CamSaint

All good points. I must admit I had not thought of the free transfer route for full back cover. And yet that's exactly what we did with the goalkeepers last year when Willy was Initially brought in for one month to cover when McCarthy & Forster were injured, and then that was further extended to the end of the season. It is therefore quite possible the club might be prepared to take a chance on doing the same in the event of KWP picking up a significant injury, rather than use up valuable funds on a backup that might barely play, especially if they see evidence that Tino is making good progress in his recovery/training. It is a shame that Saints don't have access to the magic money tree that politicians on both sides of the political divide find so useful 😊.

Could be a major problem for the club if it is affecting travel for crucial transfer discussions.......

Interestingly, in the list of PL transfers posted by @le_tiss earlier in this thread, 7 other clubs as well as Saints have yet to spend more than £20M on a single player so far this window: Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton, Palace, Fulham, Leicester and Newcastle. Of course this will no doubt change by the time the window 'slams shut', but it does show that we're not the only ones who have been shopping at the lower end of the market with just a couple of weeks to go.

If we do go for an 'experienced' CB, it is essential that he has the qualities that we need, not just games under his belt, and your assessment seems very sound. After all, Bednarek has played in 132 PL matches, yet lacks most of the qualities you highlight! Assuming Arsenal were willing to sell, I wonder what he would be valued at, and whether his salary would be beyond us?

Watkins has scored 25 PL goals for Villa in 73 matches, so roughly 1 in 3 - around 12 goals in a full season. Of course he is ex-Brentford and a classic example of the model Saints are working to: Brentford bought him for £6.5M in 2017 (when he was 21) and sold him to Villa in 2020 for £30.4M. In his 3 seasons with Brentford he scored 49 goals in 143 appearances in all competitions. So he has had a similar goal return in the PL as he had in the championship. So PL-proven, he could probably do a good job for Saints but would the club splash the cash for him?

I was trying to work out where he might go. Forest have Henderson, Fulham have just got Leno & Bournemouth have just signed Netto on a free (presumably as back-up). The only place I thought he might get a chance of first team football is Leicester, but surely they wouldn't come knocking again, would they.........? Other than that, I guess it would be bench warming for a club who would pay more than we are but I have no idea who that might be.

And yet he didn't even get onto the pitch yesterday in our final pre-season match, when we were chasing the game.....

Saints not allowed to stream the game live as today is the start of the EFL season. https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2022-07-29/preview-southampton-vs-villarreal-pre-season-friendly-30-july-2022.

Caballero played 90 minutes for the B team last Saturday.

Anyone know how long it takes to get 'international clearance'? In other words, any chance he could be included in the squad for tomorrow's match?

To my mind, the key question is: 'How long are Saints prepared to wait?' Five and a half weeks until the transfer window 'slams shut' and in that time we play 5 PL matches. Given that Ralph has said been open about the need another striker, you'd like to think we'd want the 'Delap-type' striker to be involved in as many of those matches as possible. With at least 3 of those games against the big boys, the new striker might not necessarily make a difference to the outcome of those games, but training and playing in as many of them as possible would be invaluable to the team. We clearly have pushed hard for Delap, but if City really are adamant that Delap will only be allowed out on loan, and with Burnley keen on him, that could be a deal that is finalised quickly and we move on. Or are Saints prepared to take him on loan and potentially end up in the same position at the end of the season as we were with Broja? If we are, then surely that deal could be struck quickly. However, if the Delap deal doesn't go our way would the club be prepared to wait as long as it takes in the hope they can get Broja back? The club has moved pretty swiftly so far this window, and I am sure that they have other strikers 'on the list'. I just wonder how long it will be before they make a move for someone else.

This guy is so well connected that this is very likely to be true, which would suggest we're not looking to buy an 'experienced' striker. If we were to land Delap, I wonder if there would be any attempt to loan out AA and loan in an experienced striker? My thought would be to loan Pukki from Norwich, with AA going the other way. Pukki has done well in his two PL seasons and, at 32, would probably relish the chance at not waiting another year to see if Norwich go up again. Meanwhile Norwich get a Championship-proven striker and AA gets the chance to regain confidence & the scoring habit. Not that much risk to Saints in terms of either loan, and if Mara and/or Delap develop well this year, we would start next season with 2 more established strikers who are ours, plus a returning AA with hopefully more confidence. Of course, this is a complete flight of fancy on my behalf!

