There has been a sense of excitement among our resident Saints fans in the Transfer Tavern following the news that they will be travelling to Wembley at the end of the month.

Claude Puel’s men defeated Liverpool in the semi-final of the EFL Cup and since then, there has been many glasses raised to the Frenchman’s management of the side in his first season of charge at the South Coast club.

Our landlord has especially been impressed by Puel’s management, especially considering Southampton is his first job in English football and although he endured a tricky festive period – Puel can be happy with his performance thus far.

Puel’s integrity in the January Transfer window has also been impressive, dealing with then club captain, Jose Fonte’s transfer request and recouping a cool £8million for the 33-year-old whose contract was up in the summer.

Although, Fonte’s loss will be big for the Saints in this second half of the season, but our landlord believes Puel and director, Les Reed had no choice in selling the Euro 2016 winner.

Alongside this, our Landlord has many other views on mistakes Southampton have made in this transfer window and here are TWO of them…

Not replacing Jose Fonte

Saints fans in the Transfer Tavern completely understand why the club let Jose Fonte leave to Premier League rivals, West Ham after it was evident that the Portuguese centre back no longer wanted to play his football at St Mary’s.

However, with Saints turning to Maya Yoshida, Jack Stephens and Florin Gardos to partner Virgil van Dijk – our Landlord believes that Claude Puel had to sign another similar quality centre back to Fonte in order to maintain the Saints’ league position and after an attempt to sign Spartak Moscow defender, Serdar Tasci broke down, failure to gain a centre back that could have major short term consequences.

Manolo Gabbiadini’s big money move

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1kGcGbMVzY

With the Saints’ struggling for goals following Charlie Austin’s injury – Claude Puel has seemed to dipped into his pocket to solve the problem with Manolo Gabbiadini.

Although Gabbiadini has an impressive footballing CV (Juventus being among his previous clubs) and is versatile in many attacking positions, his return of five goals in 19 appearances across all competitions for Napoli this season does not make good reading for someone signed to solve a goal crisis at St Mary’s.