A New Shirt and Hodge-Bur-Jurg
Meanwhile, back in Southampton, whilst the Euros were going
on…
First off, The Lying Dutchman Ronald Koeman completed his widely predicted desertion to Everton. As was befitting of a man whose stock had fallen massively, his first day as Everton manager was spent blaming Southampton for why he'd moved. Apparently, we wouldn't allow him to work the last year of his contract without signing another one so we forced him out effectively. Why is he not suing us for constructive dismissal then. Ah yes... I have a feeling that this is complete bullshit and that the £7 million big ones per year might have had something to do with it but to be honest, what else was he going to say? Still, it's done now, thanks for the two years but now you can go and fuck yourself and I hope you fail massively at Everton, trying to revive their 1980s glory days
It was entirely predictable that Victor Wanyama would leave and so he did for £11 million to bloody Tottenham. It hasn't annoyed me as much as it would have done last year but it's still disappointing that he's gone to them. In the same way as they did with Morgan Schneiderlin, Saints obviously told him to get his head down and he would be allowed to leave after another season. To be fair, in the main, Big Vic did this and had a good season aside from a couple of completely brainless red cards. He will be missed and is a lot better than many Saints fans give him credit for. I do wonder how he's going to get on at Tottenham because he's not going to be as automatic a first choice as he was here. I guess though, that Pochettino knows what he's buying.
With just the one year left on his contract, it was no surprise that Big Vic was leaving. However, Sadio Mané had two years left, so on the one hand it was a bit of a pisser when he left for bloody Liverpool, treading that well worn path from Southampton to career obscurity but on the other hand, we've completely pulled their pants down to the tune of £36 million. This is an obscene amount of money for a player who will be disappearing off to the African Nations cup every two years and even if he doesn't, he tends to have November to March off every year anyway. Again, a very good player who will be missed and who definitely added an extra bit of unpredictability to our attacking play, when he could be bothered. I know there's a new manager there now but it is quite ridiculous how they have now bought five players off of us, only to finish lower in the league than us. I see that Klopp has signed an extension to his contract so we are going to have a few more years of over the top antics on the touchline. Liverpool fans will lap it up of course but I guarantee most fans of other clubs will be thinking that he's a complete twat by the end of this coming season, if they don't think so already. We’d do well to finish above them again this season but whilst they’ve still got shit like Moreno, Milner, Henderson, Lucas and Lovren – there’s always a chance.
The Big beautiful Italian Graziano Pellè is leaving and going to fucking China of all places to play for a team I’ve never heard of called Shandong Luneng. They are not alone in being a Chinese club I haven’t heard of because I haven;t heard of any of them. Apparently he will be the 6th highest paid player in the world on about £250,000 a week. I mean – he’s good but he ain’t that good and a quick check reveals that Shandong are currently 14th in a 16 team league, with 13 games left to make up a 26 point difference on top of the league, Guangzhou Evergrande. I wonder if they’ve signed him because the average Chinese defender isn’t that tall and at 6 foot 4 he’s going to have a lot of joy in the air. It is not a football decision though of course but that much wedge though must make it an easy decision as he was never going to earn that much money in Europe.
First off, The Lying Dutchman Ronald Koeman completed his widely predicted desertion to Everton. As was befitting of a man whose stock had fallen massively, his first day as Everton manager was spent blaming Southampton for why he'd moved. Apparently, we wouldn't allow him to work the last year of his contract without signing another one so we forced him out effectively. Why is he not suing us for constructive dismissal then. Ah yes... I have a feeling that this is complete bullshit and that the £7 million big ones per year might have had something to do with it but to be honest, what else was he going to say? Still, it's done now, thanks for the two years but now you can go and fuck yourself and I hope you fail massively at Everton, trying to revive their 1980s glory days
It was entirely predictable that Victor Wanyama would leave and so he did for £11 million to bloody Tottenham. It hasn't annoyed me as much as it would have done last year but it's still disappointing that he's gone to them. In the same way as they did with Morgan Schneiderlin, Saints obviously told him to get his head down and he would be allowed to leave after another season. To be fair, in the main, Big Vic did this and had a good season aside from a couple of completely brainless red cards. He will be missed and is a lot better than many Saints fans give him credit for. I do wonder how he's going to get on at Tottenham because he's not going to be as automatic a first choice as he was here. I guess though, that Pochettino knows what he's buying.
