January Transfer Window 2025

[Charlie Wayman]

On 07/01/2025 at 17:56, Chez said:

Seeing as your username is as it is, I feel no shame in moaning about posters like yourself using initials for players names. I saw CT used the other day. Not a fucking clue. The same with TD here - I had to google our squad. Help an ageing poster out here and refrain from this practice... 😉

It's social media lingo ain't it? TP is the worst, that's cos the cretins wot use it can't spell or even remember his name.

[woodsaint1]

53 minutes ago, Maggie May said:

Michael O’Neill is a lower Championship manager. 

There are some really entertaining takes on here at the moment. Keep them coming.

What entertaining take? Im from NI and was merely pointing out how well Shea has done for us. 

[SaintLondon]

Ipswich signing Philogene for £21m - how far we've fallen. No offence but Ipswich? 

[Katalinic]

11 minutes ago, SaintLondon said:

Ipswich signing Philogene for £21m - how far we've fallen. No offence but Ipswich? 

Villa fans can't believe the fee. 

[Lighthouse]

16 minutes ago, SaintLondon said:

Ipswich signing Philogene for £21m - how far we've fallen. No offence but Ipswich? 

Idiots. Don’t they realise that could buy three mediocre championship players.

[sadoldgit]

3 hours ago, Lighthouse said:

So what? If a statement can be equally applied to Cole Palmer and Angus Gunn, all that proves is that it’s basically meaningless, which is my point. Saying he came through Man City’s academy is a pointless statement, like saying Keith Harris and Eva Perón both like Jaffa Bars.

I don’t know why you have an issue here. He has clearly done well for both NI and Sheffield Wednesday which is good for us, yes? Either we get a good player back now or in the summer or we get more money for him if we sell him. Personally I would have him back now in preparation for next season but given that none of us has a say in what will happen to him I won’t be losing any sleep over any decision taken.

[die Mannyschaft]

Players value astronomical now, we have over paid. Not much return on investment which for club like Saints will mean fire sale before buying new team next July. Can't believe how many goals we have per millions spent. £20m, £27m for 1 player that's not sustainable with Saints sell to buy policy. 

[Dusic]

34 minutes ago, die Mannyschaft said:

Players value astronomical now, we have over paid. Not much return on investment which for club like Saints will mean fire sale before buying new team next July. Can't believe how many goals we have per millions spent. £20m, £27m for 1 player that's not sustainable with Saints sell to buy policy. 

It is sustainable if you buy well. We will sell Fernandes for considerably more than we paid and someone like £20m Liam Delap will probably now be worth double that (and maybe a bit more).

As ever, recruitment is the most important thing for a club to get right. 

Sadly, we have massively failed at that over the last 8 or 9 years.

[Dirkdiggler]

We don’t even compete with all the other clubs for decent players! Bar Ipswich we are bottom of record signing.

Are we where we deserve to be trying to be cheap?

https://www.footballfancast.com/premier-league-clubs-record-signings-transfers-list/

[Saint Fan CaM]

4 minutes ago, Dirkdiggler said:

We don’t even compete with all the other clubs for decent players! Bar Ipswich we are bottom of record signing.

Are we where we deserve to be trying to be cheap?

https://www.footballfancast.com/premier-league-clubs-record-signings-transfers-list/

Keep on saying it - a decent wedge of money has been spent. Trouble is how it’s been spent - some players bought for ‘the future’, some for SR’s other clubs and then a glut of others for our squad that don’t do so well, rather than 1-2 marquee signings that really lift the collective quality of the 1st team.

[Weston Super Saint]

8 hours ago, Lighthouse said:

Idiots. Don’t they realise that could buy three mediocre championship players.

From us?

[leesaint88]

10 hours ago, SaintLondon said:

Ipswich signing Philogene for £21m - how far we've fallen. No offence but Ipswich? 

It was reported in the summer that Ipswich were dangerously close to the limit on PSR/FFP or whatever it is now, I assume they've decided to go down the Forest route and worry about any points deductions later...

[chownie20]

1 hour ago, leesaint88 said:

It was reported in the summer that Ipswich were dangerously close to the limit on PSR/FFP or whatever it is now, I assume they've decided to go down the Forest route and worry about any points deductions later...

Must be. 

 

They have literally sold nobody.

 

They have spent about 160m now. And made a loss of 5m in the previous season I believe. 

 

Maybe banking on selling Delap 

[Fabrice29]

2 hours ago, leesaint88 said:

It was reported in the summer that Ipswich were dangerously close to the limit on PSR/FFP or whatever it is now, I assume they've decided to go down the Forest route and worry about any points deductions later...

