New and Improved Names for Confederate Army Bases

Things have dramatically changed in the last several weeks.  One change I never expected to see was a serious call to rename the ten United States Army Bases named after confederate generals.  The fact that the popular support for this change now extends into the military is a dramatic and pleasant surprise. I now believe the renaming is inevitable. If Donald Trump were not president, the process would already have started.

I don’t want to debate whether the names of the bases should be changed.  They should and will be.  I want to discuss the new names for the bases. As a 62-year-old white lawyer who has never served in the military, I believe I am the ideal person to propose new names for the bases currently named after confederate generals.  

Not surprisingly, the U.S. Army has rules governing the naming of military bases and other facilities.  The current rules are found in AR 1-33.  The original draft of this post discussed these regulations in detail and even quoted them at length. I reconsidered that. Basically bases are generally named after dead, especially meritorious, high ranking members of the American Army—preferably people who had some connection to the base or the area in which the base is located.  While my suggestions do not fully fit within these rules, rules can be changed. And the present is certainly a time when change is in the air.

One way my recommendations significantly differ from the rules is in the ranks of the persons after whom the bases should be named.  None of my recommendations were generals. Many of them were privates, but I do not think it matters.  My suggestions add infinitely more honor to the bases and the Army than do their current namesakes.

The ten army installations named after confederate leaders are Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Fort Polk, Louisiana, Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, Fort Pickett, Virginia, Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Lee, Virginia, Fort Rucker, Alabama, Fort Gordon and Fort Benning, Georgia.  This New York Times article provides more information about both the bases and the Confederates for whom they are named. 

I have read a suggestion that Fort Benning should be renamed after General George C. Marshall. Under normal circumstances, this would be an excellent suggestion.  Marshall served at Fort Benning as the Assistant Commander of the Infantry School for four and a half years starting in 1927.  Apparently, he did an excellent job there and trained many of the men who went on to command American Forces in World War II.  Further, Marshall eventually became one of the few five star generals in American history and played a critical role in winning World War II.  He went on to serve in many high ranking civilian posts including Secretary of State. 

 

There are two significant problems with renaming Fort Benning after Marshall.  First, while it is sometimes unfair to judge historical figures by our current standards, the renaming of the confederate bases is entirely about judging historical figures by current standards.  According to a recent biography, George Marshall: Defender of the Republic by David L. Roll, Marshall’s efforts to reconfigure and improve the training program at Fort Benning did not extend to the 841 black solders of the 24^th Infantry Regiment which was also headquartered at Fort Benning.  Obviously, Marshall could not solve racial discrimination and end Jim Crow. However, according to this biography, he virtually ignored the existence of the black soldiers while they were used as a pool of indentured labor.  Marshall can be honored at another time in another way.

More importantly, the fact that the ten bases were ever named after Confederate Generals was a deliberate pro-Jim Crow, pro-racism move instituted by the powerful political figures of the South—and the white people of the South—in the post-reconstruction era of American History.  The bases were named to send a clear message to the world, and the black citizens of the United States, that whites are and always will be superior to blacks.  Even the loss of a civil war devoted to keeping black people in slavery could not change that.

The point of renaming bases is to announce that things are and must be different.  The decision to name the bases after Confederate Generals was not just wrong, it was an act of moral bankruptcy on the part of the entire country. This act cannot be rectified by simply following the normal procedures for naming Army bases.  That would would probably result in the bases being named after eight to ten deceased white male generals and, perhaps, one or two other less white or less male generals.

If the regular rules are to be followed, there will be a limited supply of eligible blacks for whom to name the bases.   The supply of high ranking deceased American black officers who were great war leaders or heroes is limited because the American Military was not integrated until 1948, and even since then, the process of promoting Blacks into positions of authority has been slow.

 

In addition, I believe that in a certain karmic way, these bases should be named after the people who would most offend the Confederate Generals themselves. There is a group of mostly forgotten people who served their country with distinction in the military. Many of them died as a result of that service.  I am referring to the numerous black servicemen who were lynched, often because they had the gall to wear their military uniforms where white southerners could see them.  I am also referring to some black servicemen who were attacked and but survived their lynching.

