Southampton supporters have been pretty downbeat in recent times after seeing their side head into the international break having failed to win in the Premier League since September.
Mark Hughes’ men went into their encounter with Watford at St Mary’s last time out having drawn three and lost four of their seven matches since their 2-0 success over Crystal Palace on September 1, which remains their only win of the campaign so far. And that’s because the Saints could only muster a 1-1 draw at home to Watford in their most recent league clash, with Jose Holebas’ late equaliser cancelling out Manolo Gabbiadini’s opener for the hosts.
Thus, there have been many disappointed Southampton fans up and down the country, several of whom are wondering how their team have got into this mess after four straight top ten finishes between 2013 and 2017.
Their pretty poor recruitment has certainly played a part in their struggles, which has been summed up pretty well by the woeful addition of Sofiane Boufal back in the summer of 2016 by former manager Claude Puel.
The Saints spent a club-record £16.83 million (as per Transfermarkt) on the Morocco international, who has proven to be damning condemnation of just how bad the South Coast outfit have got it in the transfer window in recent years, and thus very much the start of their alarming decline.
Ultimately, Southampton were a club on the up under Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman just a matter of years ago, as although they continued to sell their best players come the summer, they would then replace them with quality signings.
The club may have sold the likes of Adam Lallana, Luke Shaw, and Rickie Lambert in the summer of 2014, but they brought the likes of Sadio Mane, Ryan Bertrand, and Graziano Pelle to St Mary’s to more than compensate for those departures – and that was the theme 12 months later as well as Cedric Soares and Virgil van Dijk joined the club.
Yet things started to go downhill on the recruitment front in the summer of 2016, as while Puel deserves huge credit for leading the side to eighth place in the Premier League that season, his signings were on the whole very poor indeed.
And one of those that made the move to St Mary’s for big money was Boufal, a player who has shown glimpses of promise during his time at the club, but absolutely nothing more than that.
The Saints sold Mane that summer and would have been looking at Boufal as the man to fill the void vacated by the now-Liverpool ace, only for the Morocco international to hugely flop with just four goals and three assists to show for his 59 appearances for the club.
Yes, there were moments of magic, not least his wonderful solo goal in victory over West Brom last year, but those glimpses were very few and far between – for a club record signing, Saints fans were entitled to have expected a lot more.
Whether they see him again in a Southampton shirt remains to be seen, given he was shipped out on loan to Celta Vigo for the current season after a reported bust-up with manager Hughes, but given he failed to really produce the goods for the South Coast outfit, it’s unlikely that Saints fans are chomping at the bit for him to return.
Overall though, Southampton’s recruitment took something of a nosedive following the Boufal addition, as since then they simply have been unable to bring the same level of talent to the club than they did a few years previous – thus resulting in their lowly position in the division.
And while the summer of 2016 was a disappointing one on the whole, the shocking acquisition of Boufal for big money seemed to start Southampton’s alarming decline.
Southampton fans… what do you think? Let us know!
