It has been stated that all of the funds generated by incoming transfers will be reinvested back in the squad, but can Ronald Koeman actually manage to spend all of it ?
Saints have raked in around £90 million pounds from the sale of various players and compensation from the departure of Pochettino to Spurs after taking into account dropping Bournemouth a few bob etc, so far they have spent around £18 million of it, meaning that still in the kitty is approximately £72 million pounds, although there will be some payment to Chelsea for the loan fee of Ryan Bertrand coming out of that.
That is a lot of money to spend in a short period of time and the problem is that there is a few people out there ready to start complaining if Koeman doesn't spend every last penny.
But will he be able to manage that ? given that as I write we could be bringing in two new signings from Inter Milan in return for loaning them Osvaldo, that would be starting to bring the squad up to something near full strength and then it might be a question of Koeman either spending money for the sake of it or saving in for a rainy day or a rainy January transfer window.
I would prefer the latter, if we make the key signings we need.
At the moment the Inter loan signings aside we are linked with Forster and Van Dijk from Celtic with a combined joint fee of around £18 million and Javier Hernandez from Manchester United for around £15 million, if we made those signings then we would still have around £40 million still in the transfer kitty.
A nice problem to have but if all of the above signings were made just where would we spend that £40 million, we would be pretty strong in all departments, perhaps we would still need a decent wide man and another central defender but that apart it would be hard to really improve the squad other than ironically jamming it too full with the need to perhaps sell someone on.
Perhaps be the time to bed in the squad and then to strengthen it further in January and indeed the summer window of 2015, I tend to look at the medium term rather than the short term and Im fiully prepared for Koeman to perhaps still have £15-£20 million in the kitty come the end of the transfer window and I would rather that then spend for the sake of spending, god knows we have seen enough of that over the past two years.
Rome wasn't build in a day is the old adage and that is the same for football clubs, it cannot be denied that their have been mistakes made since the departure of Cortese, but we cannot do anything about them now, all that matters is what we do next and we as supporters should not add to the weight on the shoulders of those in charge of the club both in the boardroom and on the bench by demanding that every penny is spent, that doesn't mean that we should have large amounts of cash left, I do think its important that we invest at least £40-50 million in the next few week, but if we make the right signing then having some left over would be a solid foundation for the future.