With just the one year left on his contract, it was no surprise that Big Vic was leaving. However, Sadio Mané had two years left, so on the one hand it was a bit of a pisser when he left for bloody Liverpool, treading that well worn path from Southampton to career obscurity but on the other hand, we've completely pulled their pants down to the tune of £36 million. This is an obscene amount of money for a player who will be disappearing off to the African Nations cup every two years and even if he doesn't, he tends to have November to March off every year anyway. Again, a very good player who will be missed and who definitely added an extra bit of unpredictability to our attacking play, when he could be bothered. I know there's a new manager there now but it is quite ridiculous how they have now bought five players off of us, only to finish lower in the league than us. I see that Klopp has signed an extension to his contract so we are going to have a few more years of over the top antics on the touchline. Liverpool fans will lap it up of course but I guarantee most fans of other clubs will be thinking that he's a complete twat by the end of this coming season, if they don't think so already. We’d do well to finish above them again this season but whilst they’ve still got shit like Moreno, Milner, Henderson, Lucas and Lovren – there’s always a chance.
The Big beautiful Italian Graziano Pellè is leaving and going to fucking China of all places to play for a team I’ve never heard of called Shandong Luneng. They are not alone in being a Chinese club I haven’t heard of because I haven;t heard of any of them. Apparently he will be the 6th highest paid player in the world on about £250,000 a week. I mean – he’s good but he ain’t that good and a quick check reveals that Shandong are currently 14th in a 16 team league, with 13 games left to make up a 26 point difference on top of the league, Guangzhou Evergrande. I wonder if they’ve signed him because the average Chinese defender isn’t that tall and at 6 foot 4 he’s going to have a lot of joy in the air. It is not a football decision though of course but that much wedge though must make it an easy decision as he was never going to earn that much money in Europe.
Graziano leaves with my full blessing, not that he’d give a
shit about that, as I think that his attitude and performances have been on the
whole superb, since the day he signed. The
club have managed to get back more than we paid for him which is an amazing
effort, considering he only has one year left on his contract, his knee is a
bit suspect and he is now 31. I don't
know what Chinese is for “don't let him take a fucking penalty” but I'm sure
it's written in the small print of his contract somewhere underneath all the
money. If he'd left to go to an Italian
club then I would have been delighted for him as that was always his stated
ambition is to play regularly in Serie A. I am pleased that he's not gone to
another English club but I am slightly disappointed that he's put money before football
career. I'm sure he could've earned a decent amount at an Italian club and
still had an international career, which I assume is going to end as soon as he
lands in China. He could have gone to
Juventus or Lazio for two years and then moved to China at 33. His move does however mean that his last act
as a Saints player was to produce one of the most wanky attempts at taking a
penalty ever, in the history of football.
Incoming… Nathan Redmond, who has joined from Norwich. He's a winger who has always done it in flashes without bringing consistency to his game and he seems to have been around for ages because he made his debut for Birmingham when he was 16. He is a regular in the England Under 21s side along with JWP and Matt Targett and on the face of it there is no downside to signing a promising English Under 21 international. From what I recall, the bastard always scored against us for Norwich so at least that’s stopped. The question is whether he’s a replacement for Sadio Mané or for Juanmi. If it’s for Mané then we are going to struggle to get the same amount of goals out of him over the season. If it’s for Juanmi then he couldn’t really contribute less.
We have also completed the signing of a new midfielder, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg from Bayern Munich. The first thing that strikes me about this deal is that there is absolutely no way that my Dad is going to be able to pronounce his name so "Hoy-berg" will become "Hodj-bu-Jurg"or something like that. In all seriousness, I don't know too much about the guy but he was the youngest ever player to make a first-team appearance for Bayern, has 17 caps for Denmark and is highly regarded. I don't think anyone even knows which type of midfielder he is but at least he has some physical stature, standing as he does at 6 foot 1. Again, at 20 years old, this can only be a good thing to get a highly regarded international footballer on a five year contract. The internet jokes about him signing for Liverpool are already really fucking boring, even if they are understandable.
