Osvaldo To Leave As An Expensive Folly Wednesday, 23rd Jul 2014 08:36 Perhaps not the most surprising news that Saints fans have ever heard, but Saints are trying to sell Osvaldo in what will turn out to be a very expensive episode in the history of the club. When Osvaldo arrived at the club he was heralded as another marque signing, in many respects his signing mirrored that of Gaston Ramirez a year earlier, here was a player who quite plainly was not that interested in joining Saints, but eventually after protracted negotiations was persuaded to come purely because in the end we offered him too much money to be able to turn it down. When he arrived he came with a reputation and he was leaving Roma due to the fact that he felt in order to achieve his aim of going to Brazil with his country for the 2014 World Cup, he needed to be played in a central striking role, rather than the more wide role he had usually operated in for his now former employers. The issue with this when he joined Saints was that suddenly and unexpectedly, in Rickie Lambert Saints had a player with exactly the same aspirations so something had to give. At this point I do have some sympathy with Osvaldo, apart from the money in order to sign he must have been given some guarantees about his role in the team, Ok no one can be guaranteed a place, but he would not have come unless he had those reassurances about the way he would be used. This is where the problems started, Mauricio Pochettino could not seem to make the decision as to whom should play this central striking role, hence in the early games of the season we had a hybrid system where the manager seemed to be trying to keep everyone happy by shuffling Osvaldo and Lambert around a bit like volleyball after each play. This didn't suit either player and early Saints results were not good, however a run of games against mainly struggling opposition glossed over the problems, but the reality was that Osvaldo was not being handled well and a collission was inevitable. To be fair to Osvaldo he did give his all, but when Pochettino did drop Lambert and use him in the way he really should have done it was in games like Manchester United away a difficult test even given United's poor form, Lambert was also struggling in the system and in many games was inneffective, again a goal or two against poor opposition glossed over this fact, indeed just about the only person who was benefitting was Jay Rodriguez who suddenly found a burst of form and goals and again probably made it seem like the Osvaldo/Lambert partnership was succeeding rather than failing. When December came and the harder opposition we struggled, finally Osvaldo was geting the nod ahead of Lambert but it was against the likes of Chelsea away you could see his frustration about his treatment, this burst out away to Newcastle away when he erupted during a spat between the two benches, a week earlier we had thrilled to his goal against Man City and thought he was about to blossom, yet the trip to St James Park would be his last game in a Saints shirt, this flare up brought a ban and before he could return the training ground spat with Fonte saw him ushered out of the door on loan quickly. Whilst there is no condoning the assault on Fonte there is the feeling that all of this may have been avoided if the manager had handled him right, Pochettino had worked with him before and must have been aware of his temperament, yet after paying a club record fee of £15 million we did not use him as you would think a record signing. In short Osvaldo was like Ramirez before him, an expensive folly brought in to convince the fans that the club had ambitions and the proof was that we were paying big bucks for players, the problem was that in Ramirez and Osvaldo we were spending big but we werent getting players worth the money we were spending. Allegedly £15 million went on Osvaldo and wages in excess of £65k a week, far more than the rest of the squad were on and I suspect this was a cause of unrest and ultimately perhaps sowed the seeds of greed in some squad members, but Osvaldo was not a £15 million pound player nor was he worth the weekly wage, but our transfer committee determined to make a statement went for the deal at any price as the costs spiralled, again Osvaldo cannot be blamed for this, he merely eventually seccumbed to wages he could not dream of anywhere else. Now Saints will try and offload him and it will be at a great loss financially, at best last year he was a £10 million player, now we will struggle to get that or anywhere near it come to that, when signing on fees and wages are added to the totals, even if we did manage to get £10 million for him I would hazard a guess that it will have cost us around £10 million for this folly (£5 million loss in transfer fee plus £5 million in wages and signing on fees etc) an astronomical amount for a club of Saints size to waste and when you consider a similar amount for Ramirez its beyond belief. A swift ending for both parties is in the best interest, but the difficulty will be to find anyone willing to take a chance on a player with known issues even before joining Saints as well as Osvaldo being willing to take a big pay cut, financial negotiation will be neccessary and that will not be good news for Saints bank account. Perhaps the most likely scenario is that he goes on loan till January with an option to buy, however this was the deal when he went to Juventus and his failure there has not exactly increased his transfer value nor our bargaining power. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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