Manager of the Month: First of Many

After the end of the season and our 11th place finish, a
strange thing happened in that Ralph deservedly won the July manager of the
month award.  I say strange because usually
it’s the preserve of Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola. There is a curse commonly
associated with manager of the month which is that things go to shit
immediately afterwards but August was actually a month off from Premier League
football so no chance of that.  So, a
quiz question in future years will be ‘Who was the only ever Premier League
manager of the month for July?’.

The first business we had to do this summer involved having
to deal with Daniel Levy and Spurs over the transfers of Pierre Hojbjerg to
them and Kyle Walker-Peters to us. In hindsight, it was always going to get
done despite Levy and Spurs being notoriously difficult to deal with but it was
just a case of haggling over money and in true modern football fashion, no one
really knows who has got the better end of the deal. The details we are being
fed is that KWP cost us £12 million and PEH cost them around £18 million. If
that’s the case then it seems about right to me but it wouldn’t surprise me in
the slightest, if the figures are completely different. Again in hindsight, it
looks like the fact that Spurs wanted one of our players made it easier for us
to sign KWP because if they hadn’t wanted one of our players, I’m sure that
Levy would have priced KWP out of the move.

Hojbjerg leaves and I have absolutely no problem with that
because over the four years that he has been with us, he has always given 100%
despite playing under some pretty ropey managers until Ralph arrived. I have a
feeling he will do very well at Tottenham and let’s face it, Jose Mourinho
knows what the game is about. Pierre was a player who always showed leadership
qualities even when he wasn’t the captain and he was instrumental as captain,
in helping to turn things around after than the nadir of the 9-0 defeat. During
Project Restart, when it was abundantly obvious that he was leaving, whenever
he was on the pitch he still put the effort in and they should be remembered
when he is compared to certain other players who decided they wanted to leave
and then couldn’t give a shit whilst wearing a red and white shirt.

KWP arrives of course having quickly proved himself to be an
excellent right back, once he acclimatised to the way that Ralph wanted us to
play. This guy is a proper defender who also offers a lot when going forward
and it really looks like an excellent signing for us and for the first time
since we had Nathaniel Clyne on the right and Ryan Bertrand on the left, we
have a pair of really good full backs who offer us a really good balance
between defence and attack. We’ve had Cedric, Cuco Martina and Valery at right
back over the last five years and to be brutally honest, none of them could
defend and our right hand side has been a weakness.

It almost became a comedy sketch in the end but eventually
Mohammed Salisu emerged from quarantine and became a Southampton player, signing from Real Valladolid. It’s
all been a bit mysterious and it appears that he will not be fit for the start
of the season but on paper, it’s a great signing of a player who is very well
thought of but we have to remember that he is young, especially for a centre
half, he will make mistakes and we all got very excited over the signing of
Kevin Danso last season.  There’s not even been a picture of him in a Saints shirt as yet and he’s not been in any of the training ground galleries on the website.  Slightly odd.

We are still hamstrung in this transfer market in some
respects by our mistakes of the past and part of our summer has been wondering
what happens to our shit boy band. Maybe they could be called the Wilsations
after Ross Wilson or maybe the Reed-Jects.

We have Mohammed Elyounoussi who we thought was a lead
violinist who could play to a really high standard to packed halls but it turns
out that he can only play a fucking tambourine at a village fete in Scotland.

We have Wesley Hoedt who thinks he’s brilliant at everything
and can sing and dance and play every instrument under the sun but in fact, he
is Darius Dinesh (look him up) and a bit of a wanker with no redeeming
features.

We have Guido Carrillo who we’ve had to tell to just stand
there and mime because he can’t do anything else. It’s not his fault and you
can’t blame him for being here but it’s just the way it is.

We have Mario Lemina, the God of gangsta rap on lead vocals
and Instagram.  He’s the main talent of
the band and delivers the least and we have 200 gigs booked for next year and
we know Mario is going to turn up for about three of them. 

Back in the real world with the boy band and Elyounoussi
fucked off for a second season on loan at Celtic as soon as the English season
ended. It probably suits us to get him out the door for another year but it
seems absolutely ridiculous to me that you can loan in a player that you
obviously cannot afford to buy, for two seasons. We can only hope that the loan
fee was very substantial.

