Should Saints bring James Beattie back to St Mary's ?
The current situation with the ex Saints striker is that his contract was terminated at Rangers, that means that he is a free agent and therefore able to sign for another club despite the transfer window having closed.
In many respects this would probably be a perfect signing for Saints in that he is a player with vast experience who would be able to do a job for the club, and with his injury record he would be content to be an impact player coming off the bench.
Not being able to guarantee first team football has probably been a stumbling block in bringing in the likes of Billy Sharpe etc, especially considering the goals Connolly has scored since the season has started, but in Beattie's case this wouldnt be a problem.
Also he would be a good alternative to Rickie Lambert, my worry with most of the forwards we have been trying to sign is that they are not big number 9's in the muld of Lambert, they have been smaller players in the mould of Connolly or Barnard, this being the case and its not hard to work out that Saints could have a big problem should Lambert get injured, not just for his contribution in number of goals, but also in the style of our play, its all geared up to gettng the ball to Lambert, if he was to be injured then we would have to change our style.
This has also been the case last season, when Lambert was out of form, he still played virtually every minute of every game, in certain games he was very poor and remained on the pitch, he had to ! we had no one to replace him, so to bring in Beattie would be ideal.
But would Beattie want to come and would we be able to afford him, well in the first instance, back in the summer this subject was covered and it seemed that with a young family and a wife from Southampton Beattie would be interested in finishing his career at the Club.
In the case of wages it might be a little trickier, certainly his contract at Rangers was higher than Saints would be willing to pay, but now he is a free agent this might loosen up his wage demands, certainly he would know himself that being 34 in February any deal would be at a lower rate than he is used to in the past and probably not long term, also being a free agent he could negotiate a signing on fee that would mean he would be prepared to take a lower weekly wage.
So in many aspects going for Beattie makes perfect sense, he is the experienced impact player that we need, we know what he is all about, he would want to come here, he would be affordable and being a short term option it would plug a gap whilst we look for someone longer term.
We could however face oppositin for his signature, his old Club Sheffield United are rumoured to be interested, however with age not on his side, surely he would prefer to play in the Championship rather than league One and surely we should be able to more than match anything the Blades could offer finacially.
Beattie enjoyed his best days at Southampton, whilst there are some who would say you should never go back, in this case i think an exception should be made, after all did not another Saints forward leave the club and then return to enjoy a second spell at the club, Im of course talking about Mick Channon