It looks like another player coveted by Liverpool will not be joining them as Ryan Bertrand has signed a new five year contract tying him (in theory) to the club until 2021. It was nice to hear him saying in his interview how much he has benefited from a regular football. It's good to know there are still a few players who think that way. It is great news that he has signed a new contract as he was one of the ones I could see other clubs coming in for and along with the recent new contracts for Virgil, Fraser, Davo and JWP, reinforces that the players are happy with the ambition at the club even if the Lying Dutchman wasn’t.
What else do we need…. In my opinion we need another striker unless the medical staff have managed to find a way to get J-Rod and Charlie Austin through the season without getting badly injured. Whilst I think that the signings of Hojbjerg and Redmond are decent and it’s obvious that we are spending money on new contracts for key players, it would be nice to have one signing that has a real wow factor to it. However, the last couple of times we've tried to do this, it's ended up with Gaston or Osvaldo sized fuck ups. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain would be nice however and a bit more reliable than those two.
Away from the pipe dreams of signing name players, it is good to see that the philosophy of the club regards to buying potential and selling a couple of years later for top dollar, is alive and well. Sometimes as a fan however, it would be nice to have a summer where we could look forward to the new season without a level of uncertainty. For example, if everyone had stayed including the manager, we would certainly have been confident of finishing in the top 10. Now, we could finish anywhere between 5th and 17th. Personally, I think the signs are good but I'm just worried about the amount of goals that have been sold with Mane and Pellè leaving. I wonder if Antoine Griezmann fancies coming to England but staying in red and white stripes next season?
Oh yes, the manager. The new main man is Claude Puel who has a very good record from managing teams in France. He is therefore ideally placed to sign Griezmann for us for next season (ha!). Little is known of Claude over here so it's an interesting one. One thing that has been emphasised is his preference to promote youth players from within the club's Academy which is of course part of the club philosophy that went to shit under the Lying Dutchman. Claude seems to speak at a decent level of English which is comforting and seems to be quite a steely, determined kind of individual. His playing career was spent totally at one club, AS Monaco so just maybe we now have a manager with at least some appreciation of the idea of sticking around. In his playing career, he had a reputation for being a Roy Keane type of player but hopefully without the psychotic episodes. Hopefully, he will be a massive success… and then not sod off after a couple of years.
Pre-season training has started for anyone who was not involved in Euro 2016 and now that tournament is over, we can all focus on August 13 when we start at home against Watford. Claude will need to get the boys hitting the ground running as of the first three home games are all very winnable, being as they are against Watford Sunderland and Swansea where as the away games are a fucking nightmare with Manchester United and Arsenal up first. The TV companies have stepped up to the plate straight away and fucked us around giving us Manchester United away on a Friday night, purely so they can cover Mourinho’s first home game and the fact that our fans have a fucking ridiculous journey on a Friday night now won't have even entered into their thinking.
Incoming… Nathan Redmond, who has joined from Norwich. He's a winger who has always done it in flashes without bringing consistency to his game and he seems to have been around for ages because he made his debut for Birmingham when he was 16. He is a regular in the England Under 21s side along with JWP and Matt Targett and on the face of it there is no downside to signing a promising English Under 21 international. From what I recall, the bastard always scored against us for Norwich so at least that’s stopped. The question is whether he’s a replacement for Sadio Mané or for Juanmi. If it’s for Mané then we are going to struggle to get the same amount of goals out of him over the season. If it’s for Juanmi then he couldn’t really contribute less.
