Lallana's Left Peg

Getting a bit bored of the Wanyama stuff so looking at other transfer rumours etc. Saw some stuff on twitter over the weekend around Saints and Claudemir de Souza (Brazilian midfielder for FC Copenhagen). No idea if true or not but anyone know what sort of player he is? Also the Banega stuff has gone very quiet hasn't it?

I understand the need for agents but if you are a buying club and didn't use the agent to find you a player then the agent has done very little and cannot really command a big fee for his role in the deal. That is where this is different to the recruitment example used earlier. Recruitment agencies get a fee because they go out and find people for their clients. But if a company approached you directly would they also expect to have to pay an agency a fee? I don't think so. If there is another club out there that wants to pay £10m+ for Wanyama and pay the agent £1m+ then that is fair enough. I'd rather we didn't become a club who will throw millions at agents no matter who the player is or how much we're interested. I think Wanyama would make us better, but he isn't a 'must have'.

Those quotes (if true) sort of suggest that Wanyama wants his agent significantly compensated, and we know Cortese doesn't like to pay agents that much. However, given the player doesn't seem too bothered about coming here, I am not sure there is any leverage for Cortese in making the deal happen unless he compromises and I am not sure he is one to do that.

I don't see what is so funny about this. Oh, hang on, yes I do :lol: :lol: :lol: The best thing of all, near the end of the show he confirmed he will be appealing so he can try to continue to be Brighton Manager. So in May he says he won't be working on the retained list as he isn't sure he will still be at the club, then a few months later when no other club wants him he gets sacked and now has to go through the legal system to understand if he has any possibility of getting his own job back despite the fact his employers don't want him now either What a *****

JWP starts this evening - kick off at 7pm. Live on Eurosport.

Doesn't really sit well with me to have a player acknowledge that a bid has been accepted and then declare he won't be doing anything for three weeks as he is on holiday. You are either happy to join a club or you aren't. If you want to hedge your bets and wait for better then that is fair enough but I don't think we should be too accommodating after he has gone public with this.

I would be very surprised to see all three start a game. Does not reflect the way Pochettino likes to play and Davis played further forward when Cork and Schneiderlin also started so if Wanyama took his place then at least one of them would need to be further forward which isn't a natural position for any of them. Plus if all three played that means Ramirez out on the wing (no thanks). Not saying by any stretch of the imagination that Cork won't get plenty of games but all things being equal I see him being replaced by Wanyama if he signs. Unless there is a formation change of course.

We must be sure of him wanting to join if we are going to all this trouble. If he is going to be guaranteed first team football, that is Cork out of the team unless we're going to play a different formation.

I don't know much about Osvaldo, but were the character 'issues' also present during his time at Espanyol under Pochettino?

I'm not sure about that. He may not be a natural carrier of the ball nor a dribbler, but he does power forward with it in a pretty effortless manner whilst anyone challenging him just bounces off him.

It's gone a bit quiet the past few days...which means something is isn't too far away from happening in my experience.

The Kinnear interview was absolutely epic. He also claimed James Perch was still at the club from his time there. Perch was signed two years after he left. I genuinely think Kinnear has a problem - he appears to be a serial liar.

That is a good example. Stoke baulk at spending £10m on him because of the threat of a degenerative knee disease that will end his career. West Ham take a punt in desperation despite the failed medical, he does well enough for Newcastle to take him on a free transfer (again despite the knee issue), and then Chelsea don't think twice about spending £8m on him despite the chance that his knee could end his career tomorrow. There is a remote chance that a player could fail a medical because an existing injury isn't clearing up well and return to the deal a bit further down the line, but that is rare. Stuart Downing once signed for Aston Villa while he had a broken leg. To fail a medical these days usually means there is a heart problem, a blood problem, or something like that. Pretty serious stuff.

It takes something pretty serious to fail a medical these days. I doubt Reading would have criteria for passing a medical that would be much different to Saints. So that would mean the player in question has developed something (or shown signs of something) since he signed for us, whomever he may be. Given medicals are more around the general health of a player rather than his injury status, I imagine it may well have been a big shock to the player as well.