Where was that reported? I'm pretty sure the way the system works being on the past 5 years of accounts that they will be hugely benefiting from flying through the leagues and this is probably their best time to spend.

[SambaMaverick]

25 minutes ago, chownie20 said:

Must be. 

 

They have literally sold nobody.

 

They have spent about 160m now. And made a loss of 5m in the previous season I believe. 

 

Maybe banking on selling Delap 

All transfer fees are spread across the length of their contracts I believe, so I think they'll be fine. Whereas we and Leicester are still 'spending' on players we signed two, three, four years ago.

[Chez]

12 hours ago, Katalinic said:

Villa fans can't believe the fee. 

Didn't Villa get him back from Hull for about £18m (which actually only cost them about £13m as they had a buy back clause) five minutes ago? Amazing that his price has gone up £2m considering he basically hasn't cut it for them.

Villa originally sold him to Hull for £5m, and now they make another £7m. 

Edited 10 hours ago by Chez

[Saint Fan CaM]

8 minutes ago, Chez said:

Didn't Villa get him back from Hull for about £18m (which actually only cost them about £13m as they had a buy back clause) five minutes ago? Amazing that his price has gone up £2m considering he basically has cut it for them.

Villa originally sold him to Hull for £5m, and now they make another £7m. 

Moneyball done the right way?

[Doctoroncall]

Next step is to see players listed on the commodities market. 

[Saint86]

10 hours ago, Dirkdiggler said:

We don’t even compete with all the other clubs for decent players! Bar Ipswich we are bottom of record signing.

Are we where we deserve to be trying to be cheap?

https://www.footballfancast.com/premier-league-clubs-record-signings-transfers-list/

Not much correlation there. Leicester and wolves are on £40-45M, not allowing for inflation. Everton £45. Good chance 2 of those 3 also come down. Conversely Brentford have spent well. Its as simple as our recruitment has been utterly dreadful / we've executed our transfer strategy appallingly. Its one thing to do this whole "moneyball" style approach, but to do it whilst gutting the scouting department (Let alone then not going on to replace/improve it adequately) is just suicidal. Savings / profits on transfer fees should certainly have been offset to a degree with pumping money into the recruitment and scouting resources. And okay, none of us know really what goes on behind the scenes at those levels, but to me it has Rasmus' fingerprints all over it - he tries to take at least some of the credit for Brentford's rise, we know he has had a strong hand in recruitment at times over the past 2.5seasons, he oversaw the staff and structural changes at the club and turned us into multi club business rather than a club focussed one, and he's hired our DoF's / recruitment heads / whatever the fuck we've got now with 3 staff sharing the DoF role (allegedly).

Someone else was saying on here, this is the first time saints have been relatively flush with money in a long long time (rather than relying hugely on player trading and the academy sales to simply exist/compete at the top level) - and we've absolutely wasted it 😰

Edited 10 hours ago by Saint86

[Chez]

7 minutes ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

Moneyball done the right way?

Yeah. I guess we turned a small profit on Alvarez - also not wanted, but you'd argue he at least played games and caught the eye in the Prem.

It kind of annoys me when the big clubs make a profit on a player that hasn't worked out (obviously that isn't always the case). The Liverpool signing of Carvalho for pretty much nothing, not really getting a tune out of him and then selling for £27m especially.

[Chez]

12 minutes ago, Doctoroncall said:

Next step is to see players listed on the commodities market. 

Isn't there some sort of game (or betting market) that you can play that is based on the rise and fall of the value of players?  

[Saint Fan CaM]

5 minutes ago, Chez said:

Yeah. I guess we turned a small profit on Alvarez - also not wanted, but you'd argue he at least played games and caught the eye in the Prem.

It kind of annoys me when the big clubs make a profit on a player that hasn't worked out (obviously that isn't always the case). The Liverpool signing of Carvalho for pretty much nothing, not really getting a tune out of him and then selling for £27m especially.

That’s one of the reasons these players go to the top clubs - not just to play at that level, but to be associated with the name etc. I do wonder if the likes of Carvalho would come to a club like Southampton and are we always going to be a stepping stone club? I suppose KWP and Rambo did, so why not a really decent striker?

[Chez]

16 minutes ago, Saint86 said:

 Its one thing to do this whole "moneyball" style approach, but to do it whilst gutting the scouting department (Let alone then not going on to replace/improve it adequately) is just suicidal. 

We have gutted our scouting department? Can you expand?

I am not sure how accurate Transfermarkt is in terms of staffing, but they have a list of 9 scouts, 7 or those appointed since SR took over.

