Pre-Season Media and Big Club Bullshit Wars

 

£50 million... We Demand You Sell Him For a Tenner

For the first time since 2016, Southampton FC have a number of players who are in demand by those further up the football food chain.  Of course, owing to the fact that we got relegated at the end of last season, there are now twenty clubs higher in the food chain, instead of just the usual six or seven.  Even though we are seven years further down the line from 2016, I still get annoyed during the part of the year where the vast majority of football is on holiday.  It is of course slow news month, so you can guarantee that much of the stuff you read is made up. You will read stuff on mainstream media that will basically be speculation and you will also read stuff on fan-based accounts that you have to just ignore.  Even the previously reliable and credible Fabrizio Romano has taken to tweeting out photoshopped pictures of a players head on a rumoured new clubs shirt.  It's embarrassing.

Outside of Romano and the usual suspects, there will be all of the Super League clubs and fans thereof, making up a figure that Southampton are asking for and then saying that that’s far too much and Southampton should therefore sell their players to (insert big club name here) for about half of that. This player has a three-year contract remaining and Saints wants £50 million for him and that’s ridiculous - they should sell him to us for £25 million. Fuck off!

In any transaction, the seller sets the price and the buyer decides whether they want to pay for it or not. Unless there is a clause in a contract, it has always been this way and it always will be. The assumption of course is that because you are in the Championship, you must be desperate for any crumbs that are thrown your way.  However, as seems to be the case with us, if the relegated club isn’t desperately in need of the money, then why should they sell on the cheap?  Yes, Saints probably do need the money but not to the extent of for example, Leicester and Leeds who are both completely in the brown stuff financially if you believe what’s written about their brushes with FFP.  All of this is completely obvious, but you have to remind yourself sometimes to just ignore most of the shit and let it play out.

There is a course an issue with the fact that we have been relegated and in the case of JWP, it’s more than just about whether we need the money or not. We could do what we did with Oriol Romeu and just agree to the move that he wants, even if that is to Liverpool and they are only offering £25 million. I would suggest not doing that.  Depending on exactly  how much we need the money, I would be tempted to have a figure in our heads now of say £40 million but once the season starts and we get closer to the end of the transfer window, the price goes up to £50 million.  In reality, the only way we will get decent money quickly for JWP or any of these players who think they belong in the Premier League, is if there are more than one team interested.

It leaves me wondering what we do in August when our season starts and maybe we still have all these players who have not left. In all truth, apart from JWP and Romeo Lavia, I wouldn’t start any player who is likely and is wanting to move by the end of the transfer window. None of the others are significantly good enough to warrant it, not KWP, Salisu, ABK.  Che Adams is an interesting one because he is still undoubtedly our best striker.  To be honest, even though he has only one year left on his contract, I'd be telling him that he's staying no matter what rather than selling him for £12 million or whatever and having to find a replacement.

We of course have a new manager and the story behind that maybe tells you where we’re at regarding being pushed around, with Saints and Swansea City embroiled in a ridiculous argument over where the Saints were a Premier League club when we appointed him. Swansea are arguing that they are entitled to more compensation because we were still officially a Premier League club when we approached Martin.  However, Russell Martin‘s first game in charge of Saints is not going to be in the Premier League and never was, and approaching someone is not the same as appointing someone.  It really was in Swansea‘s interest to get the deal done because at the end of the day they were still paying the salary of a manager and coaching staff, who were not going to be there next season.  Saints weren’t paying anyone to be manager in the close season, so it didn’t really matter to us.  It wasn’t as if Russell Martin wasn’t putting some input into things with Saints anyway.

Please be Better Than the Last Two Twats

Time went on, civilisations rose and fell throughout it all and the impasse between Saints and “the Welsh club" continued.  He said, she said, embarrassing bullshit over the compensation figure owed. You would think that two football club boards of full-grown adults would’ve been able to find a compromise figure somewhere between the two figures to let everybody move on but not to be. As it turned out Russell Martin eventually came through the door St Mary‘s two days before preseason training started, closely followed by the coaches.  Hurrah

The first day of preseason training brought the first interview with the new boss and on the face of it, it sounded very good as he set out what he aims to achieve. I have learned over the years to listen to these things and take them at face value because talk is cheap. Nathan Jones spoke quite well at the start, as did Ruben Selles but ultimately, they were both shockingly inept and just delivered a horrible relegation.  The key things I took from Russell’s interview were regarding the style of play, the ambition to go straight back up and the fact that they are preparing for losing players just before the window shuts.

