Summer 2014 Transfer rumour thread - Part VII

Those are some promising links. I still think we need another striker though and we don't seem to have been linked to a anyone since things went quiet on the Ings front.

 

Be nice to have a multi-signing, wouldn't it? #agirlcandream

 

Good, we need someone who can hit the target.

 

What a load of bull(seye). We do need about 180 players though.

 

Obviously it's not ideal to be losing this amount of first team players in the same window, but if certain players are/were playing for Cortese then it is probably best to get rid and bring in players who are interested in playing for the new regime.

 

You should go back to bed, I think you had way to many doubles last night...

 

Think I am just going to checkout now....

 

Time we had some new rumours

 

Still in for him.

 

If Rodriguez goes, and Ings signs, do you know if we would be in for another forward?

 

Nice article in the Times this morning.

Everything must go for a reason

Southampton may have lost some of their key players, but the exodus could yet turn out to be good business

YOU can take a thick black pen to the list of Southampton league appearances last season and cross off the names. First, Adam Lallana, 37 starts; gone to Liverpool for £25m. Second, Luke Shaw, 35 starts; gone to Manchester United for £30m. Fourth, Rickie Lambert, 31 starts; gone to Liverpool for an initial £4m. Fifth, Morgan Schneiderlin, 31 starts; offers under consideration. Sixth, Dejan Lovren, 31 starts; going to Liverpool for £20m.

The deletions don’t end with those stalwarts of a team praised for passing and playing their way to an eighth-placed finish last season.

Another teenage English full-back, Calum Chambers, is close to joining Arsenal for £16m. Jay Rodriguez is fancied by Tottenham despite the England forward having weeks of cruciate ligament rehabilitation ahead of him. And the man who selected and led them last season? Mauricio Pochettino moved to White Hart Lane within a fortnight of its conclusion. The scale of Southampton’s big sale is unprecedented for a solvent club that has just finished in the upper half of the Premier League.

In Pochettino’s case it eased the decision to jump two rungs — and a considerable rise in pay and status — up the top-tier ladder. In the coach’s calculation, cashing in on the best of St Mary’s young Englishmen like this would require a difficult overseas shop as the club’s youth ranks did not offer immediate replacements.

Pochettino had already lost the executive chairman in a mid-winter dispute over future strategy. To describe Nicola Cortese’s approach to directing a football club as aggressive would be an understatement. Cortese drove Swiss industrialist Markus Liebherr’s 2009 takeover of the club, devised the strategy that took it from League One to the top tier inside three seasons, and then implemented a new five-year plan he describes thus: “The question for us was not if we could win the Premier League but how. If you don’t think of winning the league, you will never even get close to getting into the Champions League.”

On the way there, Cortese seemed to steadily generate enemies with his abrasive methods. In January, he resigned his position amid reports that he had saddled the club with the best part of £30m of unpaid transfer fees in the three and half years since Liebherr passed away. Under daughter Katharina’s control, a switch of financial strategy is evident in this summer’s sales.

Fraulein Liebherr’s way, though, should not be seen as a simple decision to sell the team’s silver and count up the returns.

The transfer-market balance sheet cannot be fully assessed until after the window closes, and Southampton are said to be “working on five or six deals” to replace the departing players. The best part of £20m has already been committed to successors for Lambert and Lallana — Graziano Pelle, an Italian striker who has scored 50 goals in 57 games for Feyenoord, and Serbia midfielder Dusan Tadic.

New coach Ronald Koeman has impressed survivors from last season’s squad in pre-season with one first-team regular describing the Dutchman as “a very good trainer, very focused with good methods”. Koeman appears to know exactly what he bought into at Southampton, backing his own ability to use half of a likely £100m-plus transfer take and convert it into at least as capable a squad as last season’s.

“That’s the story in football, players come and go,” Koeman says. “The most important message I gave them was that we have to keep the philosophy and the ambition of the club. There is money to spend and to continue the quality.”

While the scale of the personnel turnover is a genuine issue, what makes the idea viable are the grossly inflated fees Southampton have been able to charge for their England internationals. No one outside the Premier League would even consider paying £25m for Lallana, fine passer of the ball though he is. Ten of Lambert’s two-season haul of 28 Premier League goals have come from taking penalties or free kicks, and, at 32, his preference for operating as a chance creator rather than a finisher may not be missed.

The laws of football economics dictated that both be sold regardless as Southampton simply couldn’t match the opportunity and wages on offer at Anfield. Same principle for Shaw, whom Cortese kept at the club last summer by arranging a switch of agent, a new contract and a promise of a transfer a year hence.

While Manchester United did not appreciate Jose Mourinho’s contention that paying the salary Shaw is now receiving at Old Trafford would have “killed the stability in our dressing room”, when Chelsea cry foul at a teenager’s wage demands it’s obvious those were beyond Southampton. That a 19-year-old with one competitive international appearance is now burdened with the highest transfer fee paid for a full-back, underlines the wisdom of his sale.

Southampton are exploring the possibility of replacing Shaw with Marcos Rojo, a 24-year-old Argentina international who started the World Cup final. Asking price from Sporting? €15m (£11.8m), or slightly over a third of the income from Shaw.

Consider that they own a fruitful academy, and Southampton’s grand summer sale makes more sense yet. If Koeman, Liebherr et al rebuild astutely perhaps it will be the buyers who end up on the wrong end of these bargains

Taken off Saintsweb and from The Times apparently.

 

I don't know.

 

That your way of saying Rodriguez will sign a new deal soon

 

Will be cross if JRod goes after we've nursed him back to health...someone should boot him in the bad knee (after we get the money).

 

I already have Jay and Schneiderlin as going. If they stay it will be a great extra bit of news.

 

Don't want to 'quote' the big piece posted by Beefy, but there is a lot of sense in there (when not clouded by emotion). The author must have been fed titbits by the club to write this article. I always thought the Shaw thing seemed to be a done deal...as it was relatively rapid with no acrimony. Good on Nicola if he talked Shaw into giving us a year...was good for club and player.

 

No problem with Rodriguez going. Although he improved during the season, I still don't believe he is international quality. Also, no-one knows what will happen following his injury. Michael Owen was never the same player after his injury.

Schneiderlin is the one I really hope stays. He has that touch of class around which you can build a team. I can still see him, Wanyama and Cork forming an impenetrable midfield.

 

Chim chimney, Chim chimney, Chim Chim cher-ike

Who needed Lovren when we've got van Dijk!

 

I really REALLY hope we somehow manage to land Rojo.....