 

[SaintNewForest]

5 minutes ago, Chez said:

We have gutted our scouting department? Can you expand?

I am not sure how accurate Transfermarkt is in terms of staffing, but they have a list of 9 scouts, 7 or those appointed since SR took over.

 

The rumour has it that the scouts are now employed by SR, for the benefit of the SR group, and not specifically Southampton ... 

[leesaint88]

1 hour ago, Fabrice29 said:

Where was that reported? I'm pretty sure the way the system works being on the past 5 years of accounts that they will be hugely benefiting from flying through the leagues and this is probably their best time to spend.

I saw an article in the summer which i will try and find, but there was an argument on whether improvements to the ground to comply with the Premier League standards should be included or not (Everton managed to dodge a charge regarding payments to the new stadium development), but SwissRamble notes they lost the most in league one during 22/23 (Derby included £20m of purchased goodwill which technically put them at the top of the pile) and last year saw more losses which were reasonably hefty. 

[Challenger]

2 minutes ago, SaintNewForest said:

The rumour has it that the scouts are now employed by SR, for the benefit of the SR group, and not specifically Southampton ... 

Doing that will maybe save a bit of money, which in turn will be wasted on yet more useless signings.

[Chez]

2 minutes ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

That’s one of the reasons these players go to the top clubs - not just to play at that level, but to be associated with the name etc. I do wonder if the likes of Carvalho would come to a club like Southampton and are we always going to be a stepping stone club? I suppose KWP and Rambo did, so why not a really decent striker?

Agree. There was mention on here of (if you ignore the financial aspect and focus on football reasons only) Dibling being better to stay here than to go to a big club and be sent out on loan. But you can't ignore the financial aspect. Put bluntly, going to Liverpool means you get paid whether you play for them or not and also gives you another level of publicity. If the move fails, you have all of Europe and beyond aware of you and usually a decent move is available to you when the times comes.

I don't know why we can't attract genuine talent in the striker position. Chelsea and United seem to have struggled to get their man too. Maybe there just aren't the numbers of strikers as there used to be (with teams playing one up front) or the big teams have hoarded them all?

  

[Chez]

7 minutes ago, SaintNewForest said:

The rumour has it that the scouts are now employed by SR, for the benefit of the SR group, and not specifically Southampton ... 

Gotcha. Not sure that means our scouting department has been gutted though. 

If a scout watches a game/player and provides a report back to three SR clubs, how are we losing out? If it means we have 9 scouts rather than 5, that seems like a good thing to me.  If many are always looking at players well below the standard we require, that's an issue I guess.

[Saint Fan CaM]

2 minutes ago, Chez said:

Agree. There was mention on here of (if you ignore the financial aspect and focus on football reasons only) Dibling being better to stay here than to go to a big club and be sent out on loan. But you can't ignore the financial aspect. Put bluntly, going to Liverpool means you get paid whether you play for them or not and also gives you another level of publicity. If the move fails, you have all of Europe and beyond aware of you and usually a decent move is available to you when the times comes.

I don't know why we can't attract genuine talent in the striker position. Chelsea and United seem to have struggled to get their man too. Maybe there just aren't the numbers of strikers as there used to be (with teams playing one up front) or the big teams have hoarded them all?

  

I watch some lower league games and see fit, strong strikers put in some really nicely created shots on goal and think - why can’t they do that at a higher level? Lambert managed it. Is there another Lambert out there somewhere?

[Doctoroncall]

7 minutes ago, SaintNewForest said:

The rumour has it that the scouts are now employed by SR, for the benefit of the SR group, and not specifically Southampton ... 

not a rumour, this is now the strategy to share information within the set of clubs. Don’t know what transfers can be attributed to the new group or how it all works or the quality of those employed. 

[Saint Fan CaM]

3 minutes ago, Chez said:

Gotcha. Not sure that means our scouting department has been gutted though. 

If a scout watches a game/player and provides a report back to three SR clubs, how are we losing out? If it means we have 9 scouts rather than 5, that seems like a good thing to me.  If many are always looking at players well below the standard we require, that's an issue I guess.

Doesn’t that ignore the fact that there are scouts at different competency levels too? Do you have to be a Liverpool scout to know that the fitness and skill levels of a potential player will match the expectations required of the EPL?

Edited 9 hours ago by Saint Fan CaM

[Nolan]

17 minutes ago, SaintNewForest said:

The rumour has it that the scouts are now employed by SR, for the benefit of the SR group, and not specifically Southampton ... 

Thats not a rumour, that was reported on by the Athletic 2 years ago.