It will probable not surprise anyone that I did not do my own original research into the lynching of American servicemen.  Instead, I relied upon a report prepared by the Equal Justice Initiative, Targeting Black Veterans: Lynching in America. I have listed thirteen soldiers who would be good choices for the honor of this renaming.  However, I do not claim that my choices are perfect and that no one else should be considered. There are people who know a lot more about lynching, military bases, and black soldiers than do I.  My suggestions simply suggest an approach to choosing the new names.

I do not tie my suggestions to a specific base.  It may not be possible to identify a lynched or nearly lynched serviceman who served at each base.  On the other hand, it seems certain that servicemen were lynched in all the states containing these bases so at least that much of a geographic tie could be found. 

These are my suggestions:

Peter Branford, a United States Colored Troops veteran of the civil war, was shot and killed in Mercer County Kentucky in 1868, “without cause or provocation.” 

Johnson C. Whittaker, was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1858. He was appointed a cadet at the United States Military Academy in 1876—one of the first black cadets in West Point history.  On April 6, 1880 he was found unconscious and bloody in his underwear on the floor of his dorm room—his legs and arms tied to his bed.  He reported that three masked white men attacked him while he slept.  The West Point administrators claimed that Whittaker had staged the attack himself and court-martialed him.

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Private James Neely had just returned from service in the Spanish American War when he visited Hampton, Georgia on a day pass from Fort Hobson.  He requested a soda at the counter of a drug store but was told he had to place his order and drink outside behind the store. When he protested, a fight developed. A group of white men chased him down the road firing guns.  He was later found dead of gun shot wounds.

Private Charles Lewis returned home to Tyler Station, Kentucky, after World War I.    He was in jail after having been arrested for assault and resisting arrest following a false accusation of robbery.  A mob of as many as one hundred people took him out of his cell and hung him from a tree on December 16, 1918.  

Clinton Briggs, who had recently been discharged from Camp Pike was lynched on August 3, 1919, in Lincoln, Arkansas, because he moved too slowly out of the way of a white woman on the sidewalk.  He was driven into the country, chained to a tree, and riddled with bullets.  

Lucius McCarty, a veteran, was lynched on August 31, 1919, in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He was accused of an attempted assault on a white woman. A mob of as many as 1500 people shot him more than a thousand times.  They dragged his body behind a car through the black neighborhoods of the town and then burned his corpse in a bonfire.

Sergeant Edgar Caldwell, a decorated member of the 24^th Infantry Regiment was stationed at Camp McClellan near Hanniston, Georgia. He was attacked after he sat in the white section of a street car.  While being beaten by two white men, Caldwell drew his revolver and killed one of the white men and seriously wounded the other.  The military authorities ignored their own rules and allowed him to be taken into custody by local police.  Caldwell was tried, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death within five days.  The appeals were unsuccessful and he was hung on July 30, 1920.

Sergeant Henry Johnson, served in World War I.  He, along with a wounded compatriot, fought off an attack by 24 German solders, killing four and wounding at least a dozen.  Johnson sustained 21 wounds and was promoted to Sergeant.  The French awarded him the Croix de Gurre avec Palm since he was stationed in an area where he worked with the French Army which had no problem letting him serve in combat.  Johnson was almost completely disabled from his wounds.  He protested the racially discriminatory administration of Veteran’s Benefits and so was discharged with no disability pay and left in poverty.  He died “penniless and alone in 1929” at age 32.

Eugene Bells angered local whites when he refused to work for a white farmer after returning from World War II. Instead, he chose to work on his father-in-law’s farm.  On August 25, 1945, he was driving a car in Amite County, Mississippi with several passengers.  When three white men in another car opened fire, Bells pulled over.  The men beat one of the other passengers unconscious and took Bells into a swamp where they crushed his skull and shot him in the head. 

Maceo Snipes, a honorably discharged two-and-a-half year veteran of the Army living in in Taylor County Georgia voted in the Democratic primary for governor on July 17, 1946.  The next day several white men went to his house. A white veteran shot and killed him.  The white veteran told a ridiculous story but the inquest ruled the killing was self-defense.

