Why it's good Saints didn't sign a striker this summer

Cody Gakpo would obviously have improved Saints attack but another centre-forward would not solve its creative dysfunction

In the second of my “tin foil hat” series, I’d like to explain why I think it’s a good thing that Southampton failed to convince PSV Eindhoven to part with Cody Gakpo this summer for a fee in excess of £30m. Contrary to the opinion of most Saints fans, I don’t think our money would be best spent on a striker at all.

It felt good though, didn’t it? When we were in for him. The Gao years at Saints have been above all else, austere. Not punishing people on the breadline austerity, but real austerity - counting the pennies, knitting together patchwork squads every summer, make-do-and-mend in the winter and ringing every last drop out of a balding Nathan Redmond. All the while there’s a growing sense that financially, the game is moving on without us. Gone are the heady days of 2012 when £12m could get you a flashy creative midfielder like Gaston Ramirez or a Dani Osvaldo. Didn’t work out? No bother, Southampton were one of the more well-heeled clubs outside the top-six. I was such privileged twat back then: we had a prestigious academy, a smart board with an aspirational model, we used “data” to buy players; it was “The Southampton Way™”, I bragged, and it was eternal. Now the Jones’ have caught up, and my shoes have holes in.

So imagine how I felt, after five years playing Oliver Twist, begging Gao for another no.10, when Martin Moneybags Semmens got his wad out, and slammed it down on the negotiating mesa for Gonçalo fucking Ramos?! Do I know who that is? Do I fuck? But his name is Gonçalo Ramos so he’s obviously a massive fucking jugador. A muy, muy fuente jugador. He’s even got that squiggly thing under the ‘c’ in his name. No more Norwegians on the wing for us Linda, we’re moving up in the world!

Ramos did not sign for Saints. The ink was barely dry on his Benfica contract, who, under no pressure to sell, had already parted ways with Darwin Núñez that summer. No matter, because Southampton had been working on a deal for Cody Gakpo, and Manchester United had just skulked away. If you care to relive that saga, Dan Sheldon and colleagues did a really thorough write-up. What matters for us, is the part where Rasmus Ankersen personally drove a dumper truck full of gold bullion to Eindhoven, and emptied the contents onto the floor of PSV’s club shop.¹ With add-ons, we know the deal to have been worth at least 30 million (squids not euros).

Because it’s been so long since we had a payday, and because swaggering round the transfer market like Toad of Toad Hall felt fucking awesome, it gives me no pleasure to admit that I don’t think either deal would have been the right business. It is widely held belief among Saints fans that we badly needed to sign a new top-level striker in this window, and failing to do so was a stain on an otherwise excellent summer of business. Given our attempts to do so, it seems that the club agrees.

So why do I disagree? I should probably start by saying that Gakpo, Ramos, or any other business class striker would immediately improve Saints’ attack, which currently sucks balls, again. Dropping a forward of that quality into the team would inevitably produce more goals, and you would think, enough points that the ‘R’ word could go more or less unmentioned all season. But at its core, I don’t think Saints goalscoring problem is the goalscorers per se, but its chance creators.

I don’t intend this blog to be statistically heavy but it’s worth introducing just a few figures. Saints have scored 8 goals from 8.4 expected goals in their first 8 games. This excludes the paltry 0.10 xG they accrued against most recently against City, which Jacob Tanswell thinks could be a club record since recording began in 2014/15. Last season we scored 43 goals from 46.8 xG, an underperformance of 3.8 goals across the whole season. Before that, with Danny Ings, we overperform, slightly. This suggests statistically our chance conversion is about par for the league, and if that was how somebody in the pub described Adams and Armstrong’s finishing collectively, I’d say “yeah mate that’s about fair”. In terms of creating chances, over the last two seasons we have averaged 1.12 (16th) and 1.23 (12th) expected goals per game — similarly unspectacular without ever being quite relegation worthy. So where’s the issue?

