saints

Lallana the standout candidate for fans’ award

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All season Saints have been lauded for their approach to indigenous talent, so it is only fitting than one of those players should be voted the runaway Fans’ Player of the Year.

Adam Lallana has to be the fans’ choice for the prestigious award.

He is the cog which keeps Saints going.

Without his artistry and invention, the squad would not have risen through the divisions at the speed it did and with the plaudits it garnered.

His England selection was well deserved and his displays for the national side catapulted his skills to the national conscience, following years of being overlooked in favour of other, faster team mates.

With this however, comes a cost.

Suddenly the giants of the domestic league are looking at him and it would not be a surprise should his head be turned.

Hopefully, though, he will still be here next season to compete for the Saints player of the year award once more.

Lallana, of course, is not the only player in a red (hopefully the white stripes will be returning soon) shirt to have impressed.

Luke Shaw is being spoken about in terms of world record fees for a left back, Dejan Lovren has given a defensive masterclass time and time again.

However, the second and third spots should go to Jay Rodriguez and Jack Cork.

J Rod has shown a greater composure this term and was rightly pushing for a place in Brazil until injury cut him down.

His direct running, brave attitude and eye for goal made him easily Saints’ top scorer.

Cork, meanwhile, started August on the bench but when £12.5m man Victor Wanyama suffered injury, he grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

His composure on the ball and willingness to put in the hard yards made him irresistible in the middle.

Some have even suggested he could be the next Saints player to push for an England place.

He looked to have slipped down the pecking order, but now he’s better than ever.

Svensson devastates while Lambert elates

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Originally published in The Sports Pink and dailyecho.co.uk

An ex-Saint has ruined my plans for next summer, but a current one may just have sorted out yours.

In Dublin, 37-year-old Anders Svensson popped up to beat David Forde at the near post and condemn Ireland to a 2-1 defeat which pretty much kills of any hopes of the boys in green getting on a plane to Brazil next summer.

To make it worse, I even have a signed shirt of his from 2003. Still, can always use an extra rag. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

About 300 miles away at Wembley however, Rickie Lambert Esq. was busy scoring and creating goals against a rather limited Moldova.

This may have led to a number bemoaning the fact that it’s only Moldova and that Lambert is still not good enough for international duty, but the fact remains he is scoring goals in an England shirt.

Without his contribution in three of the four goals England scored, the result would have been rather more underwhelming – and in international football, you don’t get to play the big boys without dispatching the minnows first.

Lambert’s call up by Roy Hodgson has had a remarkable effect across the country. Since I was a small boy, all the English football fans I know have always put their club ahead of their country.

Personally, I put this down to firstly the clever marketing of the Premier League over the last 21 years, the bloating of the European Cup into the Champions League and finally the constant overhyping of the Three Lions (Golden Generation, anyone?).

In England, England is no longer the pinnacle of the game. Yet, Rickie Lambert seems to have reminded people that it should be.

His progress from the fourth tier to International football seems to have galvanised belief that it is possible to survive the influx of foreign talent and make an impression on the closed shop that is the England national team.

Suddenly, Champions League experience is not a pre-requisite to play international football – lest we forget, Gary Hooper, now at Norwich, has Champions League experience at Celtic, but I don’t see a clamour for his call up.

In Southampton especially, more people suddenly seem concerned, even emotionally invested in what England can do. That’s what international football should be about. Petty club rivalries are left at the door for the greater good as all and sundry come together in hope and expectation.

I had the good fortune to go Euro 2012 last year. The football was abysmal. Giovanni Trapattoni’s atrocious tactics and gameplans saw Ireland humiliated. Regardless, it was one of the best experiences of my life.

Poznan, a city of 600,000 people was invaded by 50,000 Irishmen and women there for the craic and unlikely dreams of glory.

Ignoring the financial realities for a moment, it now looks like I won’t have the opportunity to repeat in Rio the delights of Gdansk – in reality, it just means I won’t have the chance to sell a kidney to fund such a trip. Every cloud and all that.

Should England make it however and you’re lucky enough to be able to afford it, I can only urge you to look at heading to Brazil next summer.

If however you, like most people, don’t have a spare few grand to throw away on a football jolly, throw yourself into International football.