John C. Jones, a World War II veteran, was lynched in Minden, Louisiana on August 8, 1946. He was accused of entering a white family’s back yard and looking through the window at a young white woman.  Federal charges were brought against law enforcement officials and others involved in the lynching, but they were acquitted by an all-white jury. 

J. C. Farmer, a black World War II veteran, was lynched on August 17, 1946. Farmer was “merrily laughing” while waiting for a bus in North Carolina when a police officer ordered him into his car.  Farmer responded that he had done nothing wrong so the police officer attacked him.  In the ensuing struggle, the officer’s gun went off and shot the officer through his hand.  A lynch mob formed and killed Farmer.  

Staff Sergeant Hosea Williams survived his would be lynching and went on to become a major civil rights leader.  During World War II, he was the only survivor of a Nazi bombing which left him in a European hospital for more than a year.  Upon his return, while he was still wearing his uniform, he was beaten by a group of angry whites who were offended that he used the white rather than the colored water fountain.  He survived the beating and lived until 2000.  He was quoted as saying “I was once captured by the German Army, and I want to tell you that the Germans were never as inhumane as the state troopers of Alabama.”

A REOPENING

I first wrote this post about a month ago, but things delayed my moving forward on posting it.  Since then the world has changed yet again.  I decided to go ahead and post it as originally written as a relic of a simpler past and because it is time to get get going or give up. 

This is my (new) personal blog about the coronavirus and how it has, is, and will change the world.  I will explain why I decided write this blog, but first I should address the readers (few as they were) of my prior blog which focused on the Southampton Saints football club and English football in general. Based upon my prior readership level, there could be as many as one hundred people who have set themselves up to be notified whenever I posted a new article.  The next three paragraphs are addressed to those people.

I have not blogged since August 16, 2017.  My job as an appellate lawyer involves reading things, researching things, thinking about things, and then writing about those things.  That is also what I did with this blog.  I stopped blogging because my workload became significantly heavier. This meant that I had less time to focus on our club and I had fewer insights to share about our club and its squad.  Reading the forums and thinking about the concerns expressed on those forums was a fertile source of ideas for my blog, but I could no longer devote a couple hours a day to our club and football in general.  Also, the club’s recent poor performance was simply less interesting to analyze.  Also, the Golden State Warriors provided a nice distraction.

In 2018 I was tempted to write an article arguing that—in retrospect—our club’s outstanding performance in 2015-2016 was primarily due to the fact that we had two of the world’s best players, Sadio Mane and Virgil van Dijk, in the squad, but that wonderful situation could never last.  However, I didn’t think that argument really needed to be made.  It certainly seemed indisputable to me.

I should acknowledge that while I stand by my reasoning in my last substantive post from August 8, 2017, I was wrong to believe there was nothing serious to worry about.  Something fundamentally changed in how the club was run back then. Or perhaps the loss of two world class players plus regression to the mean put us into the relegation zone.  On the other hand, the club’s recent problems do not prove that the doomsayers were right all along.  Doom is an extraordinary event.  As Carl Sagan said “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Throughout the club’s good run, there simply was no extraordinary evidence of systemic problems with the club.  Maybe things are different now, but that is no longer my focus.

On to the new blog.

I have called my new blog “The Before Time—The After Time” based upon original Star Trek season 1 episode 8, “Miri,” where—SPOILER ALERT—the Enterprise finds a planet very much like 1960s Earth except a plague has wiped out all the adults.  The children have survived for hundreds of years because the disease prolongs their life until they become adults and then go crazy and die.  These children referred to the time before the plague as “the Before Time” and that seemed on point to me.

My reaction to current events is heavily focused on my experiences as an American.  This will distinguish my current blogging from my former bloggings which were much more focused on English things because the Southampton football club was in the English Premier League.  I even made a major effort to use English terms rather than American terms—hence, the slightly off, to the American ear, references to our “squad” earlier.  Given the nature of our President and his response to the COVID-19 problem, some of what I say will have less relevance outside the United States, but I am good with that. 