We have also completed the signing of a new midfielder, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg from Bayern Munich. The first thing that strikes me about this deal is that there is absolutely no way that my Dad is going to be able to pronounce his name so "Hoy-berg" will become "Hodj-bu-Jurg"or something like that. In all seriousness, I don't know too much about the guy but he was the youngest ever player to make a first-team appearance for Bayern, has 17 caps for Denmark and is highly regarded. I don't think anyone even knows which type of midfielder he is but at least he has some physical stature, standing as he does at 6 foot 1. Again, at 20 years old, this can only be a good thing to get a highly regarded international footballer on a five year contract. The internet jokes about him signing for Liverpool are already really fucking boring, even if they are understandable.
It looks like another player coveted by Liverpool will not be joining them as Ryan Bertrand has signed a new five year contract tying him (in theory) to the club until 2021. It was nice to hear him saying in his interview how much he has benefited from a regular football. It's good to know there are still a few players who think that way. It is great news that he has signed a new contract as he was one of the ones I could see other clubs coming in for and along with the recent new contracts for Virgil, Fraser, Davo and JWP, reinforces that the players are happy with the ambition at the club even if the Lying Dutchman wasn’t.
What else do we need…. In my opinion we need another striker unless the medical staff have managed to find a way to get J-Rod and Charlie Austin through the season without getting badly injured. Whilst I think that the signings of Hojbjerg and Redmond are decent and it’s obvious that we are spending money on new contracts for key players, it would be nice to have one signing that has a real wow factor to it. However, the last couple of times we've tried to do this, it's ended up with Gaston or Osvaldo sized fuck ups. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain would be nice however and a bit more reliable than those two.
Away from the pipe dreams of signing name players, it is good to see that the philosophy of the club regards to buying potential and selling a couple of years later for top dollar, is alive and well. Sometimes as a fan however, it would be nice to have a summer where we could look forward to the new season without a level of uncertainty. For example, if everyone had stayed including the manager, we would certainly have been confident of finishing in the top 10. Now, we could finish anywhere between 5th and 17th. Personally, I think the signs are good but I'm just worried about the amount of goals that have been sold with Mane and Pellè leaving. I wonder if Antoine Griezmann fancies coming to England but staying in red and white stripes next season?
Oh yes, the manager. The new main man is Claude Puel who has a very good record from managing teams in France. He is therefore ideally placed to sign Griezmann for us for next season (ha!). Little is known of Claude over here so it's an interesting one. One thing that has been emphasised is his preference to promote youth players from within the club's Academy which is of course part of the club philosophy that went to shit under the Lying Dutchman. Claude seems to speak at a decent level of English which is comforting and seems to be quite a steely, determined kind of individual. His playing career was spent totally at one club, AS Monaco so just maybe we now have a manager with at least some appreciation of the idea of sticking around. In his playing career, he had a reputation for being a Roy Keane type of player but hopefully without the psychotic episodes. Hopefully, he will be a massive success… and then not sod off after a couple of years.
Pre-season training has started for anyone who was not involved in Euro 2016 and now that tournament is over, we can all focus on August 13 when we start at home against Watford. Claude will need to get the boys hitting the ground running as of the first three home games are all very winnable, being as they are against Watford Sunderland and Swansea where as the away games are a fucking nightmare with Manchester United and Arsenal up first. The TV companies have stepped up to the plate straight away and fucked us around giving us Manchester United away on a Friday night, purely so they can cover Mourinho’s first home game and the fact that our fans have a fucking ridiculous journey on a Friday night now won't have even entered into their thinking.
When the Euro 2016 players come back I can imagine Davo being very happy with his summer, Shane pulling his Italian Goalkeeper face to anyone who asks, Fraser and Ryan with a resigned 'yeah, whatever' shrug and Jose and Cedric having stolen the trophy, filled it with alcohol and still being pissed, lurching up the corridors at Staplewood. The Portuguese Men of War return. It's comforting to know that our back 5 will consist of two European Champions, England's No 1-elect, England's no 3 elect and the only one not in the Euro's was Virgil Van Dijk. Not a bad defence to base a team on for Claude.
Anyway, I hope that we have seen the last of outgoing first team players and
we can look forward to another good season in the Premier League. I feel like it may be a bit much to expect
another season is of improving our league position but I think I've said that
at the start of the last three seasons. Anyway,
#WeFuckingMarchOn
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