Dusic

Hard to see us spending £15m on a wide player and then being able to sort CM as well. But he does sound like a Ralph player from the section on him here: https://totalfootballanalysis.com/article/youngsters-turned-sporting-cp-around-tactical-analysis-tactics At this stage in the window things will move fast, but also teams will get used to flush out offers from others, so hard to know what to believe. It does fit with Semmens suggesting that some of the other European leagues are under more financial pressure so there may be some deals at lower prices than first quoted. This could be an example, whilst seemingly some players in France now seem to be available at reduced fees, including some midfielders that fit our need.

Which current or ex Saint would you hire to the following roles within the club, and why? Academy Manager Our best spell in the Academy coincided with Georges Prost in this role, so I am going to appoint another Frenchman, Leandre Griffit. He had one good moment in a Saints shirt and then faded into obscurity so would be well placed to guide the nippers through what 90% of them will experience. If there is enough budget he can have Yoann Folly as his assistant - he always seems to be looking for a job. Ticket Office Manager The final two candidates were Dan Harding who just has the look of a call center manager, and Claude Puel. In the end, Puel gets the nod. Ticketing is always a shit show at Saints so limiting yourself to two or three stock phrases no matter what you are asked is a positive. Lots of possibilities but little enjoyment to be had in this role. Commercial Manager A few candidates were considered for this. Stuart Armstrong has a law degree so must be clever and a candidate for a job wearing a suit. Imants Bleidelis has the Baltics market in the palm of his hand. Chung Lee can get us to be a force in Japan after his goal in the Asian Cup final and Emmanuel Mayuka has opened up new opportunities playing for Green Buffaloes in Zambia. Jhon Viafara has a strong network but is currently busy. In the end its hard to look beyond Mario Lemina. Ability to make creatively awful hastags? Check. Ability to persevere with them? Check. Attention to factual accuracy & due dilligence? Check. #welcomebacktoniclad Canteen Gaffer He always needed everything putting on a plate for him so he should have learned what is required for this job. Now that the best finisher in the world, Charlie Austin, is errr, finished, he should be brought back to stand around doing fuck all whilst his lackies serve yoghurt to Michael Obafemi and Shane Long. Head of Security Lots of interest here. Osvaldo was preferred candidate but went AWOL between interviews. Paul Wotton didnt want to leave Devon and Mark Hughes is still too raw. He might be 61 now but Terry Hurlock gets the nod and also a place on the bench at Burnley.

Dan Sheldon on TSP suggesting will be loan deals. Seems a pattern generally for loan with option/obligation and for Saints, given how tight the cash is, those types might work well. All assuming the options are watertight. He suggested some of the bigger teams will have players that might be freed up for loan moves. Whilst, as Semmens suggested, in some of the other European leagues teams may come under more financial pressures due to Covid. Considering we have got in about £25m for Hojbjerg, Reed and some loan fees and spent basically the same on Salisu and KWP - its clear the spend what we generate is about right. Unless we can consistently find rough diamonds and make them £50m players to sell, its going to be hard to become a club that can look up rather than down most seasons when you see what over half the PL can do in terms of spending power. We are one of the longest established PL teams outside the top 6 or 7 but have pretty much the joint lowest record transfer fees, alongside Burnley.

Former Ralph favourite. An actual link to a midfielder, albeit from a poor source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/12724511/southampton-florentino-luis-transfer-hojbjerg/

Feels like the next 2 weeks will be very indicative of not just our season, but maybe also Ralph's tenure. Will the club back him? Worth remembering he resigned fairly suddenly from Leipzig when it stopped going his way. We need as a minimum a starting quality partner for JWP and a good #10 option. Interesting that the Butland/Gunn swap thing has come up again. Can't see it unless we also have a move lined up for Forster. Plus, isnt Butland also poor with his feet?

