HarvSFC

Weirdly, he did look okay again at Brighton last season after flopping at Celtic and performing badly for Brighton previously. Didn't recapture his goalscoring form, but he couldn't have it all. I don't think Brighton fans are too happy, either. As a depth option, Duffy's okay. Colwill's the delayed Dan Burn replacement, but letting another centre-back go, like us, they feel they're short of experience and now depth there. As for Coady, I know we've experimented with playing with a back three this pre-season, but I wouldn't like it to be the long-term plan. Same as Wolves are now moving away from it and they know that Coady can't perform as well in a back two, hence why they're moving him on. For us to go for him, we'd need to commit to the three at the back formation. But, anyway, Everton, as close to his home as they are, we never stood a chance, so no complaints here.

So, if Will Smallbone does well at Stoke, does he become a £35m player?

And Alan Nixon thought Everton would get him for £15m.

KWP being front and centre of the third kit announcement. That's promising.

Harry Kane being the example from last summer.

Adams was our second highest league scorer last season with 7 goals and is pretty much guaranteed 5-10 league goals a season. We already need to replace Broja's 6 league goals from last season. Now, we could replace Broja's with Broja himself, if we were to sell Adams. But, I also couldn't see Broja adding the other 7 to his goal tally at this stage in his career considering he got 6 in 32 last season. Undoubtedly, Broja does have the higher career ceiling and will likely hit 15 a season at some point. However, we have so many youngsters coming into the team this summer, that are unlikely to hit the ground running and need bedding in that we need the more senior known talents of players like Adams and KWP for this season. Next summer, should the outfield youngsters of Lavia, ABK and Mara grow into the players we're hoping for, then we can probably afford to sell one, or two players within our first eleven, as we did in the summer of 2014. But, for now, given there's so many questions over the current squad, we need to play safe. £20m to Nottingham Forest isn't a good deal, either. I've posted before all the striker flops, who have transferred for around £20m and more.

If they can put £50m down on Cucurella, you'd hope we'd expect them to do the same for KWP, especially given the English price boost.

Leicester suffering the loss of their owner will have had a big impact on their financial flexibility as well, as it did us.

Damsgaard was very impressive at the Euros, but his stats in Serie A are pretty poor. Sampdoria have done well to get £20m for him and again is another one with many question marks over his head.

Vestergaard was signed mid-August with Leicester panicking that all of their centre-backs were out injured. We might need to get through a couple of matches before a club begins to panic and looks to Bednarek, an experienced Premier League centre-back and international for an answer. Unfortunately, Everton don't seem to have a lot of money these days, as they'd be the club you'd bank on making a panic signing.

Would be very useful combined with our 70 minute drinks break + JWP too.

The next stage of JWP's development is to make those late, edge of the box runs and get some more open play goals. We know he's got the technique, its just about executing them in the Premier League. He can then become a Beckham/Lampard hybrid. KWP/Aribo down the right excites me too. Two ball carriers with nice footwork and athleticism who can cause some real problems.

Weird team. Bazunu keeps dropping in and out of the match squads, neither centre-back you'd want starting against Tottenham and I thought Redmond's days were done here, despite rating higher than Elyonoussi. Overriding positive is Perraud's playing and it's only pre-season.

Remember every summer of the “unsellables”, who were handicapping the club in the market due to previous mistakes. Forster, Lemina, Hoedt, Boufal, Elyounoussi and Carrillo. All players, who weren’t playing very much, but wanted to see out their well paid contracts and who we could only loan out before eventually letting them go for free, or pennies. Now, this summer, say if Mara flops and isn’t playing, do we reckon he’s going to want to sit around on his contract, or will he try to reignite his career elsewhere. I’d go with the latter. These are all players who have came to us for first team Premier League football, not to put in half arsed performances every other week while cashing in and posting on Instagram about their life of luxury (Hoedt/Lemina). Additionally, all of these signings will be on a fraction of what the aforementioned six were on, meaning that as long as we don’t get relegated, some of them can be affordable mistakes, as there isn’t a single club in world football who gets every transfer right. It just makes a lot of long term sense at the moment as long as we don’t get relegated. This is only the start of the new era, the first transfer window and when/if we do sell a player for a large profit then we may start looking to spend on a higher calibre of player, because we can afford to, which we can’t now. West Ham’s new signing of £30m+, there’s every possibility he becomes another Haller, as he’s only hit double figures once in his career, which was last season. He’ll be on big wages too for that fee. So, it’s either a £15m relatively low wage risk, or a £30m+ high wage risk, who we potentially can’t get rid of because of that. We’d also make a bigger profit on the former due to the initial outlay.

Braithwaite's a shocking footballer who has somehow blagged his way into Barcelona because of their well known financial issues. Shoot this one down, Benjy.