If that's the case, that presumably makes it more difficult to tempt Colwill here, even if we offload Stephens, as that would suggest Colwill would only be first choice in a 3atb formation. Would that be enough for him?

Hopefully the formalities will be completed in time for him to be involved in the final 2 pre-season matches next week.

Having 3 RBs assumes that Tino makes a full recovery and gets back to the level he was at before the injury. With an ACL, that is far from a given and even if he does it might not be until some time in 2023 before he actually gets there. So what do we do if KWP gets injured in the early part of the season if we don't have any proper backup? Obviously finances are a key factor, but it makes perfect sense to bring in another RB, with KWP also vying for the LB spot with Perraud. Maybe Small goes out on loan. At the end of next season we will know where we are with Tino and I assume at least one of the RBs would be sold then. Just MHO, of course.

Is it therefore reasonable to assume that all of our new signings so far this window would be on similar salaries? I have no idea, but if so, the saving on Forster's salary alone has more than comfortably covered all 5, with some to spare! (I guess some of that may be allocated to contract enhancements for Moi & Salisu). And of course, we have savings on Long's & indeed Broja's salary as well. If we also manage to off load a few players, it further reinforces the cracking business approach from SR so far this summer. Although I've no idea of the numbers involved, they seem to have applied the same principles to the coaching team - 3 coaches out and 2 new ones in along with an internal promotion. Add in the replacement of Glover with Joe Shields and they really seem to have shaken things up big time.

....and he wears the No. 7 shirt........

Huh? Was inflation from Delap to Carrillo 450%? I don't think so.... Interesting discussion. Going 'all MLG' for a moment, the Bank of England inflation calculator shows that 'Goods & services costing £4M in 2001 would cost £5.758M in 2018'. The average rate of inflation over that period was 2.5% but football transfer fees don't follow the normal rules of inflation because of the TV money that was pumped in. According to https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/how-much-average-premier-league-16552046, the average Premier League transfer fee in 2001/02 was £4,609,341 compared to £16,068,469 in 2018/19. If you apply that ratio to £4M, you get £13.94M, which would make Carillo 'more expensive' than Delap. Lots of holes in that argument, since it is only applying averages, but quite interesting, nonetheless!

It is also interesting that he is looking for more first team opportunities. According to Transfermarkt he started 12 games for Arsenal last season, playing the full 90 in 9 of them. He came on as a sub in a further 7, and was an unused sub in 18, so he was an integral member of their first team squad last season with a decent number of PL minutes. If it is true that Saints have approached them for a loan deal, you'd think that we would have to be suggesting to them that he would be a regular starter to convince them that he would get more playing time, unless he has fallen down the pecking order there with the signing of Viera (don't know enough about either player to know if they'd be in direct competition).

Anyone know when the players report back for pre-season training? That would be the point by which you'd hope that the significant 'ins' & 'outs' had been completed. But then again, we are talking about Saints..........

Andrew Sparkes, the goalkeeping coach is still at Saints. Oops, already answered above!

You would imagine that Crocker would be instrumental in such a signing and you would like to think that current goalkeeper coach Andrew Sparkes would also have been consulted. Can anyone remember whether Crocker and/or Sparkes were at Saints when Gunn was signed?

Foot fracture - out for 5-6 weeks. https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2022-05-17/romain-perraud-injury-update-southampton-liverpool

I seem to remember in a Total Saints Podcast, Martin Semmens said that as the new screens are much heavier, the delay was due to sorting out corrosion that had been discovered in the steel supports to which the new screens will be fitted. He did imply that that was well in hand, though, but clearly it hasn't happened yet. Obviously my memory wasn't quite right! - See Mozz's post below!

There seems to be a lot of confusion about this. According to my Sky Go planner just now, it says is being shown on Sky Sports Main Event (401) and Sky Sports PL HD (402) but not until 10.30 PM (10.30 PM - 12.15 AM).