Saints can’t rely on kids to get them out of trouble

IT’S concerning to see the way things are going at Southampton. I know from a year there as manager, until the ownership changed, that they have an intelligent, understanding fanbase who are realistic about how far the club can go.

Of the 12 players they signed last summer, nine were aged 21 or under. Three of those were bought from Manchester City’s Under 21 team because Southampton had brought in a so-called ‘head of recruitment’, Joe Shields,

from that club, too. In October, the recruitment ‘guru’ Shields promptly cleared off for a job at Chelsea, just 13 weeks after arriving on the south coast.

After surviving relegation by five points last season, the club’s transfer policy also entailed selling three senior players — Shane Long (below), Oriol Romeu and Jan Bednarek — as they prepared to stake everything on youth. None of this screamed out to me as a club attempting to help the manager, Ralph Hasenhuttl, who has now been replaced by Nathan Jones from Luton Town. They didn’t seem to be buying players for Hasenhuttl in the summer. No manager in that situation would have agreed to so many young players arriving, when experienced performers were needed. Not all of those kids will be Premier League players for Southampton. In fact, it could be that none become Premier League players for the Saints. I vaguely know the club’s owner, Dragan Solak, through golf and he is an enormous football fan but I really wonder who is advising him on footballing matters.

What you need in a predicament like Southampton’s is battlehardened players. The tried and tested. The confidence could be quickly drained from these young boys if there isn’t an upturn in results. There can be exceptions to the rule about kids not being the answer and I hope this is one of them. But I seriously doubt it.