Four established senior players left Southampton in the final four days of the European transfer window. Just under £70 million’s worth of talent headed for the exit door, and none left for good.
Mohamed Elyounoussi made a surprise move to Celtic on a season-long loan after signing for £16 million from Basel last summer. Two days later, Guido Carrillo moved back to Leganes for the campaign; he arrived for £19 million 18 months ago from AS Monaco.
The clock ticked and time passed, with two of Southampton’s first-team outsiders still left in limbo. Mario Lemina had been pushing for an exit all summer but was without an open-armed suitor. Wesley Hoedt, meanwhile, hadn’t been linked with a single club until the final day.
Both players – signed in 2017 from Juventus and Lazio for £18 million and £15 million respectively – got their moves eventually, albeit on temporary deals.
Lemina headed to Galatasaray in a somewhat less glamorous outcome than he had likely hoped, while Hoedt moved to the Jupiler Pro League to play for Royal Antwerp, who, following the signings of Kevin Mirallas and Steven Defour, are attempting to reinvigorate declining Premier League players.
All four should be at the peak of their powers. They are all over 25-years-old aside from Carrillo, who is 28, and yet their futures will be predicated on their performances in new surroundings on season-long loan deals.
Southampton shifted 14 players this summer: a blend of stagnating youngsters, first-team outcasts and promising academy talents. Ralph Hasenhuttl and Ross Wilson oversaw the arrival of three new faces: Moussa Djenepo, Che Adams and Kevin Danso.
Saints are by no means light on numbers, though. There is sufficient squad depth, and Hasenhuttl is known to favour working with fewer players as he believes he can impose his philosophy on smaller groups to a more meticulous extent.
The summer reflected an intriguing venture away from the norms by which Premier League clubs approach transfer windows. Instead of placing sole emphasis on recruitment, as much focus was apportioned to trimming the squad of its deadwood – a task that perhaps proved more challenging than what had been expected.
It took until the last four days of the window – to clubs outside of England, it must be stressed – for Saints to offload four players who had been up for grabs from the word ‘go’.
But why? Elyounoussi is a Norway international who has looked good in the Champions League before; Hoedt is a Netherlands international who was strong at Lazio; Lemina is a former Marseille and Juventus player who has featured in a Champions League final. Excluding Carrillo, whose redeeming qualities hardly jump out, these are players with pedigree, and with age on their side.
In fact, when context is disassociated from the reality of the aforementioned players’ shortcomings at St Mary’s, it is easy to see why their success was widely expected at Southampton. It’s also easy to see why they came to the club, which had become synonymous with showcasing the bustling talents of players across Europe who had either boasted plenty of potential or lost their way after being tipped for big things.
However, each of their arrivals coincided with ill-advised decisions made by those in powerful positions within the St Mary’s hierarchy. Les Reed and Ralph Krueger largely dictated footballing ongoings, and oversaw the acquisitions of the aforementioned players, along with the appointments of incompatible managers.
After such dismal tenures on English soil, players who were once sought-after by clubs across Europe have become challenging to present as marketable, and while the small victory of shifting them on loan comes as a boost for the here and now, the shortcomings from the previous regime could yet continue to keep Saints in a straitjacket.
Wilson and Hasenhuttl are now involved in the recruitment of players for the first-team squad, and while it is too early to judge, there appears to be a clear plan in place: players will be signed to suit the manager’s brand of football, rather than merely tick boxes linked to the ‘type’ of buy that the club had previously enjoyed success by pursuing.
Southampton, having spent in excess of £15 million on each of those within the aforementioned quartet, may be reluctant to spend beyond such a figure again in the market. Rather more alarmingly, though, it is unclear if they will even have as much as a say in the matter.
Gao Jisheng’s approach has been documented since his arrival; Saints will be a self-sustainable club with all the profits made reinvested, but without the help of cash injections by the ownership. As such, funds allocated to the management to put towards new recruits will be predicated on sales – a guarantee that eluded the club in all but five of their 14 outgoing transfers in the window.
Southampton are by no means stretched for funds, and this much has been made clear in recent fan forums. However, there appears to be little room to push the boat out, certainly without a flow of cash from departing stars, who continue to occupy at least a portion of the club’s wage bill despite their failings.
Saints just about got by in the recent window. Djenepo and Adams have provided strength in depth in previously weak areas in the final third, while the signing of Danso on loan with an option to buy – perhaps another example of the shortage of immediately available funds – has tightened the back-line.
But come next summer, no-one will welcome a similar struggle in the market, in which a battle to get players out of the door becomes an even trickier task than the painstaking process by which new recruits are acquired.
The main issue? It’s out of Southampton’s control, and the damage has been done. The previous regime’s failings in the transfer market, heightened by underperforming managers’ detrimental influences on the playing squad, mean that the onus is now on the likes of Elyounoussi, Hoedt, Lemina and Carrillo to prove themselves worthy of permanent moves to their new loan clubs.
If they can’t hack it elsewhere, then the same old issues will come back to bite Southampton, and moving forward may just prove difficult with the burden of big wages and unwanted players returning.
Football is a waiting game, and as Hasenhuttl has eloquently put it previously, there are no guarantees. Instead, there are options, and after Southampton’s previous board wasted just shy of £70 million on unsuitable signings, the luxury of even a choice may never be afforded to the new regime.