Carrillo has been mentioned a few times in terms of being
loaned to an Argentinian club to once again link up with Mauricio Pellegrino
but either way, he has not been invited to join in pre-season training here, so
is in limbo at the moment as he enters the last year of his very lucrative
contract, given to him by the Teflon man Ross Wilson. I wonder if Les and Ross,
having both left all their shit behind to take up new positions, still think he
has a future at Southampton? The last time I looked, we had plenty of staff in
the megastore.

Wesley probably wakes up every morning thinking that his
agent is going to be on the phone with news of a potential move to a big
Italian, Spanish or English club but it isn’t happening for a player who is
destined to be pissing around in the Belgian league for the rest of his career.
He has been linked with Antwerp but he hasn’t gone yet and he seems to have a
swipe at Ralph in every interview that he does. He will be missed in the way
that you’d miss haemorrhoids when they’ve gone away.  Always remember that there are no good
players called Wesley.

“Where the fuck is Fulham? #BellEnd”

Then we have Mario. Oh dear. He has spent the whole of the
season just gone, calling Galatasaray the greatest club on earth with the
greatest fan base. A “mythic” club no less and the perfect club for him
#LionTeam #TonicLikeLeminarse #Waster. Well guess what? The mythic club don’t
want him and have fucked him off back to us. He was initially linked with
Besiktas who are of course one of the main rivals of Galatasaray, which was
probably fabricated by Mario and his agent to get back at the snub from
Galatasaray. Meanwhile, it appears that Saints have agreed a fee with Fulham
which will probably be news to Mario. I couldn’t imagine for a second that he would
end up at Fulham but it appears it might have some legs – they would be
absolutely mad to rely on that absolute fucking waster in the relegation battle
but they have ahead next season and it saddens me to look at Fulham fans on
Twitter, looking at the infamous sped up highlight reel of Nathan Redmond and
getting excited.

Speaking of Fulham, It was good to see them get promoted
through the play-offs and that Harrison Reed played a massive role in their
success. Reed has of course been mentioned as a possible replacement for
Hojbjerg at Saints but to be honest, I think that ship has sailed and it looks
like he will sign for Fulham for around £8 million. Can’t blame him for a
second for going but I feel that we may be missing a trick if we don’t have him
here this season. With one year left on his contract though, I guess we could
gamble on keeping him for the first half of the season and if it doesn’t work
out, letting him go for a few million in January but with money being tight at
the moment, that’s not really a feasible option.

Another player was out on loan last year was Fraser Forster
who has decided off his own back it seems, to come back to Southampton and
fight for a place which is absolutely fair enough as far as I’m concerned.
Celtic fans seem to be taking the news quite badly but at the end of the day
lads, a player who knows your club well has decided to come back to
Southampton, where he stands a very real chance of being on the bench.  Celtic are a huge club…. in Scotland, though
they did give the mighty Ferencvaros a good game at home in the Champions
League before losing and exiting the tournament before the season has actually
started, as usual, which means that their decent players will be available for
less before the transfer window closes.

On an extremely positive note, Gareth Southgate announced
his England squad and both Danny Ings and JWP were in it and deservedly so.
There was the usual strangeness with Southgate though in that he didn’t pick a
left back and we have a very good one at Southampton.  The very fact that he didn’t pick a left back
at all just makes me have grave doubts over Southgate’s ability as England
manager.  Anyhow, Danny will always have
loads of players in front of him in the pecking order, no matter how many goals
he scores as there are quite a few English strikers at the big clubs but JWP
will hopefully be given a really good chance to impress, in an area of the
pitch were England are not that great. Southgate will probably play him at left
back.  Of course though, JWP can always console himself with having signed a new 5 year contract at Saints.

Back at home, shock of shocks, LD Sports turned out to be a bit dodgy.  They have either been kicked into touch or left of their
own accord, depending on what you read. Either way, the £7.5 million per year
we were getting from them is no longer a thing and we were in the situation of
beggars not able to be choosers, so we’ve ended up with a sports betting company which is not ideal. I’m not going to speculate on how stable Sportsbet.io are but I
assume it will be a one season thing. Lots of replica kit will have to be
replaced or rebranded though, which is a massive deal to the slightly peculiar
breed of fans who didn’t like the sponsors logo and it was the biggest deal in
the world. I guess they will have to find something more important to worry
about now.

The football itself all starts again in a couple of weeks with our first game
being an away trip to Crystal Palace. We usually do quite well up there but as
I always say, historical records against teams, even recent historical records
are largely meaningless. For example, you may have heard on the grapevine that
we lost a game 9-0 last season… and the next meeting of the clubs was
slightly different.