It is my belief (concern?) (fear?) that, while our situation is nowhere near as extreme as the one in Star Trek, a major change in our world has happened and that things will not come close to returning to the Before Time normal.  Of course, I could be wrong.  And, even more of course, this change could go any number of ways.  Our world could become a kinder and better one.  We might start paying more attention to the poor and disadvantaged who are extraordinarily more likely to suffer serious consequences from the pandemic.  We might start addressing other problems such as global warming, income inequality, and racial discrimination.  Or we might turn to authoritarian leadership and all become fascists.  Or things might get back to the old normal after we get a vaccine or, without a vaccine, the new normal will like the old normal but with a lot more routine death.

I do think I have something useful to say about all of his because I believe I am good at spotting stupidity and explaining why it is stupid.  There is a lot of that going around right now.  This does not mean that I will focus my articles on calling people stupid.  There is also too much of that going on right now.  Some of that stupidity gets enough attention—such Trump’s suggestion that doctors investigate the possibility of injecting disinfectant to fight the coronavirus.  But some of it isn’t getting nearly enough attention.  And some things that are not getting enough attention do not involve stupidity.

But that is not really the reason I am writing this blog.  I am writing this blog because I am already spending lots of time thinking about these things.  When I mentioned to my best friend the possibility that I would start blogging about the Coronavirus, she responded “Yes!  It would be a better outlet for you than telling me about it.”  Then she added a smiley face.  I trust her judgment.

On the other hand, I am not an expert in any relevant field except American Law.  When I address issues that require some other expertise I will be relying on internet sources that appear reliable to me and I will be linking to them—assuming I can remember how to do that.

My current plan is to post a blog at least once a week, but I don’t want to start until I am sure I will be able to follow through –at least for a little while—so I will not post this until I have written two more articles.  I will probably try to incentivize myself by never posting a blog until the next blog is ready to go.  My target will be articles of about 1000 words.  Finally, if you are new to my blog, feel free to go back and read my posts about football.  Some of them are still relevant and interesting.

Transcript of Part of Ralph Krueger Interview

I have transcribed the posted part of Ralph Krueger's interview with Radio Solent found here.  It is obviously not the complete transcript but I not found the audio of the entire interview posted anywhere.  I have no idea why the font looks different.

Ralph Krueger:  We want to make a statement again about the importance of holding your core and about continuity and about creating synergies.  It is something that is no measurable in sports but if you can keep teams together at certain ages for a few years you have a chance to reach another level of potential.  Now we had 13 players going out in the last three summers.  19 coming in.  We needed to increase our depth.  We needed to make those transfers.  But this summer was clearly one of consolidation and continuity and of holding the core together and we make those statements prior to the transfer window opening and we confirmed those statements here again today that that is our goal.  You know one player out thus far J. Rodriguez on choice of both of United States  It was a win win and in with Mario Lemina and if you look at Jan Bednarek and I will say again we are not done yet with our transfers in.  If you look at that as a summer strategy that is a very very big statement to the world and Virgil is just a part of the plan.  It’s not a personal situation and again, just like every summer, the first of September let’s look at what happened, and we did make statements prior and let’s be judged after.

Q:  Ya. I gotta just to add to that.  The statement earlier in the summer, the statement of intent when you put your foot down with Liverpool as a club you showed strength and the supporters loved that.  They love the fact that you came out and went hang on a second, we stick up for ourselves here we are not having anyone walk over us and I have said even though that is the case if the club are better off selling van Dijk because they get the money and they can reinvest it with the manager or whatever then maybe the fans will have to bite the bullet and not blame the board.  Do you still say that the statement stands?  You are staying firm.  He is not going. 

Ralph Krueger:  Yes it is quite clear that we are not selling in this window and it’s been said many many times and we just need to keep saying the same thing I guess until the window closes and then everyone will see that that’s the plan and that’s how we are carrying it out and we are very confident and we’ve been very fair and we continue to look for the potential in each and every player.  We continue to look for situations that are right for all parties and we just believe this is the right way to go.  The strength of contracts put us into this position.  Players committing to us for a long time need to understand that there is there is loyalty and there is opportunity in that for both sides and we look forward to staying strong through this window.