Southampton are fundamentally changing under Sport Republic’s ownership - The Athletic

Edited 9 hours ago by Nolan

[Chez]

11 minutes ago, leesaint88 said:

I saw an article in the summer which i will try and find, but there was an argument on whether improvements to the ground to comply with the Premier League standards should be included or not (Everton managed to dodge a charge regarding payments to the new stadium development), but SwissRamble notes they lost the most in league one during 22/23 (Derby included £20m of purchased goodwill which technically put them at the top of the pile) and last year saw more losses which were reasonably hefty. 

Ipswich lost £18m in the league 1 season. The Championship season accounts will be out in March 2025.

[danjosaint]

1 hour ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

Moneyball done the right way?

Same as Archer 

[Chez]

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/24842286.southamptons-taylor-lack-minutes-potential-january-exit/

Sounds like Charlie Taylor won't be departing in this window, although I guess there is still time for the manager to decide he isn't his man.

[Saint Scott]

 

[SambaMaverick]

Why are we taking him away from senior football to play kids football? Doesn't make a lot of sense if you ask me

[ChristopheVAFC]

It's official, Joachim is now in your home.

I wish him every success in your home !

Allez Southampton, Allez Valenciennes!

[Turkish]

Just now, ChristopheVAFC said:

It's official, Joachim is now in your home.

I wish him every success in your home !

Allez Southampton, Allez Valenciennes!

Is he any good @ChristopheVAFC

The odds say no

Edited 8 hours ago by Turkish

[kitch]

1 minute ago, ChristopheVAFC said:

It's official, Joachim is now in your home.

I wish him every success in your home !

Allez Southampton, Allez Valenciennes!

What are your thoughts on it?

[Saint Scott]

1 minute ago, SambaMaverick said:

Why are we taking him away from senior football to play kids football? Doesn't make a lot of sense if you ask me

He's been added to the first team on the OS.

Our CB's have hardly covered themself in glory so far, lets see if he is ready to challenge for one of the three starting spots.

[ChristopheVAFC]

3 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Is he any good @ChristopheVAFC

The odds say no

In all sincerity, this player really does have the potential to have a great career. Of course, he still has a lot of work to do, but he's a serious and dedicated player both on and off the pitch.

[ChristopheVAFC]

4 minutes ago, kitch said:

What are your thoughts on it?

I'm happy he's with you because he's a player who was coveted by other clubs, and with you he'll be able to make a lot more progress, I have no doubt about that.
 

[davefizzy14]

Welcome onboard Kayi Sanda amd Welington 😊

Edited 7 hours ago by davefizzy14

[richardc]

6 minutes ago, ChristopheVAFC said:

I'm happy he's with you because he's a player who was coveted by other clubs, and with you he'll be able to make a lot more progress, I have no doubt about that.
 

Do you think he is ready to start or just one for the future

and thanks for you updates

[davefizzy14]

7 minutes ago, ChristopheVAFC said:

I'm happy he's with you because he's a player who was coveted by other clubs, and with you he'll be able to make a lot more progress, I have no doubt about that.
 

I think we beat off a lot of competition to get him so looks a coup.

[Chez]

7 minutes ago, Saint Scott said:

He's been added to the first team on the OS.

Our CB's have hardly covered themself in glory so far, lets see if he is ready to challenge for one of the three starting spots.

Eight first team CBs (if you include Taylor) now. Are we looking for another Prem record or have Chelsea cornered the market on having the most players in one position?

£5m isn't peanuts for a youngster, but certainly doesn't guarantee future success, as we saw with Small. Signing a French youth international sounds exciting to me. Let's hope he has similar success at Saints to Schneiderlin. 

[Turkish]

2 minutes ago, Chez said:

Eight first team CBs (if you include Taylor) now. Are we looking for another Prem record or have Chelsea cornered the market on having the most players in one position?

£5m isn't peanuts for a youngster, but certainly doesn't guarantee future success, as we saw with Small. Signing a French youth international sounds exciting to me. Let's hope he has similar success at Saints to Schneiderlin. 

Sekou Mara was a French youth international when we signed him. Just saying...

[ChristopheVAFC]

3 minutes ago, richardc said:

Do you think he is ready to start or just one for the future

and thanks for you updates

I think that if the season goes on like this for you (I don't wish it on you, of course), it's possible that he'll make a few appearances on the pitch to prepare for next year. If not, I think he'll start with the B team.

[ChristopheVAFC]

3 minutes ago, davefizzy14 said:

I think we beat off a lot of competition to get him so looks a coup.

That's probably one of the advantages of multiple ownership: it makes it easier to keep the best players.