Saints new boss Nathan Jones has been telling the media that there are certain things that his team needs and that they need them quickly, suggesting that January might be quite busy.

Nathan Jones has been speaking to the Daily Echo about the forthcoming January transfer window and the new manager is very clear on what he needs.

“Look, if you’re an organised football club, you do your recruitment well well in advance,”

“My previous club we were six months in advance, always looking at windows, always looking at the next level, always looking at pushing boundaries. And here they are exactly the same.

“We have one of the best recruiters in the world in Rasmus Ankersen and Sport Republic in how they do that. So we’ve been really regimented in what we want, we’ve been clear in what we want, what type of player, what position, everything we want.

“We’ve narrowed that down and we’ll be having conversations to try and get those through the door as early as we can because there are certain things we need and we need them quickly.

“So they are well in advance, any well organised, well run, diligent football club would have already done that weeks and months in advance. Obviously it’s been difficult for Southampton with the change in manager, only six weeks to restart, but we’ve restarted immediately.”

Saints spent big by their own standards back in the summer and in the main they have recruited well, however they failed to land the striker that they wanted to and have certainly paid the price, hopefully in January they will add to the squad in the attacking department.

The club have largely ignored signing players on a permanent basis in the January transfer window in the past few years, the last transfer paid was 5 years ago for Guido Carrillo in January 2018, although that didn't quite work out, Saints did stay up that year and so from that perspective it all ended well that season.

The previous January saw Manolo Gabbiadini join the club and in 2017 it was Charlie Austin who arrived in the January.

Now it seems that the club will look to revive the tradition of signing an attacking player or two in the winter window,

At the moment it is unclear just who they will go for, but as Nathan Jones says the club have a strategy and will have identified targets well in advance, I have seen some cynical comments on social media, but the club has new owners and a new strategy and that strategy with Rasmus Ankersen overseeing has worked well with Brentford.

My own view is that we bought well in the summer, but blooding younger players into the team was never going to be easy, yes we should have landed a striker, but we still had a reasonable start, our problems started when we suffered injuries to several key players.

Now with those players back, we should be able to move forward again especially if we land the right players in the January window,

Photo: Action Images

stmichael added 11:47 - Dec 20 Our problems started when somebody made the ludicrous decision to let Oriel leave or rather be wasn’t worth a new contract. Secondly it wasn’t several key players it was ONE 18 year old. Thats how bad a state we are in. One 18 year old signed in the summer got injured and we were totally Fcuked. Now he’s back let’s hope he doesn’t get injured again.
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underweststand added 12:02 - Dec 20 ..just buy TWO strikers who can remember how to score goals, and then alternate them until someone does score....PLUS ...a decent cup run to Wembley ... and a Happy New Year.
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SaintNick added 12:51 - Dec 20 St Michael, you need to check a few things in your calendar. Firstly the mistake wasn't in letting Oriol Romeu go, no one was questioning that when Lavia started to show what he could do, if he had not got injured then no one would question the decision to move on a player about to turn 31 and replace him with a youngster whose value more than quadrupled within weeks. Secondly it wasn't one 18 year old presuambly Lavia who was out injured, at one stage we were missing not only Lavia, but also Kyle Walker Peters, Armando Bella Kotchap and Tino Livramento, in essence 4 of our 5 best players arguably. So Lavia although good, wasn't a one man team, we were lacking a forward and also full backs and perhaps the main issue finding an attacking wide man who was consistent

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highfield49 added 13:06 - Dec 20 Whilst remaining optimistic I still have a level of despondency that I can't shake off. We all know that having a list of players you want to sign is very different to getting the signature on a contract. The level playing field is at such a precarious angle now that any club outside of the wealthy few is in danger of sliding into oblivion. I presume that several agents have already been approached, on fishing expeditions, and maybe NJ's upbeat mood reflects some very positive news to expect in early January. Despite having pretty much a full squad available we all know that our destiny lies in the procurement of genuine goalscorers and I haven't a clue who those players might be, so over to you Rasmus Ankersen and fingers crossed.

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