Hmm, so Fenerbache reportedly interested on Saints' Jose Fonte, and Saints reportedly monitoring Fenerbache's Miroslav Stoch...

Banega is a very clever player. Not much of a goal threat but he is awesome at being able to move the ball forward into the final third and get it to players in space who can do some damage. Creative but without creating goalscoring chances for others, however he will start loads of moves in moving the ball forward in transition. I can see why we'd be after him.

Quite a big fee for a defender who has fallen out of favour with his current club. Hope he proves his detractors wrong though. Would be great if he can defend well (I like the way he described himself as "aggressive" in his interview!) but I'd give an arm and a leg for a central defender who can nod the ball down to his midfielders when dealing with long balls and also pass it well out of the back to start attacks. I hope Lovern can.

Well without descending into an illegible rant, here are my main issues: 1. The 'cost per point' only recognises transfer fees, which are quite clearly only one aspect of a cost of a player (wages the other). So a player signed for £5m earning 30k a week is going to cost less in his first season than a player signed for £2m but earning 100k a week - but that isn't reflected in the table. 2. Transfer fees are guessed as many clubs don't disclose them - so immediately the data is guess work. 3. The stupid *****s have the club who paid the 'most per point' at the top of the table - shouldn't they be at the bottom or is the objective to spend the most money for least return? 4. And the most stupid thing of all is that pathetic table which shows apparent difference in value of players in the squad vs. the amount of money spent. How on earth can people who came up with this nonsense attribute a figure to what a player is worth? It is completely subjective and means nothing.

The whole idea behind how they've interpreted the data and the conclusions they have made is like a 14 year old has done something for their homework.

I would expect us to have a nibble at that price - unless Lens has slipped down the target list in the last year.

http://www.talksport.co.uk/sports-news/football/premier-league/transfer-rumours/130123/new-southampton-boss-mauricio-pochettino-rules-out-signing-a That was said in January. But, of course, attitudes can change.

I think he is a good player but I am not so sure the club would like him announcing he is joining us rather than them doing it all in the usual way. Unless he just confirms he is leaving Espanyol tomorrow without saying where he is going. Then there is the small matter of Pochettino apparently saying he wouldn't sign any player from Espanyol. Appreciate he'd be leaving on a Free Transfer but still, the sentiment is the same.

I saw the guy that e-mailed me this story last night and I managed to get something a bit more solid out of him. There were three people in the meeting - the suspected player, the translator, and a guy from Southampton (not the FA). No-one else - no agents, other club officials, family or anything like that. The was lots of cordial chat and he 100% remembers the Saints guy telling the player (through the translator) that whatever papers he signed at that meeting would be registered with the FA first thing the following day. He is pretty sure the Spanish guy is a player as he looked far too young to be a coach or anything like that. That is all he said - he lost interest in my questions after that. So it just gets a bit more confusing. I would find it surprising that anything would be signed in public like that if it was a player, especially if his agent wasn't present. It is perhaps more likely it could be an agent instead of a player there, or maybe even someone else joining the club in a non-playing role (another coach or something) but the guy I spoke with seemed sure it was a player, which seems far fetched to me. So nothing really conclusive (or even interesting) there but perhaps clears up a few things. Maybe.

Mate saw Saints speaking with a Spanish player in De Vere Grand Harbour last week and a translator and member of the FA was also there. I have no idea if this is true or not but this guy doesn't support Saints and spends a lot of time in the hotel as he uses it as his base when he goes on cruises etc. And yes, I found it strange that there would need to be a member of the FA there too but who knows what goes on these days. He said the translator was a fit female. Treat with suspicion and as a rumour but he thinks the guy he saw looked like Victor Ruiz after a quick google. There you go, a messy rumour.

I think we're just making sure we're informed of all movements in the market. A large part of our scouting and recruitment is our network - not just paid employees but also contacts around the world who will inform us of what is going on. Long gone are the days of only having one target to fill a need, I suspect we're keeping tabs on hundreds of players and in every single position no matter whether we've got a perceived need in some positions more than others. It's clear we're both very active scouting players and also making sure we've got an interest enough in players to be informed of what is happening with them. It makes it both easy for the media to misinterpret and fans alike around our intentions. It's just a big game these days.