Just when you thought their luck was finally about to run out after another summer of upheaval that involved their totemic striker becoming one of the world’s best paid footballers with a move to China, their best attacker following a well-trodden path by four of his former teammates up to the opposite end of the country and under a new manager previous untested in the Premier League, Southampton once again look well placed to confound their early season critics who tipped them for relegation.
Wednesday night’s 2-0 win over an admittedly understrength Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium put Southampton into the semi-finals of the League Cup, where they will face Liverpool over two legs.
The well-trodden path mentioned earlier just so happened to be to Liverpool where Sadio Mane became the last Southampton player to move to Anfield from the South Coast in the summer, following Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Rickie Lambert in doing so the previous three seasons.
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Mane’s ability to ghost past players, commitment to taking on defenders and eye for goal prompted Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp to sanction a transfer that would make the Senegalese forward the most expensive African player in history. He has hit the ground running, too, part of a fluid and interchangeable front three or four that could fire the club to a first championship since 1990.
For those harbingers of doom who predicted that Southampton’s spell back in the Premier League would come to an end in May 2017 with the sales of Mane and Graziano Pelle — and this writer was definitely one of them — they continue to defy logic.
Since their return to the top flight in 2012 — following two relegations that saw them play in England’s third tier of football six years ago — the club have sold their best assets every summer but recruited arguably superior ones and have become the model for promoted teams looking to establish themselves in the top flight.
A superb scouting network, sound recruitment of players who can be sold on for profit and an academy that continually produces a conveyor belt of world-class talent to top up of the clubs coffers: Matt Le Tissier, Alan Shearer, Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale, Adam Lallana and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are the most high-profile graduates of a Southampton academy that is already the envy of most of Europe. The conveyor belt is still moving, too: Josh Sims, Harrison Reed, James Ward-Prowse and Matt Targett offer proof.
In each of their four seasons back in the top flight the club have started each campaign with a different manager. While Nigel Adkins’s sacking was arguably harsh, Mauricio Pochettino and Ronaldo Koeman excelled before moving to bigger clubs with ambitions that, in their minds, outsize those of Southampton.
Claude Puel was installed for the 2016/17 campaign. If Gareth Southgate’s appointment as the new England manager was underwhelming, it’s safe to say the unheralded Frenchman’s unveiling as Koeman’s replacement at St Mary’s in June hardly caused a stampede.
But after an inauspicious start under the former Lille, Lyon and Nice manager, Puel’s Southampton have followed the same upwards trend of those of his predecessors, and sit comfortably in the top half of the table just three points off sixth place with a more-than winnable game against a Crystal Palace in free fall up next on Saturday.
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