Vegard Forren has been at St Mary's for nearly three months yet has not played one minute of first team football, is it time to give him a chance.
If rumours are to be believed Saints paid somewhere in the region of £4 million for the player, a fee that a year ago would have made him the club's record signing and indeed even now could make him in the top three expensive aquisitions for the club, yet here we are some three months and 10 games later and we have yet to see him kick a ball in first team anger.
Its not as if he is playing in a position that is not a problem area, to be blunt neither of the other three contenders for a central defensive role has been completely convincing and indeed we are still prone to lapses as was shown at Reading on Saturday where poor defending could have seen us two or even three down before we had got out of first gear.
That makes it all the stranger as to why Forren hasnt been given at least a run off the bench at some point, indeed most weeks he hasnt even been able to get on that bench.
I do take the point that Saints have been involved in a relegation battle and its maybe been hard to throw him into that with no experience in the Premier League, yes some would say its no difference than the arrival of Yoshida, but that being early in the season made it easier to do, since Forren's arrival there has been no room for error.
Yet errors have been made in central defence and continue to be made, the two games against Newcastle and QPR saw central defensive errors a plenty, yet still Forren wasnt thrown in, there was talk of his fitness on arrival in that he hadnt played a game since the end of the Norwegian season six weeks earlier, yet surely he had still trained given that he was negotiating moves to England and had a trial at Liverpool lined up, im sure he wasnt going to roll up for that one having not broken sweat for well over a month.
Indeed Jose Fonte was carried off against Chelsea and couldnt kick a ball and train for a period, yet he was able to return to the team by the start of March, the point being that a professional player can generally be got up to match fitness in around a month, really Forren should have been ready to play two months ago.
As is documented Saints seem to have a transfer policy where the signings are made by a committee rather than by only the manager or coaches choice, this has its advantages and I am actually an advocate of this system, but to run it properly the manager/coach must have a dominant role in proceedings as at the end of the day its his job to get the best out of the team, its no use giving a manager a type of player that doesnt fit in with his thinking, he just wont play him. Coaches see players play in training day in day out, my fear is that Mauricio Pochettino doesnt think that Forren is any good, whilst as I have already stated its hard to throw players in to tense situations untried, a manager will know whether a player is up to it or not, it seems MoPo doesnt feel Forren is good enough.
But as they say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, with safety being nearly achieved perhaps its time to throw Forren in and see if he sinks or swims, perhaps West Ham isnt the game to do it in given their direct aerial threat type of play, but after that certainly.
You never know perhaps Forren will step up to the plate and prove himself up to the task, but equally perhaps he will be another Mayuka and clearly not be up to the task, Mayuka of course was thrown in to a game and sadly showed that he isnt suited to Saints type of play, perhaps Forren will be the same, but without trying him we will never know.
One thing is for sure, if we want to take that step to the next level, we have to get the transfer committee working in tandem with the manager, clearly last summer that didnt happen, with Pochettino seemingly the man to take us to the next level then perhaps those running the transfer committee will feel confident enough to let the manager have significant input, if they do that can only bode well for the team.
I really dont know how good or bad Vegard Forren is, I hope its the former rather than the latter although I suspect that his lack of appearances is down to one thing and one thing only and that is that Mauricio Pochettino does not think he is good enough for this level.