On that score, the lowball offers for our players keep on coming in. Newcastle became the latest to try, using their sport-washing client journalists (who are probably scared of the way their owners have been known to treat journalists) to put out there that they were interested Tino Livramento for £12 million.  Big club again setting the below-market-value price that we should sell for.  The good news is that Tino seems to feel that he owes the club for getting him fit again so he’s unlikely to throw the toys out, which of course is what Newcastle hopes he does.   Mind you, we said this about Virgil van Dijk. 

Liverpool used the same tactic as Newcastle when they put out that they would not pay more than £25 million for JWP – another player who is not going to throw his toys out.  Liverpool are soon going to leak to the press what they are willing to pay for Romeo Lavia so I look forward to that one with eyes rolling in the back of my head.  It just feels like a time to mute certain words on Twitter, those words being Arsenal, Chelsea, Newcastle, Liverpool, Saudi, Manchester United, Mason Mount, Mbappé, Spurs and Tottenham.

Theeeeeeo.  One of the Good Guys

Before we worried about incoming players, we needed to get shot of some of the unwanted players we had in our bloated squad.  At the start of the break, we waved goodbye to the on-loan Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who was generally useless last year.  He was going to replace Oriol Romeu as the experienced midfield option and was simply not up to it either in ability or attitude.  Arsenal have let him go but I wouldn’t even want him on a free in the Championship, so I hope we go nowhere near.  Also leaving were the out-of-contract Theo Walcott and Mohamed Elyounoussi.  At the time it was announced that Walcott was going, I kind of thought it was a shame and that he could do a job next year but as time has gone on and I see he’s likely to join Reading in League 1, I do wonder if he felt himself that he was reaching the end of the road.  Not only that, Ruben Selles is Reading’s new manager.  The man who masterminded zero victories from our last ten games has clearly found someone gullible enough to fall for his ‘results don’t matter long term process' bullshit.

Walcott did well in the second half of the season compared to our other attackers and while that was a low bar, he at least tried in every game and did is best.  The same can also be said for Elyounoussi, who was trusted by every manager to play, even though he did nothing with the ball.  The fact that both of them largely stayed in the team, tells you a lot about why we got relegated however.  It looked for a bit like Willy Caballero was going to stay another year but the opportunity to be Assistant Manager at Leicester was too good for him to turn down at 42, so off he went.

Oh look, something actually happened - first out the door, perhaps unsurprisingly, was Mislav Orsic who signed for Trabzonspor in Turkey on a very generous tax incentive no doubt. We will simply never know with this guy. It was a relatively cheap £6 million gamble that spectacularly failed to pay off and we have accepted about half of that fee to get his wages off of the books.  Well, I assume we’ve got his wages off the books and we’re not subsidising it for the remainder of his contract. This one doesn’t even register on the “Give-a-fuck-o-meter”.  When we signed him, I pushed the facts that he was 30 and had never played league football outside of Croatia and South Korea, out of my head because I of course, wanted him to be good and for the transfer to be a masterstroke.  All he proved though is that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

His fellow January arrival, Tall Paul has been linked with various European clubs and Romeo Lavia with everybody but that’s about it.  There's been not much about some of those you assume would want to go like KWP, Salisu and ABK.  The only incoming rumours seem to be about Manchester City youth players with a young goalkeeper Josh McNamara ready to join along with a midfielder, Shea Charles. I have no issue with this as our new Director of  Football Jason Wilcox has to be trusted, but as per last season, it’s the experienced players we need to sort out.

Talking of which, Joe Aribo has popped up to say that it was a disappointing season last year and that he didn't get given much of a chance to impress but he’s cool with it because it was all part of God’s plan. Can’t help but feel that he is somewhat abdicating responsibility for the fact that he barely raised to jog last season and was complete shite. I hope that the voices in his head tell him that it's time to leave.  By the way, he had plenty of chances but if they were farther away than a couple of yards, he couldn't be bothered to run for them.

One of the things to come out of Russell Martin’s first interview and that was that players are going to have to run, in order to play his style of football.  As far as Joe Aribo is concerned, that tells me that he is either going to 100% have to change the way he approaches things or he is going to be leaving the club. Martin’s desire to play possession-based football, for me also cast doubts over players who don’t have terribly good first touch who are not very good at retaining possession.  There are a few that spring to mind that category with Adam Armstrong and Ibrahima Diallo being the most obvious.

Rampaging Left Back Ahoy!

As I was about to hit ‘send’ on this, we signed Ryan Manning on a free, having played the last two seasons under Russell Martin at Swansea.  A left back who at 27, is the right age and is also used to this league.  On the face of it, a good signing given that Perraud is our only real left back option and he’s injured and rumour has it that he wanted to leave anyhow.

The first friendly is a ‘behind closed doors’ effort at St Georges Park when we play Benfica.  Pre-season is about to move up a notch and so will the incomings and outgoings and so will the volume and thickness off bullshit coming from the ITK’s.  Be aware.