How are things going? (Southampton 2017-2018 Premier League Roster/Squad Update 2)

As an American, my view of Southampton fans is undoubtedly badly distorted.  I do not run into people in my daily life who chat about the club.  Instead, I only can find out what people think if they post on one of the fan forums.  I am aware that this gives me a distorted view of the situation.  For example, I fully recognize that no matter how many bridges Virgil van Dijk has burned, there were few, if any, actual fires set in Southampton.

Nevertheless, the current situation reminds me of three years ago when I was first inspired, if that is the right word, to start blogging about Southampton.  Once again, there is a massive fan meltdown for no good reason.  I think anyone with an objective frame of mind will now recognize that the meltdown three years ago was unwarranted.  Even though the club sold five “important” players, the club got better each of the next two years.  While there is, of course, no way to know if the current meltdown will turn out to be as irrational, a good rule of thumb is to trust the judgment of the people making decisions three years ago that turned out well and to mistrust the judgment of the loony toon people who think that everything their club does is certain to be a catastrophe.

Before I get into my more detailed explanation let me make something clear.  The club is not poorly run.  Katharina Liebherr is not pocketing huge sums of money from player transfers.  The club has made remarkable progress over any time frame greater than a year and, if last year is this club’s idea of an off year, we are in wonderful position.

I see no reasonable way to blame the club for the Virgil van Dijk situation.  Prior to this sequence of events he had always behaved in such a way that he looked as he had integrity or, at least, an understanding of his obligations to comply with his contract.  No rational person would have understood his decision to sign a long term contract last year as being anything less than a commitment to staying here for at least two or three more years.  (If the club was going to sell him this summer, there would be no need for a long term contract with an increased rate of pay.)

On the other hand, I understand van Dijk’s position.  I believe it is entirely possible that up until his injury, he was content to develop his skills while playing here for a year or two more knowing that he would enhance his position for a big move to a top club.  I think that it is entirely reasonable for van Dijk to believe, after the injury, that perhaps he misjudged the risks involved and he should grab the money while he could.  What is unreasonable is for him to think that actually changed his situation in any significant way.

Van Dijk may not have contemplated the possibility of a career ending injury but Southampton certainly did.  That was a risk that Southampton voluntarily took on—much to van Dijk’s benefit—by signing him to a six year contract with a big pay increase and significant loyalty bonuses.  Obviously, I do not know the term of van Dijk’s contract but if his injury had turned out to be a career ending injury, Southampton would have owed him significantly more than 20 million pounds for doing nothing over the next five and a half years.  If van Dijk had not thought about that possibility in advance, that was his mistake.

Many fans have pointed out that van Dijk was not the first player to try to force his way out of Southampton.  Therefore, they argue, there must be something wrong with our club’s management because it keeps getting itself in this position.   That is nonsense.  The reason we are in this position so often is we are constantly coming up with players—either through the academy or good scouting—who are good enough to play for teams that are richer than we are.  The only reason other clubs in the Premier League do not have this problem is that they have fewer good players worth poaching.  When they do, they lose players too.  Sure, Leicester had several of its players in demand after their championship season, but only lost one.  However, they had Champion's League football and money to convince the rest to say.  If they don't lose some of those players this summer, it will be because they no long look good enough.  Either way, I am skeptical that Leicester will continue to detect undiscovered gems who will entice the big clubs year after year.  If they do, they will lose them after a couple of years.

Everton may be a somewhat richer club than we are but they still lose players to bigger clubs.  I do not know whether Everton fans freak out about this like we do, but they would be equally entitled to do so.  (My desire to post this blog did not extend to a desire to spend hours or days researching the craziness of the fans of other Premier League Clubs.)

