Cracking the top 4

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Southampton sign midfielder Ganso​

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Southampton have today signed 25 year old Brazilian midfielder Ganso for a fee of £5.75 million. Ganso arrives in the Premier League from Sao Paulo where he made 101 appearances and scored 16 goals. He will link up with the first team squad immediately and will be available for Southamptons next match against Chelsea in the Premier League.

"We are delighted to welcome Ganso to the club and look forward to seeing what he can do for us" Southampton manager Ronald Koeman said. "he is a clever playmaker and can play in a variety of positions, we hope he can give us that extra something that can unlock tight matches."

BBC football pundit Jermaine Jenas reckons that the saints have bought well. "Ganso is a class act. He has been capped multiple times by his country, he is a good age and can still improve. His play is based around his intelligence and his ability to pick a pass which is something that Southampton will find very useful."

Ganso has been capped 8 times by Brazil and will join the midfield fight at his new club, vying for a place with the likes of Steven Davis, James Ward-Prowse and Gaston Ramirez.
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This Ganso guy is a Pato look-alike. :P
 
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December Review
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An absolute horror of a month see's us lose some serious ground in the Premiership but signs of improvement are there with the comeback against United and then the win against Liverpool
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9 points off the lead is now a big gap to close but we have to give it our best shot. As we have seen, a couple of wins can change everything. It is encouraging to see that despite our really poor month we are still in the top 4.

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The FA Cup has seen us drawn away to Preston. We will have to work really hard to ensure our complacency doesnt knock us out again.


Player of the Month​
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Despite not playing every game, Jake Hesketh has impressed when called upon and his infectious energy has gone some way to digging us out of a tight spot at the end of the month.


January Preview​
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Bale returns to Saints​

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Southampton Football Club have today made a sensation swoop to bring former academy product back to St Marys from Real Madrid in a deal worth a reported £11 million. Bale, 30 years old, had been at Real Madrid since 2013 when he became the worlds most expensive player, joining from Tottenham for a fee of £85 million. His time at Madrid however has not been a success, making 141 appearances for the return of 46 goals.

"Gareth is one of the finest players in the world" Said Southampton manager Ronald Koeman "We are delighted that he has come back to the club for what can only be described as unfinished business. This is a hugely exciting time for the club and for our fans and they now get to see Gareth play his football at St Marys."

According to Sky Sources, Bale is taking a significant pay cut to rejoin his boyhood side but will still be one of the highest earners on the South Coast, taking home a reported £190,000 a week. Bale is currently sidelined with a calf strain which could keep him out for up to two weeks so Saints fan may have to remain patient for his long awaited return to the pitch.
 
Wow !!!!! Great tranfer there !! I did not know that Tottenham bought Bale from the Saints !!!
 
kolas79 said:
Wow !!!!! Great tranfer there !! I did not know that Tottenham bought Bale from the Saints !!!
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Yep I'm afraid so :) Along with the likes of Walcott, Chamberlain, Chambers, Lallana, Chris Baird, Wayne Bridge, Luke Shaw, Morgan Schneiderlin and Alan Shearer.
 
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Jack Grealish leaves for Chelsea​

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Young Jack is the one that has to make way for the incoming Gareth Bale. Jack never really settled at the club and was frequently complaining about his lack of first team football. Perhaps he had ideas above his station, expecting to start frequently ahead of Lucas, Sanchez and Insigne. The £22 million transfer fee from Chelsea is exactly what we paid for him and is a nice addition to the clubs bank balance.

Morgan Schneiderlin rejoins from United

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One of my favourite players ever rejoins the club as Schneiderlin comes home from Manchester United. £5.5 million was the fee for the 30 year old who will provide excellent midfield depth and replace Strootman in the squad if I can ever sell him.
 
