Transfer Rumours Summer 2025 1 - 10 June, 16 June - 1 September

This can’t possibly be true. We all know the SR model exists entirely to use Saints to prop up Goztepe and Valenciennes with deals on lopsided terms

 

I think this is just the new normal in football, and I don't think it is unique to Southampton at all. A combination of either compelling financial offers or player power, and often both, means that clubs no longer hold on to players who either want to leave or who are in demand by clubs who can pay.

 

I get that it’s normal to get rid of maybe your best, or 2 after a good season. We just seem to get rid of anyone that’s just good. We always offload at the first sign of it looking like a player is doing well, and not one player, sometimes 3/4/5 players.

Im sorry but it says a lot that Dibling, a damn 19 year old from our own academy, who we haven’t even really got him playing consistently well, who would have been a massive asset to us in the championship, is able to drop tools and push a move away. It says so much about how players view us as a club. It makes the future look so bleak. Yes other clubs struggle too but we seem to be a unique case. If anyone else can tell me a club that sold 14 first team players in 3 years I’ll be happy to hear it. I also imagine it would be very rare.

There’s a reason we watch every week and it seems like the players are a bunch of mercenaries who don’t know each other and would rather be playing somewhere else. And there’s also a reason that the only player with move on chatter about them is… oh right our best player again with Matty Fernandes. And you can tell people have already resigned themselves to the fact he might be out the door because it’s so expected despite a 4 year contract.

 

I think you have nailed it with this though:
"Im sorry but it says a lot that Dibling, a damn 19 year old from our own academy, who we haven’t even really got him playing consistently well..."

He is a teenager, that has had one good run of form in the PL and never even completed a full season, yet we've have just got £42m for him.

It's okay to lose players as long as you only do so by making teams over pay and get great money.

 

I would have rather have kept the player and tried to build something, isn’t that what this whole damn sport is about? It’s like we’re trying to build a house but everytime we turn our back someone takes the bricks away and we have to start again. At some point you got to look around and go what the **** is the point in all this if we’re not building anything.

I know that I live in fairytale land but it just seems so much worse with us, I think it’s because our reputation is just so deep in the mud. But I’m sure teams like Brentford and Brighton are feeling the same right now too, they’ve gone down the exact same road we did but they at least didn’t cash in on their entire team.

 

It is, but you need funds to build - and funds must flow in and out, especially in this PSR era. Keeping him would've seriously eliminated our ability to do that

 

It’s rumoured that West Ham have now made a move for Middlesbrough midfielder Hayden Hackney.

 

Meanwhile, The Guardian's Jacob Steinberg is saying they're now in advanced talks for Magassa from Monaco. Hopefully means they are going away, although not sure either of those players are in the mould of Fernandes...?

 

Magassa certainly isn't. Hackney more so I would say.

 

Fingers crossed they look elsewhere.

 

I just hope that Boro don't cash in on Hackney and then decide to sit on Azaz and knock back further offers...

 

That is the rumour. Hope we have a number 4 on the attacking midfielder list?
Though I fear they’ll just decide to keep Smallbone as that option.

 

That’s not a lot.

 

Using your analogy it’s like we’re trying to build a house, in recent times, then a disaster (relegation) happens and washes away some bricks.

In the previous times it’s like we were trying to build a deluxe mansion and had the raw materials to do so, some other **** who already had a mansion and wanted to upgrade it came along and threw cash around to buy our materials as they thought ours was better than theirs.

 

Forest buying Kristiansen from Leicester, feel like Leicester could be very busy before the deadline

 

I want to feel that way about us but my Southampton brain is giving me doubts!

 

We’ve been busy the last few summer deadline days haven’t we? Stills comments after the Stoke game indicate we likely will be again, or at least in the week leading up to deadline day.

 

Certainly won't be able to afford Fernandes if this goes through.

 

Similar to what we paid and he’s not exactly got better. And it’s an overseas club who pay lower fees