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.