Quite an interesting season so far, going out of the champions league so early is slightly disapointing especially since things started so well with your massive victory over PSG but in the end I guess it wasn't meant to be. In the League you are doing pretty well, obviously a title challenge is out of the question but a top 4 finish will definately happen if you keep playing the way you have. Some great transfers altough I do believe you should also start looking at the future as you now have Sanchez, Ozil, Schneiderlin and Bale whom are all very good footballers but also getting on age wise. How are your youth teams developing? Anyway glad you are updating this story again as I love reading it, keep it up :)
 
Superb work bringing Bale back like that. Sad to see Grealish leave mind
 
TheOtherSpecialOne said:
Quite an interesting season so far, going out of the champions league so early is slightly disapointing especially since things started so well with your massive victory over PSG but in the end I guess it wasn't meant to be. In the League you are doing pretty well, obviously a title challenge is out of the question but a top 4 finish will definately happen if you keep playing the way you have. Some great transfers altough I do believe you should also start looking at the future as you now have Sanchez, Ozil, Schneiderlin and Bale whom are all very good footballers but also getting on age wise. How are your youth teams developing? Anyway glad you are updating this story again as I love reading it, keep it up :)
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Youth teams are going very well :) I will do an update on them soon! we have a couple of 4/5 star promising strikers coming through! Josh Barry is going to be the long term successor for Ozil along with Jake Hesketh who are both still very young :) Part of the reason I bought Schneiderlin back was to mentor young Slattery who is the successor for him. We are going to need to start looking for some young talent on the wings, especially with Grealish not working out but Bale and Sanchez have a few good seasons left to sort that out. Thanks for following :)

Sam91 said:
Superb work bringing Bale back like that. Sad to see Grealish leave mind
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Yeah I'm sad to see Grealish go too.. he was somewhat destroying our team harmony with his complaining though!
 
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Starting XI - Horn, Digne, Tah, Dier, Chambers, Schneiderlin, Alli, Ozil, Hesketh, Lucas, Martial.

Once again we were let down by poor discipline as Jonathan Tah got himself sent off and might well have cost us points as we have to settle for a point against Arsenal. We were the better team throughout but it was another former player that punished our opponents with Mesut Ozil scoring our all important equaliser.
 
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Starting XI - Lewis, Whiteman, Van Dijk, Dier, Turza, Schneiderlin, Alli, Ozil, Barry, Lucas, Williamson.

A rotated but strong starting XI were played in this match and we absolutely blew Preston away. Lucas and Ozil completely ran the show on the wings and scored all the goals between them as we never gave Preston a chance. Cant help but feel this was an important win for the boys tonight. 4 games undefeated including fixtures against Arsenal, United and Liverpool.
 
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Strootman joins Hammers​

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With just 6 months remaining on his contact and no way back in to the first team, we took the decision to sell Kevin to West Ham. The fee of £5 million is not bad for a player that would be going on a free anyway and it gets the best part of £100k of wages off our books to cover half of Bale's wages. It was an up and down sort of two and a half years for Strootman at the club, with a promising start being hampered by his devastating injury that saw him miss most of his second season with us. We have plenty of depth and cover now with Alli, Maia, Slattery, Schneiderlin and Hesketh so I feel it was probably the right decision to part ways.
Gallagher released​

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An academy product that was just never going to make it to the first team. His difficult contract renewal talks previously had seen him sat on a yearly wage wise of 15% meaning his wages were now up to almost £20k a week. This was not acceptable for a player that was doing nothing so with his contract also expining at the end of the season, we offered him out for nothing and sold him to Burnley. While we didnt make any transfer fee for him, we are going to save £20k a week for the rest of the year.
Bruma Signs
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With Sanchez being out for a couple more months at least and Bale being somewhat injury prone, I dipped into the loan market for some attacking cover. Top of the list was Bruma, currently at Man City, who signs for us until the end of the season with us covering £30k of his wages. A pacey, direct flair player who can play on either flank, Bruma can add great competition to our starting places.

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The Academy​

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I am going to take this moment to give a little behind the scenes at the famous Southampton Academy and take a look at how some of the youngsters are shaping up, additionally its time to catch up with our established academy stars.

Based at Staplewood training ground, the Saints academy is the most profitable footballing academy in the world. When Markus Liebherr took over the club in 2009, it was decided that the academy was going to be at the very core of a broader footballing strategy that was to be known as 'The Southampton Way'. Liebherr had a vision of an academy that was capable of supplying at least 50% of the first teams squad and also use it as a source of sustainable income, should it be deemed necessary, by selling these players. With this in mind the club set about a £20 million redevelopment of Staplewood which is now one of the finest training complexes in Europe.

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The indoor training dome at Staplewood is big enough to house several full size pitches and allows for all weather training sessions.