All sounds good, I know Adams said he wanted to win the Premier League here when he signed, but it's unusual for a Southampton signing to say they want to become one of the best footballers and win lots of trophies, which won't necessarily be here, but it's exciting to be a part of the journey. I've commented on us picking up players cheaply because they've ran their contract down this summer. But, Mara signed a new long-term contract at Bordeaux in March, we only picked him up for a reduced fee because of Bordeaux's financial woes and from reports he's been wanting to move to a club who would give Bordeaux a fair fee this summer. So, from a character point of view it's looking hopeful that we'll get good money for him if he does fulfil his promise.

Edozie looks like a talent on the YouTube videos. But, again, also looks a bit slight. Hopefully he's the next Sancho, which I mentioned yesterday and we're getting in between the move to Germany. 😂 Also, remember last summer when it looked like Livramento was set for Brighton and then we were linked and all of a sudden he was a Southampton player.

Not a Premier League side, but the model we're following looks to be very similar to the one Borussia Dortmund have been doing for a number of years now. They do sign dud youngsters themselves, but their focus on young players has seen them pick up Jadon Sancho and Erling Haaland in recent years, selling them on for profit, while Jude Bellingham will also follow in a year, or two. Sancho being £8m with no first team experience, Haaland for £20m after hitting 16 in 14 in Austria and then Bellingham was £25m after Birmingham retired his shirt number. All would've been affordable for us this summer. Dortmund have also never been able to keep hold of their best players, be it them going to Bayern Munich, or the Premier League, but they've consistently been in the top five of the Bundesliga since 2009. Now, of course the Premier League is a more competitive league and Dortmund are much bigger as a club, but when the next Sancho does come through and is wanting a move for first team football, you'd hope with us being closer to home and in the Premier League, they may decide to come here instead. It is a huge gamble, and nobody's saying it isn't. Nobody knows what's to come for this season from us, but the rewards could certainly be exciting and I'm happy that we're trying something new after getting it so wrong in the last five years. We could've just remade the same mistakes, like we've seen a number of clubs, including Southampton do over the last few years.

At least we aren't managed by Mark Hughes. Similar to when we were getting beat 3-0 by Derby in pre-season 2018.

The key is being versatile with the formation. Koeman knew which matches to play three centre-backs and which matches to play two centre-backs. Certain matches the three at the back formation will be more suited for, but I don't think against now Championship Watford is one of those matches. Similar to the home match against Watford last season when we all of a sudden played Adams upfront on his own and Will Smallbone randomly got thrown in. Additionally, the two upfront formation suits both of our current strikers, being Adams and Armstrong. Broja could play upfront on his own, but we don't have him. Adams will always be a support striker, better at coming deep and playing others in. He'll never be the focal point of a team, scoring goals and being a good target man, like Pelle. While, Armstrong needs teammates in and around him and pretty much needs to be set up on a plate, as he's not going to create anything on his own. Essentially, the three centre-back formation will probably be suited for the opening day against Tottenham with Kane and Son. But, against Leeds in the second match, I'd rather we went more attacking and took the game to them at home.

One of the main problems with Djenepo is that just when he looks like he's getting going, he gets an injury and then he's back to square one and working to get back to where he was. Needs to stay fit now.

Didn't score a single goal in China last season and has one goal since 2017.

On a separate tangent, I know myself and many have some questions regarding our purchasing of youth this window. But, these players are all costing around the £15m mark, barring Aribo, who had a release clause in his contract. That's still a good amount of money. If we wanted to sign proven players, who still have question marks on if they can adapt over here, that's going to cost around £25m-£30m these days and we've been stung in that market already with the likes of Boufal, Lemina, Hoedt, Elyounoussi and Vestergaard, who would all probably be priced around £10m more today, than what we paid for them just a few years ago. We'd need to sell to be able to afford the players in that market and there's no point in selling JWP or KWP or Salisu this summer, as we'd have a massive hole in our team to fill. Unlike in 2014-15 when we still had Schneiderlin, Fonte, Wanyama, Clyne and S. Davis here to compensate for the sales. See Leeds as an example, they've put £30m down on an American attacker with 4 goals in the Austrian league last season and £22m on an attacker from the Dutch league. Essentially, the more experienced player market is too much these days, especially for a striker with Broja being priced at £30m+ and half the league also looking for a striker. Lets hope we've been smart and it all works out, while we watch the same clubs (Everton) make the same mistakes every year. As I said, we've gone for the more experienced players and it hasn't worked out. We were shopping at the cheaper end of that market, hoping they'd come good and I think they were more of a risk than us shopping at the higher end of the youth market.

Never heard of him, like I hadn't heard of Broja last summer. So, I reckon he's going to be the next Thierry Henry.

Interesting that Meghoma's a LB. Only a year between himself and Small. Both highly rated youngsters, fighting for the same position, will be interesting to see how they develop.