Southampton's Season Set To Begin Saturday

Southampton travel to Cardiff Saturday to kick off their 3rd consecutive season in England's 2nd division. Yes, yes, I know it's called the Championship. But that's just a new label the marketers slapped on the old 2nd division.

Saint's new Dutch manager Jan Poortvliet says the team will be ready. Veteran Polish striker Marek Saganowski has joined Danish club Aalborg on loan until December. Saints are looking to get his £5,000 / week wages off their books. More so though, Saganowski only managed 3 goals in 30 appearances last year. A club in the tight financial situation Southampton is in right can't afford to have veteran players who don't produce.

Saturdays game is totally different. We knew the games over pre-season would be difficult but we start on Saturday and boys will be full of confidence.

As you can see above, Poortvliet isn't concerned about Southampton's results in the pre-season. The question though will be if the young players can step up and perform during the long 46 games season in division two. They'll also need another 15+ goals from Stern John (scored 19 in 07-08). Can they get the job done on the road at Cardiff tomorrow?

Not A Total Bale-out

I'm on vacation right now but not loving it. I caught a stomach flu from my little nephew. Right now I can't keep any food down and I'm pretty sure while I was napping some hooligans beat me with a sack of nickels. At least that's how I feel right now.

Horsfield's little piece over at Sportingo caught my eye. He touches on nearly done transfer that would have Spurs buying Cardiff's Chris Gunter for up to £4 million pounds. He goes on to point out how much these lower clubs could use the cash.

I don't doubt they need the cash. Both Cardiff and Southampton are toying with administration right now. The problem is in quoting the full potential value of the deals and implying they'll help the clubs.

Rumors have it that the deal for Gunter will only be £2 million up front and possibly rising to £4million dependent on Gunter meeting certain benchmarks. The same with Walcott. Horsfield says that Southampton made £20 million off the deal. They didn't. They only made £5 million up front. And that cash is what is most important for a club that is hanging in the balance financially. Sure, they've gotten some of the up to £10million since then but there are no guarantees they'll reach that full figure.

As you may have guessed, the same applies with the transfer of Bale to Spurs. Horsfield again reports it as £10 million deal. Again it was actually £5 million up front and possibly up to £10m total if the right benchmarks were met.

This doesn't mean that the money doesn't help lesser clubs. But we really should get the amounts right if we are to talk about how much it helped. In the case of Southampton, had they gotten cash up front the way Horsfield reported they could have paid off most of their debts just from a couple players. Unfortunately Southampton still has well over £25 million in debt; these deals have helped them tread water but not gotten them out of the woods. And even if Gunter were to earn Cardiff £4 million up front, it won't make much of a dent in their debts.