I would not touch Southampton's squad with a barge pole. They have done exactly what we did before our second relegation. Fundamental weakness of the team through trading players as if the club was the stock market... For each time you pick up a talent to sell to Liverpool for £30mil +, there's two or three who are garbage. Tadic is the only talent left, with the rest championship standard, maybe lower. If we didn't have goalkeepers coming out of our arse, I might take Forster (especially as the lemmings prefer McCarthy ), and Bertrand might be ok, but other than that, pass. From West Brom, I think Rodriguez is a better version of Long and would be an ok back-up striker. Stoke? Shaqiri, and that's if we don't sign Kenedy, and Peter Crouch, as a very low budget option instead of Slimani. He's so bloody useful. the lanky twat.
Competition / Back up? Bertrand would walk into most teams in the league, don't think he'll be playing back up to Dummet?
Maybe look at the full backs mentioned but we need quality. Rodriguez looked good at the start of his career but big injury doubts there and Shaqiri I don't like. Blows hot and cold and is a shortarse dirty cheating twat - we can do better. We will be an attractive club to join in the eyes of a lot of players playing in other leagues so it won't be as difficult to get quality in like it was last summer. We need to be prepared to offer more money to the right players though.
By the way, we get first dibs on any Saints player as part of out feeder club agreement we put in place, so get to the back of the line Lemina looks a talent, can't see him playing in Champ if they go down. Redmand is decent mid table winger and Romeu is another that's probably upper mid table CM.
I know he's a good player, but Dummett has been outstanding since he came back from injury. We need cover for him though as I think he is going to start to struggle with pace - it's hard being quick when you still have so many top class wingers in your pocket.
Rafa's put a lot work into the defensive core of the team and it shows in the results we have been getting and the improvement in a player like Dummett, as for player recruitment we have to be looking at a step up in quality rather than retreads or similar, we really need to overhaul the strikers, we need goals from this position and nothing we have including Mitrovic is good enough to keep if we want to get our heads above the herd in the Premier League next season. The margins have been very tight this season and our defense has made a big difference, if we were capable of four or five more goals we would have done even better and that's the key for me, if he could add Kenedy and Dubravka along with some better quality at the front I would be happy with that.