Pretty clear that Ralph has a very extreme tactical philosophy when it comes to pressing and the off the ball work. I like that generally. We arent going to win anything so its good to see a team play with a clear and aggressive approach rather than just chuck 11 players on the pitch like Bruce does at Newcastle, or Moyes at WHU. The problem is that with such an extreme approach when it doesn't work its going to be ruthlessly exposed by good players and the PL is full of them. Today, and in the Palace game it was far too extreme, with players in certain positions asked to do things they cannot do: Bednarek - is a defend your box CB who will win duels, make blocks and suits a deep defence. Vestergaard - as above Stephens - is a defender comfortable on the ball and who can help play out but who gets exposed by the better forwards. Romeu - suits a slow possession team where he can shield a deep back four. Very slow. McCarthy - is a shot stopper who claims crosses well but is one of the worst PL keepers with his feet and has poor judgement on when to leave his line. Forster - reactive shot stopper, poor at most other elements and awful coming off his line/ kicking Gunn - best suited stylistically but confidence shot after last season These players are the biggest problem we have as none really suit the way Ralph wants to play and their weaknesses are the type that won't improve on the TG. Summary: if we can't find a suitable no6 and GK especially then Ralph will need to tone down his ideal of how we can play, because the players just can't do it.

I think his alleged £20m price tag is ridiculous but he is a slightly different player to what we have, a little more technical on the ball than our #10s but not as physically able. Left footed also. Not sure he fits us off the ball, but depending on the deal he wouldn't be an awful option IMO.

One name I haven't seen linked before is Will Hughes. Duncan Castles (Sunday Times) says we are keen along with Brighton, but Watford want to keep him at the moment and have offered him a new contract. ‐------- Just listened to Ralph's part 2 presser and he reiterated that we don't have much money and admitted it can be frustrating when a player is identified and we can't quite afford him and he then goes elsewhere. He did say he loves the challenge though and that Saints don't play games with Agents etc - they offer first team football in the PL with good coaching and the opportunity to impress big clubs - and players are keen on it. Not on transfer topic but he also said it is very hard at academy level to compete with the big teams as their recruitment is very aggressive down to young age groups. Said we almost have to look for imperfect players who those teams won't have seen. Said Matt Crocker's knowledge has been very useful.

If we are talking about loaning someone from another PL team then I would imagine that involves paying 100% of the wages. Most of these Chelsea lads that get mentioned are on way over £100k a week so I doubt we would do that, even as a loan. Under, who Leicester are signing seems to be a loan with an obligation if he plays a certain no of games. Now thats a type of deal that could work well for us, if the obligation means it happens automatically rather than the player, if he does well, ending up doing a Toby on us and holding out for a better move. The UK deals are ridiculously overpriced, so I expect us to be dealing in Europe - as Semmens hinted, some of the other leagues will feel the pinch financially from Covid more than the PL. Also - we need one wide player, no more as its just to replace Boufal, who barely played anyway. In addition to CM obviously. From hearing Ralph earlier, rather than just reading the quotes, its clear they have a plan. Lets just hope they can execute it.

Two good additions: CM and competition for the Ralph #10s and if those players are of sufficient quality then that gives us a pretty decent window.

Dan Sheldon said on TA yesterday that Armstrong may be back for this. Even if not, suggests he won't be far away. Salisu will be after the first Intl break, so in October. (Source: Ralph). Surely Redmond's injury will see him miss this one but hopefully thats also not too bad, despite his poor start to the season we need him. Team - same but with a start for either Tella or Djenepo for the injured Redmond. IMO. Unless he thows Long in perhaps.

The stupid thing about the central midfield position is that the club would have known for about a year that Hojbjerg would very likely be leaving this summer, and that we would be looking to get shot of Lemina. There was also talk of us allowing Romeu to leave in January. They must have a whole host of targets in that area as have had ages to scout players specifically for RH's style and to tee up potential deals, much like the Salisu one which has probably been in the offing since January. Lets hope some of those are still available and that we are just playing a good waiting game, rather than scrambling to find someone available on loan. Our current depth would see us absolutely screwed if JWP picked up a mid severity injury. Across the whole squad there is only really GK and CB with any real competition for places, all others aside from maybe Adams are nailed starters when fit and thats not healthy.