Enjoy the dreams, wallow in the disappointment, but above all remember how Rickie Lambert made it acceptable to care about your country once again.

The future according to Liebherr

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The dust has settled, more dust has been kicked up and us Saints fans no longer have the Sword of Damocles – more commonly known as liquidation – hanging over us. Instead, we have the far more familiar upheaval of searching for a new manager to be getting on with. Being a Southampton fan is never dull.

To be fair, we haven’t had a proper speculation season on a new manager since Burley took his baffling substitutions to Hampden Park.

So while supporters come up with fanciful, terrifying and downright odd suggestions (Ivan Golac is my personal favourite) for the man who will be pinning the team sheet to the St Mary’s wall next year, the men entrusted by new owner Markus Liebherr go about the serious work of trying to find someone competent yet foolhardy enough to take the job on.

The problem I have is that we simply have no idea of what Liebherr (or rather, Nicola Cortese and Andy Oldknow) are after. Discipline? Continental flair? A big name?

Not. A. Scooby.

An interview with Cortese certainly provided something of an insight, but as with anything like this, it is easy to read far too much in to it. After all, he had barely got his feet under the desk so you’d imagine that by now he’s got a firmer grasp of exactly what is wanted – and needed.

Still, I do love the ‘in the know’ rumours – which of course, almost without fail are so wide of the mark they make the Sunday Sport look on the money – flying around. Between the comments on the Echo’s stories and SaintsWeb:
– Strachan has already supposed to have been unveiled three times,
– Tony Adams has single handedly engineered his odds with subtle betting patterns, and
– Darren Ferguson would love the chance to drop down a division and leave upwardly mobile Peterborough for the chance to work with the talents of Anthony Pulis.

It keeps those few quiet moments at work interesting, at least.

Does Mahwinney think he can turn back time?

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The statement today by the Football League chairman Lord Mawhinney paints the possibility of a fairer, more harmonious world for football fans across the nation.

In fact, it’s almost like going back to 1990, before a little thing called the Premier League was born. Money was shared between the four divisions of the Football League, players could move clubs at almost anytime in the season, and footballers weren’t completely out of touch with the fans in the terraces.

Mawhinney’s proposal for the Premier League to negotiate combined deals for both it and the Football League will never get off the ground, as it is the main reason the the 22-clubs broke away in the first place. Why would they suddenly turn around now and decide they want to give their vast wealth back to the clubs that were cut adrift by the schism of 1992?

Allowing players to move domestically at any time of the season seems like an okay idea, although personally I don’t mind the transfer window, it does limit the ability of clubs in the lower leagues to raise cash when they need to by selling players. The likelyhood of FIFA allowing their rule to be flouted though must surely be slim at best.

One of his proposals that I see no problem with is the suggestion that clubs who have fallen behind with tax payments to be banned from transfers. As far as HMRC are concerned, it probably isn’t going far enough, but from a purely footballing perspective it has to be a good move.

Of course, it would seem that Mawhinney is simply doing this at the behest of culture secretary Andy Burnham who has demanded that football clean up its act, and while Burnham’s timing also suggests this is being done for political rather than purely for the ‘good of the game’, at least it’s nice to know something is at least being talked about being done.

When will it end for Saints?

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The rear of the Chapel Stand, St Marys Stadium, Southampton

The rear of the Chapel Stand, St Mary's Stadium, Southampton - © Dan Kerins 2008

The whole sorry affair of Southampton FC is hopefully moving towards something resembling resolution, judging by some of the things being said at the moment.

While it’s safe to say we won’t be seeing investment of Paul Allen proportions, at least the administration debacle should be behind us and we can start afresh (appeals not withstanding) regardless of who the owner is – although us Southampton fans know that not just anyone should be welcomed into the board room.

However, the new owner certainly won’t be the council – as proposed in a column in the Telegraph. They’ve said they are interested in the stadium, which is not something I have a problem with – but the club itself would probably be a step too far for the electorate to stomach.

But after reading the piece, it brings up almost utopian visions of what could be if British football clubs were run for the benefit of the community rather than the pursuit of profit. Like I said, it’s never going to happen, but the possibilities are certainly worth pondering.