Many Saints supporters are surprised that Saints havent spent out much in the transfer window so far.
Leading the league at the turn of the year Saints have a great chance of a return to the Premier League after an absence of seven years, after raking in an alledged £15 million pounds in August for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, the general consensus was that it was a little late to spend it back then but it would most certainly be spent in the transfer window in the New Year.
When Saints unexpectedly became not promotion hopefuls but League leaders and showed they had more than a little staying power, this view was enforced, and Saints were linked with many players including the likes of Sharpe, Rodrigues, Jutkiewicz and maynard to name but four, however with 3/4 of the Transfer window approaching Saints seem no nearer landing any of their targets that they did five months ago.
Of course we have brought in Tandanari Lee (when the deal is finally done) and Falque, the latter on a loan from Spurs, but neither have any experience nor track record at the level at which we are playing, even Lee who has played in the J League is a gamble, Yuki Abe his colleague in the Japanese National side has not been a raging success at Leicester City since signing in August 2010, finding it hard to get into a poor performing Leicester side this season, in short Lee could be a big success or a big flop, at this stage its impossible to tell which.
So the big surprise for aints fans is our failure to have landed any of the players we have been linked with, the feeling back in December was that Saints were canny enough to have been lining up the deals so that we would be hitting the January transfer window running and getting that boost needed after a poor run of matches in November and December.
Of course most deals in January are done at the end of the month as Clubs panic and we all rather hoped that Saints might be astute enough to avoid all this, but whichever way your thoughts go on why we havent landed anyone bar the two mentioned, the fact is its a little worrying about the lack of incoming players so far.
The January transfer window was always going to be a barometer as to the commitment of the Liebherr family to the club and some fans will see it that way and if Saints fail to invest a fair chunk of the Oxo money then it could send out messages.
Maybe some supporters will feel that Nigel Adkins doesnt need to add much to his sqquad, after all we are top, but that doesnt appear to be the view of Adkins himself, who although stopping short of naming players that we are in for, seems very keen to make his views that we need new men in very public.
Those of us old enough to remeber the 1981/82 season will recall that in that year we lead the league for longer than any other club that season, with 11 games to go we were still top and as the transffer window closing approached, the senior members of the squad, including Kevin Keegan and Mick Channon were imploring Lawrie McMenemy to bring in a top quality signing or two that might just win us the league, whether it was McMenemy or the board who did not want to splash the cash is unclear, certainly Im sure the manager probably would have spent it if he had it, untried Mark Wright and Keith Cassellls from Oxford were the only players in but in those 11 games we won only 3 and took only 11 points out of 33, it would have been a tall order to win the league, but ask Channon or Keegan and they will tell you that they felt that we would have.
Perhaps that lesson from history should be heeded, a football team always has to keep improving, even if sometimes hard decisions have to be taken, the question is why dont Saints seem to be able to land any of the players linked with them, is it poor planning in identifying players that will come, is it poor negotiating or is it the fact that we just arent going to spend most of thet Chamberlain money, the truth is probably a combination of all three to varying degrees.