With the transfer window just over a month away, speculation is growing over what will happen at St Mary’s in January. According to rumours, numerous players will leave to make room for newcomers.
Several media outlets, notably footballfancast.com, report that Tall Paul Onuachu was advised to find a new club in January; he was seemingly surplus to needs in the summer after spending 2023/24 on loan in Turkey.
Back then, Saints remained steadfast as numerous clubs attempted to buy him on the cheap, including Trabzonspor, where he spent last season, but their offers were deemed inadequate, and Saints decided to keep him rather than loan him out.
However, it appears that there is a team willing to pay the asking amount, with Clubb Brugge in Belgium reportedly willing to spend £8.5 million to bring him back to the country where he had a lot of success before to being signed by Southampton.
Tall Paul played his first game of the season and has weirdly gone from being dubbed a flop by fans to a cult hero, but the truth is that, while he has unquestionably given his all on the pitch, he is not suited to Russell Martin’s style of play.
Against Liverpool, and in some of his appearances off the bench, he battled valiantly, but mostly in the centre circle, dropping deeper and deeper to try and get the ball, which was not happening otherwise. We bought him to score goals, but he has barely had a touch in the opposition penalty area, with the majority of his touches occurring in and around the centre circle.
Onuauchu is an out-and-out forward; if he is to be used, it is necessary to get balls into the box early and get him on the end of them; this is not Russell Martin’s style; it is about pass and pass again, and Tall Paul and Cameron Archer spend their time making run after run only to have the ball passed sideways or backwards. Martin’s decision to pick Onuauchu appears to be motivated by desperation, as he appears to be the only person in Southampton who cannot understand where our problems are and how to solve them.
Onuachu might be the Saints’ saviour this season, but only if Russell Martin leaves; I’m perplexed as to why the manager has chosen him in recent weeks. If we need an extra midfielder, play one rather than an attacker.
So this is a significant month for Tall Paul; if Russell Martin is still here at the end, he’ll be off to Brugge.
Also on the move might be Maxwell Cornet, who has made little effect since his loan move from West Ham; the difficulty here is that he is also surplus to requirement at The Hammers, therefore they won’t allow him go back to the London Stadium until they can find another team to take him on loan; if they can’t then they will take our money and leave him at St Mary’s.
The big problem here is that it will only be in the final week of the window that they may find a club willing to take a chance on a player who has started only one Premier League game for Saints and another as a substitute, with the same number in the Carabao Cup, for a total of 71 minutes in the League.
They are not the only players who may depart; with Kyle Walker-Peters out of contract in the summer of 2025, the Saints may decide to cash in during January, with little possibility of him signing a new deal.
Armel Bella-Kotchap could have done a good job this season, but it appears that Russell Martin has no intention of playing him, implying a schism. Again, the Saints will try to offload him, though if Martin departs, a new manager may have different ideas and use Bella-Kotchap.
