Summer 2014 Transfer rumour thread - Part IV

+ a good back-up keeper
http://sportwitness.ning.com/forum/t...and-goalkeeper

 

Looks like an ugly Dejan. I think what we need is news of a player coming in....anybody would do, just so we have something to talk about other than transfers out


Just pasted my answer from other thread...would have been easier just to retype

 

If Targett comes good then Shaw wouldn't be a huge loss and £30m for a left-back would be excellent, similarly Lallana is the centre-piece of our attack but you'd hope we could get someone in to replace him or Gaston could step up. The drop off on the pitch would be noticeable but we could recover from it theoretically, but that's not the reason we can't afford to sell them. I've harped on about this before but if we were to get £30m for Adam you'd think we could both replace him and bring in a lovely new striker for that money, we'd probably be pretty happy if we were able to source say one of the brightest talents in Serie A for about £12m and maybe a proven goalscorer and Italian international striker for about £15m, but obviously that doesn't always work out. Of course just because our two biggest acquisitions have been failures doesn't mean they all will but having the same money to throw around as the big boys doesn't mean we won't have a much harder time than them, because when you're looking at these big money signings it's not like you're unearthing hidden gems, every big team in Europe will know all about them and if they don't want them there's a reason. With Osvaldo it was because he's an arsehole and with Ramirez it's because he's very raw and the price didn't really match for a player who may never 'come good'. Then there's the second reason, you can't attract better players by selling the best ones you already have, it's just not going to work and players will either be turned off or view us as a stepping stone. Not only that but every single player coming from the academy will just be hopping on that conveyor belt into our first team and then straight off to United or Arsenal or someone, 'Bale went, Walcott went, Chamberlain went, Shaw went, Lallana went - why would I stay?', that trend starts as coincidence but becomes much more real, and the best chance we have to stop that is now so the buck has to stop here or it will only get tougher to keep our players. The fact is that though transfers have a large element or randomness that on average the quality of players and clubs will match up, the best ones go to the best teams, the good ones go to the good teams, the bad ones go to the bad teams. Obviously you can affect that in either direction with particularly good or particularly bad recruitment, but I think in our case most would agree we're somewhere in the middle. We can't just stand up and say 'We just finished 8th and sold our two best players, but we've got loads of money to spend now so come on down!' and attract top players, they're still going to be going to the big teams and as I've already said the ones that don't will have flaws. As far as I'm concerned there's five ways to break into the elite - luck, fantastic recruitment over a long period of time, fantastic management, wages and having top players coming from the academy. The likes of Man City and Chelsea may have snuck in paying huge transfer fees, the kind that we could pay by selling Adam and Luke, but that wasn't the reason they were able to get those players, it was the fact they were paying them way more then anyone else would and waaaaaay more than we would. So for us, I think we've got a bit of the first criteria, a bit of the second criteria (for all our high profile failures we've also gotten the likes or JRod, Morgan, Cork, Clyne, Davis etc. for relative peanuts), a bit of the third and plenty of the last one, that's what's going for us and if we cut off the last one by letting that conveyor belt feed directly into the top four then we're also probably losing the third and relying on the first two - so are we going to hope we get lucky or hope we unearth a few needles from the haystack?

Of course all that is irrelevant if we're happy to just try and go on at around or just below the level we're currently at, and certainly it would be fine compared to where we've come from and we'd all probably get used to it, but personally I can't shake the feeling we actually do have the potential to go even further and do even more special things than we've done to this point, and ignoring the incredibly unlikely we're simply not going to fulfil that by selling our best players.

 

**** that his a massive post.

 

Pointlessly long stream of consciousness posts/rants are what I do best.

 

Whilst we hope to keep players coming through the Academy, we also can get some young promising players in from outside that could benefit from being with us. We want them young, talented and ready for hard work. They are still out there...the big sides can't suck them all up. We have been lucky with some and not with others...let's hope we get some good players in.

 

I did actually read that...have to say sometimes I wouldn't

 

Just....paragraph.

 

Be grateful rabbitspectrum didn't write it....it would be a punctuation free zone.

 

These days, I apply that rule more generally.....

 

Paragraphs are for losers.