While it can be (and is) discouraging to see our better players leave year after year, given the current structure of the Premier League, the club has no choice.  This is not a North American sports league where there is a salary cap and revenue sharing to ensure that no club can spend significantly more than any other club and where there are binding agreements in place with the players’ unions such that players can be traded against their will and are bound to their initial club for five or six years whether they like it or not.  Possibly the Premier League would be a better league if they implemented such rules and, depending on how the Brexit negotiations go, perhaps the laws can be changed to create such a system in the future but for now, that is not the way it is.

This does not mean that the club cannot take a strong stand on van Dijk.  I personally favor making it clear to him that he was not going to be sold this summer and if necessary making him sit out the entire year while fining him as much as legally possible to recover the money.  The club’s improved financial situation is such that, inconvenient as it might be, the club could afford to pay van Dijk to do nothing for a year.  The bigger problem is not the lost money but the wasted roster spot as I will discuss below. 

On the other hand, the people who are criticizing the club for letting this drag out and not bringing in new players promptly do not appear to know what they are talking about.  The club cannot force a fast resolution of the van Dijk transfer story.  No matter what the club says they cannot make van Dijk play and cannot prevent another club from coming in with a satisfactory offer late in the transfer window.

On the other hand, the club faces significant roster limitations.  The club cannot simply sign two, three, or four new players without getting rid of three, four, or five old players.  As of now, our squad is overly full.

I believed, throughout this transfer window, that the club fully intended to keep Van Dijk.  Both his “strike” and transfer request surprised me, because I did not believe that the player would do anything that drastic.  Nevertheless, I do not believe that the club intends to let him go this summer.  At this point, I did not expect very much more incoming transfer activity beyond what we have already seen.  I am not sure van Dijk’s actions change much of anything—except possibly to make Gardos’ position more tenuous and potentially take playing time from Stephens.  To explain, we need to look at the current squad list and understand what it means.

CURRENT PREMIER LEAGUE SQUAD LIST (AS OF 1/7/17)

Home Grown                                    Other

Austin                                                  Boufal

Bertrand                                             Clasie

Davis                                                   Gabbiadini

Forster                                                Gardos

Gallagher*                                          Gazzaniga

Long                                                    Hojbjerg

McCarthy                                           Lemina

McQueen*                                         Pied

Redmond                                           Romeu

Stephens*                                          Soares

Targett*                                             Tadic

Taylor                                                 Van Dijk

Ward-Prowse*                                 Yoshida

*Indicates a club trained player for European purposes.

Because we are not in Europe this year, the complications of figuring out the squad list are considerably reduced.  Suffice it to say that the first column is the players that count as homegrown under Premier League rules.  We are required to have eight of them or, in their absence, leave spots on the 25 man roster empty.  The second column is players who must be registered on the 25 man roster in order to play but do not qualify as homegrown. 

Currently, this list presents an obvious problem:  we have 26 players for 25 slots.  At least one player is headed out—more if any new players are to come in.

Those fans who are demanding more incoming transfers need to understand this problem.  We cannot do incoming transfers until we figure out who is leaving.  No matter who the club gets rid of, there will be fans who think it is a mistake.

If, for example we sold Tadic and replaced him with a somewhat younger and faster player for the same position, there would be people complaining that we were giving up an experienced veteran for a young player and people complaining that we were giving up someone with technical skill for someone without.  On the other hand, if we replace Tadic with an older, more experienced player, there would be people complaining that we have sold a good player and replaced him with someone on the downhill part of his career who will have no resale value.  Similar complaints will result from the transfer of any of our current players.  They all have fans who will point to the relative strengths of their favorite players and will be upset if those players are sold.  Fortunately, the board will almost certainly be making its decisions without worrying about the feelings of individual fans.  On the other hand, if the board views keeping the fans happy as an important part of their job, they likely understand that they must simply assume that most fans will be happy with an improved performance on the field.  It is my belief and hope, that for the majority of fans, that would turn out to be correct.

Of course, the fact that some fans will be upset if their favorite players are transferred is not going to stop at least one more outgoing transfer this year because we need to clear a roster spot.  This is what I think is relatively likely to happen: 

Gazzaniga will be sold or loaned out since the recent re-signing of Taylor makes no sense if Gazzaniga was going to be with the first team this year.  There is simply no room for him as the squad now stands.

