The supporters of Southampton Football Club are getting scared to read the press, it seems that every day one player or another is linked with another club, they now need to hear some positive news.
It has not been a good last month or so for Saints fans and it has been made worse by the constant rumour mongering in the media by certain journalists who look to link just about every player at St Mary's with another club to give the impression of a club in totla meltdown.
Whilst it is certainly stormy sea's at the club the reality is we would be sailing these waters anyway whether Nicola Cortese was still in the boardroom and Mauricio Pochettino in the managers seat, the Daily Echo sports editor Simon Carter has written an excellent comment piece today and he tackles this very same question coming to the conclusion that certain players are just looking for a convenient excuse to manipulate an exit from the club.
Dejan Lovren is the latest and it has to be said his reasoning behind wanting away is flimsy at best, Lovren claims the club is now lacking ambition, but as carter points out in a lot more detail than I am doing here, when Lovren arrived Saints had just finished 14th in the Premier after fighting a relegation battle, added to that they had a manager who had spent his entire career as a manager fighting relegation, did Lovren really believe that Cortese could turn a club round that quickly and make them Champions League contenders within two seasons ? In their second season after their major takeover Manchester City could only finish 5th despite spending over £100 million that was after a first season of 10th after similar spending, some Saints fans and seemingly some players have come to think that Champions League football is only a matter of following a simple set of rules and it is guaranteed.
So after weeks of negative headlines the supporters of this football club really need a few positives, yes of course we have been linked with a number of players and in the main these have looked very promising, but we still haven't signed them yet and we supporters really need to see some action in this area so we can start to believe that the team will be rebuilt with quality rather than see a few late over priced signings as we have seen in the last two seasons.
Contrary to popular belief in some quarters, Southampton Football Club is still in a better position than most of the other teams in the Premier League, I would suggest of the 9 clubs who finished below us still in the division and the 3 promoted clubs, we have the best qualified manager, we have the best core squad and we have a lot more money to spend to build that squad back up than anyone outside of the top 7 from last season.
If Cortese and Pochettino had stayed then we would still have seen departures, we would need to in order to improve the squad, this is how every club outside of a privileged few has to operate out of necessity, indeed our Promotion squad of 2011/12 was built on the funds raised from the sale of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain should anyone have forgotten that and would like to claim that Saints were not a selling club under our ex Chairman, if Oxo had stayed the chances are the squad would have not been strong enough to sustain a promotion push and key players in that campaign like Jack Cork, Danny Fox (Yes look at the assists that season and tell me he wasnt key) and Billy Sharp would probably not have been affordable.
On the face of it Saints are now in a good position to keep moving forward and keep progressing.of course there is the unknown factor but every club has that but there is no reason why we should not finish 8th again, but now is the time to start delivering some good news to the fans, it is amazing how a few pieces of good news will improve morale amongst the faithful and make them start to believe that Saints can flourish.
As I have said before we now have a better qualified manager in charge of the club, someone who has the contacts and experience to bring in some good players and it could be that the players coming in are better than those going out, however the proof of the pudding is in the eating and if this football club is to quieten down those who would like to see it fail then now is just the right time to start to generate some positive headlines about quality players wanting to play for this football club rather than depressing news about how some of our so called heroes care about nothing else other than their bank account.