 

I won't quote you Mikey but I agree with most of what you say. The only thing is, we might be able to replace Shaw and Lallana in terms of their functionality on the pitch but what about the sheer excitement and entertainment value they provide? Seeing Luke make one of his surging runs past the fullback, or watching Adam jink and weave through a defence, surely those moments are part of the joy of watching Saints these days. To misquote Nigel Adkins, it's not all about winning games of football, important as that is.

 

I won't sleep until Immobile, Rodrigo and Musacchio are on the OS holding our new Dior Homme kit

 

Shaw is replacable, Lallana I think not.

 

Damn right. I almost want Shaw to go in the (probably stupid) hope it helps us keep Adam.

 

At its core football is entertainment and excitement and Lallana can still leave me in awe at one of his Cruyff turns, even though i've seen them hundreds of times.
I accepted long ago that Southampton are unlikely to be a club regularly challenging for league titles, but one thing i've always believed the club has stood for is exciting attacking football.
That's why i'm pleased that the fans have been at their most vocal in the past when this has been compromised under Branfoot & Sturrock etc Would we have been so accepting of Big Sam? I'd like to think not.

If Saints are to go through big changes this summer and a push up the table is going to be checked. Then the very least I expect as a supporter is a competitive and entertaining team playing football in the right manner.

 

We've never had as high a points total in the Prem. We've never had so many good players. We've never brought so many through in such a short time frame and kept them.

There is only 1 thing that rules us out of spending that much on a single player if we sell Shaw and Lallana. That is wages. If we were already paying £100k+ average then I could well see us buying direct replacements at the same or even more price, however as we only pay in the 30-40k average at the moment buying in a No10 for £30m would mean us paying £150k a week which wouldn't even be as bad until you factor in raising the whole squad's wage.

So its not that we wouldn't spend £30m on a player or even couldn't. It is that we wouldn't and probably couldn't increase the whole squad's wages to keep them in touch.

I think there will be a lot of contract negotiations next season. Firstly to improve the contracts of everyone we want to keep and boost them up to a more acceptable level for where we are/want to be. Secondly so that if we were to do as well/better next season there wouldn't be as much a wage gap to bridge to buy in any high profile replacements. We could see players like Morgan, Wanyama, Clyne, Lovren offered contracts in the £75k region and players such as Cork, Chambers etc up to £50k.

Thats a lot of money going out but if we don't start to bridge the wage bill between us and other teams that aim for top 8 like Newcastle and West Ham then eventually those 2 teams will end up with better players than us as ours leave (The latter assumes Allardyce is sacked eventually.) Thats just how it works.

We have got to address the difference in what we pay compared to many other Premier League clubs because 'The Southampton Project' will not keep these players for love. They may buy into the 'vision' when they come here for a couple of years but if we start treading water or getting our calves wet then they will soon want to move upward/not be good enough to move upward in which case not be good enough for where we want to be.

I think with or without player departures this summer transfers in may be quite low because we will need a lot of cash to persuade players that we already have to stay.

 

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IN DEMAND: Southampton hope to persuade goalkeeper Oscar Ustari to move to St Mary's rather than re-sign for Sunderland
SOUTHAMPTON are hoping to trump Sunderland to the capture of goalkeeper Oscar Ustari, with Italian giants Lazio also interested in the 27-year-old.
Ustari spent the second half of last season at the Stadium of Light on a short-term contract, with his three senior appearances coming in the FA Cup.
In the absence of Keiren Westwood, who has been released at the end of his deal, Gustavo Poyet would like to re-sign the Argentinian in order to provide cover for Vito Mannone.
However, Ustari does not want to move somewhere where his first-team prospects will remain severely limited, and Southampton officials are hoping the possibility of more senior action on the south coast will persuade him to move to St Mary’s.
While Artur Boruc is firmly established as Southampton’s number one, the Pole is 34 now and Mauricio Pochettino would like to provide greater competition next season.
Paulo Gazzaniga has proved something of a disappointment in the last two seasons, and a senior Southampton delegation is due to meet with Ustari’s representatives before the weekend to outline their plans.

 

So Ustari, Schemeichel and Ings are the few we've been linked to so far??

 

I like the fact that (in the link to Ustari) they mention Mauricio without adding the words 'who will shortly be off to Spurs'.