Southampton Q&A: Can Saints stop being a selling club?
We have been putting your questions to BBC Radio Solent's Adam Blackmore.
In part two, he focuses on Saints' recruitment, selling strategy and youth teams.
Laurie asked: Is there any chance that Southampton could stop being a selling club - with a view to keeping team consistency and having a fair chance of making ourselves a club to be reckoned with?
Adam answered: To be honest Laurie, I don't think there is! FFP/PSR really makes it very hard to compete in the Premier League against much richer clubs with far greater turnovers (Manchester City's turnover and wage bill is five times that of Saints) and I don't see those differentials changing unless, in the long term, Saints can up their turnover and revenues so much that they close the gap. That is a really long-term project that I know they're working on.
I think the best any club of Saints' size can hope for is one season where they have a crack with a manager and squad that punches above its weight, shocks everyone, and gets into Europe. That ups the income dramatically and makes players more likely to stay. However, finding young talent and making a good profit on that talent has to still be a big part of the strategy I'm afraid.
Darrell asked: Why have Southampton never brought young players into the fold and nurtured them together into senior team? Surely to bring a youth team on together through the age leagues and then into the senior team will be the best team spirit and cohesion that money can buy? Instead, they sell them on thinking of profit instead of a team that the supporters can be proud of.
Adam answered: Darrell, I'm afraid the days of Dave Merrington getting two-thirds of the first team squad from the academy are over. As I said in my reply to Laurie, PSR makes it nigh on impossible to keep really good talent for a long time.
Saints have only had a handful of players make it from the academy in the last decade but, on the positive side, we can now see a number of age group internationals in the under-21s and below.
There are also a lot of young players coming into the Saints setup from other countries, as the club hopes its wider scouting network will start to find diamonds in the rough.
But remember it is now a global market and the biggest clubs will always get the best young players. Manchester City pay for their academy talent to go to private schools – how do you compete with that if parents have a choice?
Realistically, Saints still need to develop talent as much as possible, but it's really difficult to keep top young talent and the best you can usually hope for is to make a big profit that helps the club thrive more in the future.
