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Most important player signing of past 3.5 years?


Lallana's Left Peg

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It's been a slow two weeks with no Saints game, so ahead of the Newcastle game is there any chance we could arrive to a general agreement on which player has been our most important signing of the past 3.5 years?

 

For the record, contract renewals also count, so Adam Lallana can also be nominated for example.

 

Hard one to do as we've made a lot of successful signings, but for me it has to be a player who made a significant contribution in all three divisions, so it is between Fonte, Schneiderlin, Lallana, and Lambert, with the latter pipping it for me.

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This. In fact, it would be stupid to argue against it.

 

After what we had to endure with admin / double relegation and the squad we were left with, Rickie was the kind've player footy fans dream about. Scored a boat load in league 1, then the championship, and even the premier league.

 

Absolutely brilliant.

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Has he been with us three and a half years? I thought it was longer than that.

 

EDIT: He's been with us since summer 2008 so you can't count him.

 

How time flies!!

 

Lambert then Cork for me then. Despite hardly playing...Billy Sharp can't be forgotten! He pretty much got us promoted last season.

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Johnny Forte, the man that inspired all the promotions.

 

Nah, it has to be Lambert. He's different gravy, and he's managed to adapt to every league on his way up. Quality for 1/50th of the price of Torres. Honourable mentions for Morgan, Lallana and Fonte, all whom have done the same from League One upwards.

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I can't help to ask myself: where would we be without Guly?

 

On a more serious note, Lambert is the obvious answer. The man is a legend.

 

If Boruc keeps performing like he has in recent weeks, he would also be on my list of our most important players.

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Has he been with us three and a half years? I thought it was longer than that.

 

EDIT: He's been with us since summer 2008 so you can't count him.

 

Wasn't he the one serious signing we made when Lowe came back and we didn't have a pot to **** in? If memory serves...

 

Lambert is the obvious first choice, not just because of the goals he's subsequently scored in all three divisions, but also for the marker it laid down at the time to fans and rivals alike; we're not going to mess about in this division, we're going to assemble the best squad and get promoted.

 

For second most important, I might go out on a bit of a limb and say Jaidi was exactly the right man for the job. When he came in we were desperate for that kind of experience, nous and commitment. He was instrumental in shifting the momentum of the club while younger players were finding their feet.

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Lambert by a distance.

 

When we signed Boruc I thought he was our most important signing of the season so I'll put him as our 2nd best - so far he's transformed our defence from a leaky sieve to a fairly robust unit.

 

Other than that Cork - fantastic signing who is really starting to form a great pairing with MS especially now that we play a high pressing game.

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Lambert.

 

Who would have though that through our journey to Div 1 and back we would actually hold on to the likes of Lallana and Schneiderlin though. Their 're-signings' were immense (at least I think Morgan re-signed....).

 

I nearly named Shaw though because his first pro signing marked a watershed for the club - to be endorsed with a full contrat this summer hopefully. It did not matter how much we kidded ourselves, the likes of Oxo, Walcott and Bale were never going to stay long. Hopefully Shaw has shown that statement of intent NOT to sell our best young players.

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Lambert for sure and it begs the question of how many other gems from the lower leagues have been missed in English footballs quest for foreign imports

 

GlennMurray for instance? Doesn't he have the second highest goal-game ration of any European league this year as well as the record for most Championship goals scored by Christmas? Maybe the English clubs might actually start to realise there are some true gems in England's own leagues.

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GlennMurray for instance? Doesn't he have the second highest goal-game ration of any European league this year as well as the record for most Championship goals scored by Christmas? Maybe the English clubs might actually start to realise there are some true gems in England's own leagues.

 

At what cost though? English players for some reason cost a lot more than foreign imports when clubs now Premier League clubs are interested - would we have taken the punt on Lambert had we been in the Premier League? Even if we did Rovers would have been looking for more than £1 million I reckon. If a Premier League club wanted Murray now, I'm sure Holloway would be looking for silly money for a goalscorer. Danny Graham has done OK in the Premier League for instance, but £3.5 million was a lot to pay for a player unproven at this level. Then we look at the likes of Liverpool's recent signings, Carroll and Henderson. Silly money.

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It's been a slow two weeks with no Saints game, so ahead of the Newcastle game is there any chance we could arrive to a general agreement on which player has been our most important signing of the past 3.5 years?

 

For the record, contract renewals also count, so Adam Lallana can also be nominated for example.

 

Hard one to do as we've made a lot of successful signings, but for me it has to be a player who made a significant contribution in all three divisions, so it is between Fonte, Schneiderlin, Lallana, and Lambert, with the latter pipping it for me.

 

Schneiderlin, has developed a ton of Prem quality, is the key to our recent results and more importantly is going to be around at this level a lot longer than Lambert - so let's hope we can keep him.

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I think the League One gang of 5 (though maybe Puncheon's troubles for most of it keep him out IMO) have to be the ones. We really did hit gold by getting together a backbone that was able to adapt to the constant incremental change of our opposition surroundings with more or less difficulty, particularly at such a distant level as that of L1.

 

It's also helped that we have managed to find a spot-on compliment to each of them in their sector every season, i.e. Cork/Schneiderlin, Fonte/Yoshida, Stevie D as a successor of Chaplow in providing electric power to our game, Clyne/Puncheon...

 

I imagine that some of them will start to loose importance, but it would be fantastic if the five of them could be seen in our regular starting line-up photos should this dream of top 4 pushes have any realism to it.

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Fonte.

 

The thing is, when we were in L1 we felt he was almost good enough to be a standout player.

When we went up to the nPc we felt he might be good enough to be a standout player

Then we came up into the PL and we thought he would struggle to make it.

 

And yet before his injury he was looking more and more compsed, had formed a solid partnership with Maya and, if we are honest had started to look (almost) like a Claus.

 

He has never been the standout player, but he has been damned reliable.

 

(And let's face it, even SRL had some wobble along the way with fitness and niggling injuries)

 

So Cork is too new, Morgan has been here too long, SRL is the first choice, Adam was already with our Academy.

 

No brainer as runner up Jose Fonte has given great service in these 3.5 years and hopefully will continue to do so

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