I don't remember seeing him play, but just looking at his shot charts for the past two years versus our current CMs, there's a wee difference that stands out: He has more shots from within the area than the other three combined, and most of those are from open play.
Anybody else feel like funds to buy clubs in turkey and france are funds that could be used to buy players for Saints? Too soon lads, too soon. Build the top tier club and then find feeder clubs.
If these clubs are going to act as feeder clubs, then the more the merrier. Plus they probably only cost a couple of Charlies.
As young talent for the academy I can see that in the future we might have a prospect or two but can't see what else Goztepe or Valenciennes add to the mix right now. Just a throwaway thought I had, I'm sure there's a plan but I do know where money is needed and it aint Turkey or Ligue2.
Would imagine Solak only bought us on the condition that we were cool with him buying other clubs. Plus he cleared all our debts. Think we need to remember that before expecting him to start splashing the cash.
Do we have confirmation that he cleared the debts? In any instance, I'm not terribly concerned. It's clear that this is a large project, and a Ligue 2 club is a very small investment. L'Equipe wrote that they were looking for €9m total for Valenciennes (including clearing all of their debts), and not all of that up front. And from the Brentford - Mijjjjjjjjijijijijland experiment, it appears that the biggest benefit isn't acting as a direct feeder club, but rather then enhanced resources for player evaluation. A bunch of the Danes that Brentford acquired weren't from Mijiijijiijiland, but were almost certainly recommended to them by people at the club who were more familiar with the quality of player in the league. No team can have enough eyeballs on world football to get a good look on every emergent talent or underrated squad-ready player...but having a whole team's scouting resources at your disposal means a distinct advantage in scouting smaller leagues. Given that Ligue 2 has for a long time featured a rich vein of young talent available for a pittance, that feels like an investment that could pay off even if Valenciennes never progresses up a league.
Work permits. Turkey is a tier 2 league so counts for a lot more points than other leagues in Europe. French division 2 is the same. Plus, let’s not think Sport Republic is just the Southampton business. They are going to be investing in other things which are not Southampton FC, as I’m sure clubs with individual owners do too.
Anything which widens the pool of available players to us, especially players who are not established international names, is beneficial. If having a Turkish team in the group means we can get a player from Poland, send him there for a year so he can get a permit and subsequently have access to a player who we could not sign before, then it’s a gain. The Athletic also said that SR are looking at small clubs in Belgium for the same reasons.
Yeah but every club was looking at the majority of those, it will be very rare that a player gets signed by a team which similar status clubs haven’t heard of. We may have had interest in all of those but whether the players had any interest in moving to us when there was obviously other clubs interested is another matter
Thomas Delaney last summer. Dunno how serious we were, but would have been nice. Anyway, I'm sure every club in the league could come up with a similar list.
Every club has a list like this though. Rupert Lowe talked about almost getting Drogba, Dyche talked about being recommended a 14 year old Messi. “Could have had…” is such a remarkably wide net when you’re one of the 20 best clubs in one of the world’s biggest league structures.
Just remember to put Gibbs-White, Winks, Lewis-Potter, and Broja all in your Fantasy League team when they inevitably sign for other clubs instead of us.
