Crocker was our Academy head (during the heady days) -> head of the youth setup for England -> our Director of Football Operations.
Yes. He’s talked about having a head of transfers of sorts to work alongside him since he started. By all accounts the business bit isn’t quite his bag. Obviously the club has been stalled as a whole for a while now so they haven’t brought anyone in. This would be a very promising and suitable appointment if they can get it.
Genuine question. How are the benefits clear - is there another example of the multi club model where we've seen players come through from lower tiers in lower nations to premier league first teams? Seriously trying to understand how this model benefits Saints, neither club seems to have a huge catchment or history of producing talent.
Red Bull have done it really successfully and players and coaches have moved between all three(?) clubs. They’ve used it to get around work permits for talented youngsters too. Manchester City do recruit from other clubs in their group but they also spend £100m on Grealish so it’s not a big deal. It does also have added benefits in helping us get access to talented young players that play in the tier two leagues by loaning them to play regularly in a tier one league. It is a really good idea if managed and organised. I think we can get a lot out of it but it’s a long term investment by a company which owns Southampton FC and other businesses. We’re not going to see much out of it for a while.
Good times. A twitter rumour account has linked us with different backroom staff. Yay! We're sure to have a great season now....
And we're sure not to, because less than a month into the window opening, you've decided it's the same as Gao and everything is doomed.
And Vitesse with Chelsea. I guess the point that was trying to be made is the successful examples still all involve top division sides in different countries - not those in the second tier. However the Turkish side have only just been relegated - so could go up again. And the latest link is for the side that finished 4th in the Polish league We also should remember that we are at least one rung below the focal point clubs of previous successful examples - Chelsea and RB Leipzig. More than one in the case of chelsea. So we couldn't expect our lower tier network clubs to be of a similar size. And if anything lower division european clubs might be more beneficial for our youth players as they will presumably be less physical than the likes of League One but also more competitive than the youth leagues / involve playing against fully grown adults.
Yep. Like I said in an earlier post. We'll sign a couple of 15 year old academy players as "ones for the future", will sell a few squad players for about 15 Milltotal and spend 10 million on someone who's a bit ****. Then probably sell JWP on the final day. But there's fans who are happy that the owners are rumoured to be buying other clubs
Should probably put a pin in the above prediction since there is a good chance it will be 100% wrong. Not least because we are already signing someone for £12m in a deal that will be announced very soon. And also we don't really sign 15 year olds for the academy.
Of course it will. I do like Lincs, but it must be incredibly depressing being him. "Happy Birthday Lincoln!" "One day closer to death...."
Why would you not be happy that the new owners appear to be going completely all in on their proposed project? It means they are very serious about the whole thing - which by extension would include the Saints part. The changing of the coaches and the recruitment team also all point to this as well. To be unhappy about adding clubs to the group would require assuming that they have not segregated their budgets out into one for transfers and one for developing the group. The notion that they haven't budgeted that way is simply absurd. It further would require the belief that they just have one big pool of money whereby they would randomly pull out of a major part of their strategy to chuck a bit of extra money at one signing. Again - not how people like this (serious finance, business and football people) operate
