Southampton in INCOMING transfer shocker!!!

I read a Rumour on Twitter today.....

Having got sick to death of reading shite about players and managers leaving my football club, I am going to turn it on its head and write an article about who I would possibly like to join Saints as I believe, as a Top 10 Premier League club that we will be an attractive proposition for a few players and believe it or not, we might be signing some decent players.  It won’t be headline news I know as we’re not Man United, Chelsea or even that North London joke team that is Tottenham.

My assumptions are that Mauricio Pochettino will be here next season and so will .... wait for it.... Luke Shaw, Morgan Schneiderlin, Adam Lallana, Jay Rodriguez, Dejan Lovren, Calum Chambers and despite scoring 15 goals in the World Cup including the winner in the final, so will Sir Rickie Lambert.  They’re all under contract for next year after all which while it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be here, it carries more weight than any bullshit rumour you might read on a website or in a chip-paper.  I read today that Luke Shaw was going to be a Man United legend.  Odd that... and a tad presumptuous.

Some more assumptions are as follows:  Guly do Prado is out of contract and won’t be renewed, Jos Hooiveld will be paid up and move on, Kelvin Davis will move into coaching or into a rest home for bewildered people and Dani Osvaldo will be back as no other team is going to want him unless we give him away so we’re going to have to have a go at rehabilitating the prick.

Here we go…

We need another keeper to put pressure on Artur Boruc for the No1 spot and not have the situation we have this year of an injured 1^st choice, a Championship standard 2^nd choice who is always injured and a League 1 standard 3^rd choice who gets thrown in the deep end without armbands, before he can swim.  My choice is David Marshall from Cardiff who has been brilliant this year.  We’re probably the team who are going to finish highest this year who he’ll have a chance of being first choice at, so why not?  Cardiff are going down so why not?

We have two quality right backs in Clyne and Chambers and left back is covered by Shaw and Matt Targett who is well thought of and should be capable of being a capable back-up next season.  The assumption that I’ve made that is most likely to not be true is that Shaw will still be here.  If he does go then we would need to buy a first choice left back and Ryan Bertrand would be available from Chelsea and not cost the earth.  He has played for England before and is young enough.  Of course, Shaw may move to Chelsea so we may be able to pick up Chelsea players as makeweights in the deal, as they have about 40 that they don’t use but more on that later.

At centre back we have Dejan Lovren, Jose Fonte and Maya Yoshida and in my opinion, only the former is good enough to warrant being an automatic starter so we need to hit the market for a centre back and my choice would be Steven Caulker from Cardiff who won’t want to be playing in the Championship next season and like Bertrand, is only 23/24 and has played for England.  He’d cost a few quid (Cardiff paid £8m last summer) but would be worth it.  Also worth remembering is that Jack Stephens is well thought of and maybe his loan at Swindon this year is part of preparing him to step more into the first team picture next season.  If so then we could also see Maya Yoshida depart.  Whatever centre back we bring in will need to be comfortable on the ball and be able to pass it and not straight to the opposition like Jose Fonte has been doing recently.

We are well stocked in defensive midfield with Big Vic, Morgan and Corky competing for two positions and the right hand side sees Steve Davis and JWP in competition and there will also be Harrison Reed in the mix.  The left hand side is covered by …. no one really as J-Rod is injured so we need someone else – a pacy winger type to can score goals and stretch teams like Wilfried Zaha or Thomas Ince.  Like J-Rod, both are proven at Championship level and with the right coaching, belief in them and patience, they could do a very good job for us.  United will want shot of Zaha as the emergence of Januzaj has scuppered his chances and if they didn’t find a place for him this season when they were shit then they’re never going to.  If he did join us, expect David Moyes to be linked to us as his daughter was upset.  Ince hasn’t pulled up any trees on loan at Palace this season but could be available for a song in the summer, especially if his parent club Blackpool get relegated to league 1.  Signing him would probably mean that his Dad was linked with a coaching role here but there’s no worries there because of Ince Snr’s managerial track record of being shit.  The ‘unknown’ here is Gaston Ramirez.  He’s not really a winger but he would be picked at the moment if J-Rod or Adam Lallana were unavailable.  If I was him I’d be looking to leave though as he’s been selected to start about 5 games so far this season.  There is always an ‘if’ about Gaston.  If he sorts himself out and manages to stand up for 90 minutes then he could be one hell of an asset.  He certainly has the ability but how long do we want to wait and how long will he put up with being a fringe player.

Up front we have Sir Rickie who obviously, will be one year older. It’s not as if any other player is not going to be one year older but you know what I mean here.  We need to have a further option in addition to him as playing every game up front on your own when you’re 32/33 is not easy.  Osvaldo will still be around I’m sure, unless we loan him out again to another dumb foreign club.  Let’s hope he makes the Italian World Cup squad and does well, then there’s bound to be someone mug enough to take him off our hands.  I don’t think Sam Gallagher is quite ready yet so just for fun, lets make Shaw’s potential transfer to Chelsea contingent on Romelu Lukaku coming the other way.  I can’t imagine for a second he’d want too come to us but he might be happy to give us two years until Gallagher is ready to lead the line after Sir Rickie rides off into the sunset.  It’s probably not as far fetched as you might think.  Of course, if all else fails we can fall back on Emmanuel Mayuka, the little African bloke who has gone to Sochaux for the season and has been crap, so he’ll no doubt be rocking up back at Staplewood once the World Cup is over.

The players I’ve mentioned as potential incoming are already in the English Leagues and I’m sure that there are a multitude of European and South American players that I’ve never heard of who would make exciting signings for us.  Yes, I’d heard of Dejan Lovren before we signed him but had no appreciation of how good he was and I’d heard of Osvaldo but didn’t know just what a psychopath he was.

So, we will be bringing players in during the summer and they will be decent and hopefully, like with the signings of Lovren, Wanyama and Osvaldo last summer, fans of rival clubs will sit up and take notice.

So, a final message to the agents of Marshall, Bertrand, Caulker, Zaha and Lukaku - We are Southampton – we are a top 10 Premier League Club on he up and we are a desirable club to come and play for….. and your client gets the bonus of reading about themselves every day getting linked with all the big clubs…. and Tottenham.  Whether you agree with the players on my list is irrelevant really - the big news is that some will be coming in - let's start talking about that!