of managers doesn’t help them either.

If Poch leaves Spurs then we could easily see a mass exodus of our top players.

If Saints can get a good manager and keep hold of him then I think they would end up less likely to lose their top players but unfortunately bar 4/5 clubs then everyone has to worry about someone coming in for stars.