Saints Stuff

Although he doesn't mention Hoedt at all, he does say Lemina looks a good signing. He is more concentrating on, although these 2 appear good signings, they weren't addressing the main weaknesses from last season. Something that Saints (and more Les Reed) love to say how the black box is some awesome recruitment tool, when in reality it isn't and never has been, it is the same as every other clubs recruitment strategy of "you win some, you lose some".

The fact that we didn't address the striking/creativity issue points to someone high up the recruitment chain either burying their head in the sand at best or at worst being incompetent.

 

He says Lemina looks "capable".

I'd say he looks a whole lot better than that.

 

He does acknowledge Lemina as a good signing, his point was we need more signings of that quality in other areas of the pitch. From what I've heard from Lazio & Italian football fans is that Hoedt is a liability when playing against quick forwards. He can deal with crosses and the physical battles, he's also very good on the ball. Put him up against a fast/tricky forward and apparently it gets pretty ugly.

 

Mertesacker built a fairly successful career playing like that!

 

That's true, if he turns out to be close to Mertesacker I'll be very happy. Lazio fans left me pretty skeptical though.

 

Indeed. I don't anticipate him being the perfect defender, and in this league, the ability to be effective in the air, physically dominant and with a good left peg is 3 out of 4 of a good thing.

 

That's a good point. I just wish we could clone Maya, 3 times. So we'd always have a back up.

 

CB and DM were higher priorities on the summer. If we had in injury to Oriel we would have been playing with a central midfield of Davis-Hojbjerg. And even worse, an injury to Yoshida or stephens would have meant Gardos being first choice.

But I guess people are forgetting that due to how well the board have done in those areas this summer.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree here as a number 10 was my first priority this summer. If Yoshida or Stephens were injured the other would play with VVD. And a midfield of Davis and Hojbjerg/JWP still isn't as bad as our first choice current 3 behind Gabbiadini. I am not saying Hoedt or Lemina are bad signings, just that the priority should've been elsewhere.

 

CB and boosting our attack should have been priorities. Our CM/DM has received investment, just poorly planned. Hojbjerg just doesn't fit into our system at all, and Clasie physically isn't up to the PL - which again the club should have realised with our super duper scouting and due dilligence.

 

yup, i woudn't have looked to buy a no 10 at all. only reason i would be interested in one now is because of the way Pellegrino seems to be playing, but even that is doubtful because its hard to work out how Pellegrino really wants to play. As other have said, we seem to lack identity.

 

We've definitely strengthened on last seasons team and squad. However, the problem is that we had so many areas that needed strengthening due to below par transfer windows for some time. Not selling anyone we didn't want to sell, plus signing Lemina and Hoedt would normally equal a fantastic window. As it is, they were necessary additions to keep us competitive in mid table.
We should be more solid than we are currently looking even if we are useless upfront. We have arguably the strongest back four and DMs we've had since being back in the PL.

 

not disagreeing we're replacing failed appointments. Though if we rushed to bringing in attackers would would just be repeating the same mistakes of the last window where we brought in Hojbjerg and Redmond before the manager had a system in place to know what he needed.

 

I thought we had a Southampton way which was to play a certain system so changing anyone would be seamless as they would be recruited to match our style.

 

I can't handle the truth

 

Love Jos

 

All managers have played a pretty similar way, it's "The Southampton Way" - while there have been some difference in our play, the general formation and set up of the team has been a 4-2-3-1 since we got promoted. That's why our scouting and recruitment is supposed to be so good and there will be interviews from Les & probably Krueger crowing about how our recruitment isn't dictated by Manager changes and that's why it's so brilliant.

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/southampton-set-paco-alcacer-transfer-11359590

Mirror suggests we are after Alcacer. Dubious about suggestion that Pellegrino has spoken to the player....not sure that is how Saints work. MP2 wouldn't get involved in the early stages.....unless Reed thinks a personal touch would help.

 

I've got a feeling the implementation of that may have caused a few of the problems we are experiencing atm.

They brought in a right winger in Redmond to go on the right instead of mane, aswell as Hojbjerg which is pretty much a more phyical version of Clasie who Koeman clearly wanted, so possibly both aimed at Koemans style. But Puel was more different than they had expected and ended up using Redmond as a second striker, and an inverted winger. then during the poor performing winter they told him to switch to the formation they had bought the players for, which worked for a while and almost got us a cup. but Puel wasn't really suited to it and ended up losing the players.

I was expecting them to switch back to a more Koeman like style which is why i wasn't after new no10, but they seem to have gone even more into the one style and have brought in Pellegrino and asked him to play with our style we were already playing. but it seems Pellegrino has gone too far and adopted Puels broken version and attempted to improve the linking between the players(as he has said in his interviews) rather than make changes and so we've ended up with the same problem. Which is the players aren't suited to this bastardised version of the 4 2 3 1, and we've lost some of the key players for Koemans version.

 

Good to see Saints getting involved more in the community.