FWIW most Everton fans think Davies is awful, especially off the ball which is why they brought in Allan and Doucoure. For what he would cost he isn't a good option IMO. But we need new faces soon, even more so if Redmond's injury is bad.

This summer, with a quality season behind him we could probably quote £50m for Ings. Next summer, if he were to make it clear he didn't want to sign a new one and wasn't as high profile performance wise then it would probably drop to £15-20m if we were lucky given his age. Lets hope he signs a new deal fairly soon because it won't end well otherwise (and there are probably no adequate replacements that will be available for our £12m - £15m price range!) IMO he will either sign one by Oct/Nov or won't at all.

Semmens also on TSP was pretty adamant that we would still do something. He suggested our plan was to get Salisu and KWP done early and then see how the market developed later on. The thinking seemed to be that Covid will impact other leagues more than the PL and that prices will be reduced near to the end of the window as clubs face the financial realities. Ralph certainly seemed frustrated about it all when asked in the pre Palace presser, but he seemed generally annoyed as had just found out Armstrong was injured. Lets just hope that he gets what he wants - we haven't really given him a lot in the market so far, and generally he is working with the same squad we had when he arrived. Hope we get two more (centre mid and versatile attacking mid) but think it will just be the first. Then, lets hope its not another Danso, who was clearly way down the list of CBs we wanted. Would say a few mid table sides have recruited very well so far: Everton, Palace, Newcastle, Villa so its important to keep improving.

Only way to stop speculation is to get him signed to a new deal, otherwise we will have to sell next summer should the demand be there. Should think he would be opwn to it if we start the season well and show improvement. He will have an eye on the Euros so knows he needs to be playing regularly, and also scoring.

He is also on over £120k a week, so no chance of us signing him, even on loan I wouldnt have thought. https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/18717467.ralph-hasenhuttl-admits-saints-needed-bring-best-will-smallbone-crystal-palace/ From RH comments in the above it made me think about Kuzyaev. Sure we will see some links emerge this week about a few...

The issues with RLC: 1. He is always injured 2. We wouldn't be able to sign him permanently if he did well so its against the ethos of the club 3. He isnt a 'no6' 4. He is always injured

So the only recent links have been Choudhury (would surely cost too much yo be worth it) and the Russian lad (available on a free). Imagine we will see some strong linka shortly as we are in dire need of another midfielder - cannot be in a PL season with two CMs (three with Smallbone).

Makes sense, he obviously has no long term future at Saints.

Don't like Ralph moaning about the pre season, Arteta said they only had one session with all their players together so sure its been the same for most teams. As the club are so secretive we don't know how many minutes players had during pre season but a load looked off the pace. Romeu showed why Ralph always preferred PEH until it became clear he was leaving. Tidy on the ball but too slow today and was done after 70mins but we didnt have anyone to bring on. Not a disaster but a shame not to start well again, and Spurs then Burnley away is a tough couple to follow. We have a decent starting XI but as shown with the subs today, very little beyond that. Probably only at CB that there is any genuine competition for a place. Nothing from the two fullbacks and 10s who were very poor.

And the main thing: no money.

Also still not sign of Jeremi Rodriguez who supposedly signed this summer. Will be interesting to see the U18s lineup tomorrow and whether he is on that. Should keep this B Team thread for the season IMO as always good to follow progress.

Sounds like an absolute joker to be honest, so its probably true. To think an established PL side could get lumbered with the likes of Gao and this bloke. At least Gao seemingly recognises that he knows nothing about football and leaves others to run it (easily his best attribute). This guy sounds like one of those who thinks he gets it - the most dangerous kind of owner.

He is made of glass, which is a shame as he is quality. Not sure he is a '6' though. ------------------ Link to Russian midfielder Daler Kuzyaev, free agent after leaving Zenit: https://www.championat.com/football/news-4130831-sautgempton-izuchaet-vozmozhnost-podpisanija-kuzjaeva.html?utm_source=champtw&utm_medium=social If that ends up happening you would feel its low down the list of targets. Maybe a backup option.