Beyond that, if there is going to be any more incoming transfer activity, there has to be outgoing activity.  In prior years, this was not a problem because we had several younger players who did not need to be put on the 25 man squad list.  More importantly, we had players we intended to sell and players we were happy to get rid of.  None of that appears to be true this year.

That being said, the next most logical choice to transfer is either Van Dijk or Gardos.  I still don’t see the club selling Van Dijk.  It would make the club look extremely foolish unless the price was publically known to be completely ridiculous and it does not serve our negotiating interests in future transfers to be pressured into selling this way or for everyone to know how much money we have to spend.  If we get a lot of money, the prices clubs will want to charge us will go up.  And, we will continue to face pressure to sell our better players before we really want to.

On the other hand, it may not be feasible to get rid of Gardos.  It seems unlikely that anyone will want him at the salary he makes here.  Possibly we could keep him but with van Dijk’s availability as a player up in the air, whether he is sold or not, the club would be taking a big gamble in not bringing a new center back who is viewed as good enough to start right away.  If the club does that, but holds onto van Dijk and plays him, there is suddenly much less playing time to go around—not to mention an extra player to get rid of.  Nevertheless, my vote would be to try to get rid of Gardos (unless Pellegrino rates him above both Yoshida and Stephens) and bring in a quality replacement.  (If van Dijk stays, we should consider playing three in the back which I believe has shown itself to be an effective strategy in the Premier League.)

If we need to clear a slot, we could get rid of a midfielder.  With the arrival of Lemina we are certainly overstocked at that position in terms of numbers, if not quality.  The most likely person to leave is Clasie although Davis would also be a reasonable choice since he is relatively old in football terms.  However, he also has no significant resale value and is now the club captain so that seems unlikely.

This problem actually reflects significant progress on the part of the club.  We are facing what in other contexts is called a first world problem.  We have a full roster of players of sufficient quality that we cannot simply get rid of them cheaply.  These players are not good enough to get us into the Champions League but they are plenty good to allow us to avoid relegation and compete for the top half.  The best clubs will want few of these players but they are the only ones who can pay large enough sums of money to be significant to Southampton given its current financial status. 

Take Long for example.  After having a good season in 2015-2016, he was much worse last season.  Yet it is not apparent that we can find anyone that would improve upon him who would not cost more than we would be willing to pay for a non-starting striker.  It is also questionable that we could find anyone who would want to take him off our hands for a price that is worth it to us relative to just keeping him as a player. 

Midfield is another complicated area.  Presumably, with the signing of Lemina we are done with the incoming activity in that area.  Undoubtedly the club believes Boufal, Clasie, Hojbjerg, Redmond, and Ward-Prowse are good young players who are going to get better.  Developing them, even if some will eventually be sold, is obviously a club goal.  On the other hand, it is likely that one of them will have to go. 

In my last post on this subject I listed our needs as

Two center backs

A defensive midfielder

A striker

However, that was based on some assumptions that turned out not to be true—at least so far.  I thought we would be selling or loaning both Rodriguez and Gallagher.  It looks like Gallagher is here to stay.  I thought we would keep Lewis as our third goalkeeper.  Instead, he was loaned out and Taylor was re-signed.  Since Lewis would not have used a squad/roster spot, that is one less opening for someone else.  We also sold McCarthy, a central defender, who also did not take up a squad/roster spot.  On the other hand, I was right about the defensive midfielder.

This means that, even under what remains of my prior assumptions, we have no openings.

We are not getting another striker unless we get rid of a striker.

We are not getting another defender unless we get rid of Gardos or Van Dijk.

We are not getting another midfielder unless we get rid of a midfielder.

We are getting rid of a goal keeper, almost certainly Gazzaniga. 

Obviously, I have no way of knowing how this season will go, but there is no reason for pessimism.  The new manager seems like an improvement.  The people running the club did not suddenly forget how to do their jobs.  Last year the club was, overall, more unlucky than it was lucky. There is no reason that should continue.

Plus the whole fan thing is more fun with a good attitude.