Southampton boss Mark Hughes has stressed that new signing Mohamed Elyounoussi is not a direct replacement for Dušan Tadić.
The Serbia international left St Mary’s for Ajax’s Johan Cruyff Arena this week, ending a four year stint with the South Coast club for around £15million.
While much of that transfer fee was reinvested in 23-year old former Basel winger Elyounoussi, Hughes is adamant that a deal wasn’t done in order to replace Tadić, and the Welshman claims he wanted to keep the Serb.
In an interview with the Daily Echo and BBC Radio Solent, Mark Hughes said:
We’re not viewing him as a direct replacement, he’s a different type of player but he has similar traits as well.
He’s not a like-for-like replacement, you can never get that, but I was sorry to see Dušan go, I really enjoyed working with him. He was really influential in what we did at the end of the season.
But I sat down with him almost immediately after the end of the season and had a quick chat with him and tried to make him understand that if I was the manager next season, I’d loved to continue to work with him.
He needed to understand that but he had this idea and this hope that he’d get this opportunity to play at a club like Ajax and maybe win titles and play in the Champions League.
That’s a big draw for these players and at the stage he’s at in his career I wish him well, because now he’s got the opportunity to tick some boxes he hasn’t before.
