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.
