Jason Puncheon is off on his travels again, the player who has spent more time away from St Mary's than at it during his sting with the club is joining Crystal Palace.
In many respects its no surprise that Jason Puncheon has once again joined another club on loan, after all its something he has done with regularity since he joined Saints in February 2010, even then he was in the strange position of being signed from MK Dons a club that he was actually only on loan at himself, his parent club being Plymouth Argyle at the time, even there he only stayed at Home Park a little over two months before joining MK on loan in October 2008, a status that would be extended several times meaning he spent something like 15 months there on loan in total.
He was barely at Saints for six months, most of them being the summer of 2010 before his first loan spell away, joining Millwall in the November of that year for a two month spell followed by another loan move to Blackpool in January 2011, For 2011/12 he joined QPR on loan till the January, and with Saints heading for the Premier decided to stay put and fight for his place with the Premier within Saints sights.
All in all in 3 1/2 seasons at the club around 35 months in total playing time, he has probably actually spent around 18 -20 of them available for selection by Saints and assuming he sees out his loan at Selhurst Park will mean that by the end he will have been away from St Mary's for nearing 3/4 of the time he should have been here.
The strange thing though is why the Club offered Puncheon a new contract back in March, even back then he was struggling to get in Mauriccio Pochettino's side and it was clear the manager didn't really fancy him using him mainly off the bench for 10 minutes or so, even when he started he barely lasted after half time under the new manager.
The writing was clearly on the wall for Jason back then, so why did we offer him a new deal that will surely have cost us more money, perhaps we see profit in him in just loaning him out, I really don't know.
But to be honest what has really changed for Jason from last season, the new arrivals have not been in his position so he shouldn't really be down in the pecking order, however he couldn't even make the 18 man squad for Saturday's game at West Brom and in true Jason Puncheon style, when the going gets tough, Jason gets going out somewhere on loan.
Of course some would say its harsh that he has gone, and I do agree to some point, Puncheon made a decent contribution last year, mainly under Nigel Adkins, but the change in manager seemed to signal a change in fortune for Jason at St Mary's again, it seems that it has been made quite clear to him he doesn't have a future here, that being the case again all the stranger that he was signed up to that new deal, surely back then we were aware that we would be chasing bigger fish that Jason in the summer transfer window, so why not just let his contract run out.
Undoubtably this will have cost Saints a few bob in signing on fees and increased wages so just what was the point.
Good luck to Jason he is clearly a troubled soul and very much an individual rather than a team player, there are many who think that last season Jason was a very valuable player, however the stats show a different story, indeed his six goals were a good total and several of them were vital ie the goals at Chelsea and Sunderland, but apart from that his stats weren't that impressive, only 44 shots = 1.37 a game, although in fairness as pointed out many of his later appearances were cameo's, in terms of crosses he was a little better delivering 88, but again that's less than 3 a game and that's a poor total, but perhaps most telling is his number of assists, only a solitary 1 and that is just not good enough, to put it in perspective even Guly had one assist to his name as did the also much maligned Danny Fox, which goes to show that sometimes players can be deceiving as to how much they actually deliver.