If I was 18 and at the start of my career and Man U came knocking, I would probably take it. Life changing money and the possibility of becoming a football legend. Remember also that youth has no issue with confidence and backing themselves.
I think Dibling would be a good fit for Man utd but would see him gaining cult status at somewhere like Spurs unfortunately
Seems like Dibling is keen on following Bellingham in going to Germany and then getting a huge move from there. I do think Leipzig would be a good move for him and us. We'd get a huge sell on fee when he makes his move to one Europe's top clubs.
Yep unfortunately this is the result of many years of buying cheap and selling high (well at least when that worked). You end up eventually selling all the good and leaving the bad, you also end up with owners who cash out and leave once they’ve hit their desired goal. And where does that leave the club? With players who are too ****e to offload, with owners who have to sell anyone whose even remotely good because they can’t offload anyone and having to buy cheap young players because they can’t afford anyone else and then those players want to leave as soon as they’ve hit form because we are the stepping stone club and they are clearly better than those around them. That’s the state we are in. We are not a desirable club no matter what way you look at it. We are a carcass of a club that has been meticulously and at times brutally picked apart until now it is just bare bones left. Our best players immediately into transfer talks cause the notion of our club keeping them and building a team around them is laughable. It’s why the black box bollocks always pissed me off because this was always going to happen when you treat a football club as pure business. The Poch/Koeman era was lovely but it was always going to lead to this with their dumbass “we can replace anyone” philosophy rather than trying to keep what you’ve built.
There was nothing wrong with the black box IMO. The problem is we've been too clever trying to find hidden gems for 10mill rather than pay 20mill for someone more proven. Especially in the forward department. We struck gold on Lavia and Fernandes but too many have been busts. Which is why we need to do everything we can to hold onto Fernandes this summer. If we can sell Dibling for a huge sum, which looks likely, then financially we won't be under pressure to sell Fernandes. Then if we go straight back up, Fernandes is one player we know is PL quality and don't need to worry about and can spend more on a CF.
The clubs I mentioned also sell their best players - literally every club in the world does except 3 or 4. The issue in under previous ownership has been selling too many at once as this breaks up the squad it is unlikely every replacement will be just as good. I don't think SR actually want to do this though. The only reason they did it before was because we got relegated, and that is the reason we will lose players this summer too. Sadly, every single relegated club needs to raise about £80m-£100m in sales. I genuinely think if we ever managed to survive, SR will only sell the odd player and even then only for a a big fee.The issue is relying on SR to build us a squad good enough to ever survive!
There was also an issue with the previous ownership where after 2 or 3 years of sales they got sick of selling people and offered long contracts with relatively high wages to players who were good enough to support star players but weren't stars themselves (there are probably others but Forster and Long immediately spring to mind, plus McCarthy a bit later). When we lost our last star players they couldn't step up and we couldn't get rid of them either because of those contracts. There's been a bit of that under SR (the desperation signings in January when we last got relegated, signing Fraser and extending Jack Stephens contract this summer) but some of that may have been down to Martin, who seemed to be quite keen on helping out some of his favourite players.
Your second Paragraph is my issue. We never sell one or two it’s always a complete offload and rebuild. I wrote out the insane list of players we sold in 3 seasons during the poch/koeman era. We sold an entire first team of players in 3 summer windows. And it felt like we were picking up the pieces years after, if not to this day. I get that every team sells their best players but as you mentioned, we sell anyone who is good and that’s been our way for years now. It is very hard to get excited about anything in the future when we sell anyone as soon as they turn a profit. The Southampton way in my life time is to sell anyone as soon as they get good and that’s depressing as ****. I get that it’s hard but I rarely ever remember a story saying something along the lines of “Southampton under pressure to sell star player but club adamant they want to keep the player and build”. The only time I remember that happening was VVD and that seemed to be mainly to drive up the price. Again I get now with the way we are its near impossible to keep good players but we were absolutely in a position with Koeman to push on with the squad but instead we just let everyone (including the ****ing manager) go. Not to mention both poch and Koeman essentially cited lack of board ambition as to why they left. I know it’s a very doom and gloom outlook but it’s all I’ve known as a Saints fan.
What I'm saying is that I think we are in a better place financially with SR compared to previous owners(at least when in the PL), so I don't think they want to just sell our best players every season. The reason they did once is because of relegation, which was the only option. I think if we manage to re-establish ourselves in the PL then SR will try to retain our top talent and only allow 1 or 2 to leave - which is part of football.
Never heard of him but he’s made 19 appearances for the first team this year and they are doing well in League 1 I think. We do love a full back
He refused to play in their last game to try and force a move so they didn’t really have much choice I don’t think.