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State of the art physio/training/gym/swimming pool facilities are all housed within the main complex. The Academy is so envied that Southampton have taken the decision to sell the blueprint of how the academy functions to the American market to gain some extra income and to spread the brand of Southampton Football Club globally.

SOUTHAMPTON FC | Ralph Krueger eyes American development
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As you can see our facilities are something that we take great pride in and that shows with the level of our Training and Youth facilities, our extensive youth recruitment and exceptional coaching.

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The process begins with our Under 18's team which is supplied by both our youth intake every year and by our team of scouts scouring the globe looking for promising talent at reasonable prices. As you can see we have some promising players in our current crop of youngsters who will be looking to push on to the next level. We take our time at this level and weed out anybody that we dont believe is going to make it so we can better focus on our brightest prospects and guarantee them more game time.

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When a player is deemed good enough they are moved up to the under 21 level. We have made the conscious decision at the club that our players development is best served with regular game time so we utilise the loan market a lot. Any club with reasonable facilities that can promise our lads at least regular first team slots are free to take our under 21's out on loan. Any offer of rotational game time or less is rejected in favour of the player developing their game at the club. Bradley Stephens is the latest in a long line of talented playmakers to come through the academy but is still very raw. He will have to wait his turn before stepping up as he is behind the likes of Ozil and fellow academy products Jake Hesketh, Callum Slattery and Josh Barry.

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Any players that stay at the club or are deemed ready for the first team squad are put on dedicated training and mentorship programmes with experienced squad members such as Ozil, Sanchez, Schneiderlin, Bale, Van Dijk and Lucas. This helps them understand the work ethic required at the club and brings them a little closer to being involved in the first team, it might even see some of the older players talent rub off.
So what about the players who have already made it? Lets take a look at the stars of our academy that are settled in the first team squad.

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As previously mentioned, our scouting department is hugely important to us and needs to take a lot of the credit for the work that is done with our youth recruitment at the club. We have a team of 27 working on our scouting and transfers department led by Director of Football Les Reed and our Chief Scout Ross Wilson. Most of our scouts have at least 18 in either judging potential or judging ability and most even have 20.

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I hope this gives you all a little bit of insight into the work that goes on behind the scenes at Southampton FC both in the game and in real life. :)
 
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Starting XI - Lewis, Digne, Van Dijk, Dier, Chambers, Schneiderlin, Alli, Bruma, Ozil, Lucas, Martial.

A really good performance to go with our win away against West Brom. Mesut Ozil gave another stunning performance in the middle of the park and pulled all the strings, being rewarded with his 9th goal of the season. Eric Dier then doubled our lead and although we conceded a consolation goal we held out to narrow the gap to the top of the table to 9 points.

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Starting XI - Horn, Digne, Van Dijk, Dier, Chambers, Maia, Alli, Insigne, Barry, Lucas, Martial.

A thumping win over Villa continues our form. We were helped on our way by Martial's 30th goal of the season and a ridiculous tackle from Jordan Vertetout that got him sent off, with the resulting free kick being whipped in by Lucas Moura. Our defenders chipped in nicely as we pushed up and made the most of our extra man with Digne and Van Dijk both scoring.
 
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The old Southampton problem is starting to creep back in as bigger clubs start to come in for our players. We have rejected several approaches for Lucas Moura from PSG and Juventus but having talked to him he understands that his future is here. The real problem we are having is with Timo Horn. The German shot stopper is determined to leave the club and wants a return to his native Germany. Schalke even offered £25 million for him but the problem we are having is that only 35% of transfer revenue is made back available for transfers. Can we buy a better keeper for £9 mil? probably not. Szczesny is transfer listed by Chelsea for £5 mil but I would only be buying him as a stop gap keeper until we can buy better in the summer. For now, Timo is going to have to stay and I am going to have to risk his unhappiness effecting our performances and our squad harmony.
 
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Starting XI - Horn, Digne, Van Dijk, Dier, Chambers, Maia, Alli, Insigne, Barry, Lucas, Martial.

I am so proud of the whole team as a really gutsy defensive display saw us shut out Stoke at the Britannia and pinch a win with a single counter-attacking goal courtesy of Anthony Martial. We defended like lions with Digne and Van Dijk leading from the front and Timo Horn having a super game in goal. Three more valuable points, especially with United drawing with Villa to bring the gap to the top down to 7 points.
 
Shame about Horn mate :/ maybe a trophy might change his mind?
 
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