In what Ralph calls the “wide 10” position, Southampton employ Joe Aribo, Samuel Edozie, Stuart Armstrong, Mohamed Elyounoussi, Moussa Djenepo, Theo Walcott, Nathan Tella and until recently Nathan Redmond. Cumulatively, those players (present last season) scored 7 goals and 7 assists in the league. Our top assister was Nathan Redmond (5), no longer in Ralph’s plans and departed for Beşiktaş. The highest scorer, Elyounoussi made two assists in over 2000 minutes played, and his goal tally (4), was matched by Jan Bednarek. For players in his position, Elyounoussi is in the bottom 12% of players (in Europe’s big 5 leagues over the last 365 days) for assists, the bottom 8% for shot-creating actions, and the bottom 25% for goals scored. His four goals last season came from 6.0 expected goals, suggesting his finishing was also significantly under par (over a smallish sample). Stuart Armstrong, presumptively the club’s best player in the position, scored two league goals and made no league assists in 1,473 minutes of football. He was middling for shot-creating actions (47th percentile), and was in the bottom 14% for goals scored.

If you want to understand why Armstrong and Elyounoussi play so much for Ralph, have a look at Stuie’s passing and ball-carrying statistics (among the better players in the big 5) and Mo’s pressing game (actually, one of the best in the big 5, by volume). Whereas Ralph has often voiced frustration at Djenepo’s inability to stick to the script, Elyounoussi contributes to the press very well. After starting last season well, Ralph suggested that they weren’t many games coming up that would suit Tella’s speed and desire to get in behind the lines. Armstrong is better at picking the ball up in deeper areas. But despite their systemic contributions, Armstrong and Elyounoussi’s chance/shot-creation is appalling. Neither have scored or assisted yet this season. Redmond, Tella, Djenepo and Walcott have played so little they don’t really warrant statistical inquiry. The bottom line is that together, they offer an astounding amount of bluntness for what must be £15m-£25m in annual wages. Meanwhile, James Ward-Prowse made more goals and assists (10 goals, inc. 4 free kicks, 5 assists) alone than all of them combined, playing as an attack-minded no. 6.

Over the years we have coped with this for two reasons. The first is that when Ralph’s incredibly specific and inflexible 4-2-2-2 system actually works, by God, it works. In our good spells, we have played some blistering football with a frankly awful squad. Hassenhuttl’s capacity to make us more than the sum of our parts is precisely why he has survived this long. The second reason is Danny Ings. When Ralphball wasn’t working, the absence of chance-creating midfield players was offset by a striker who really could just do it all. Che Adams and Adam Adamstrong are passable chance converters, but they don’t have that bit of magic in the box to create chances too.

Much of the belief that we need to sign a striker seems to reflect a desire to recapture that spark. Luke Osman lamented after the City match that nobody in our current group is “capable of creating something from nothing”, as Ings was for years, and Broja was last season. The absence of such a player is a “massive worry”. His analysis obviously absolutely correct. But there are different ways a skin a cat, and I wonder if the best solution is really to break the bank for a new “carry” player in the centre-forward position.

Put it another way, imagine we got Gakpo. And imagine he’s everything we hoped for and he balls so hard it makes your eyes water. What do you think the upshot of playing him in front of our current midfield is? Is Djenepo going to beat the fullback and play him in behind? Is Elyounoussi going to play the telepathic one-two with him? Is Ward-Prowse suddenly going to morph into a deep-lying playmaker and send him defence-splitting through balls? Yes, he would inevitably score some great solo goals, and likely carry us as Ings did. But should we be looking for a world-class striker to carry us, or should we just get like, another quality winger (hey Joe Aribo xoxo), who can play balls to a competent striker like Che Adams? I accept we won’t challenge for Europe with Che up top. But that isn’t where we are right now, and the next stepping stone surely has to be addressing the glaring deficiency in attacking midfield. I have not forgotten how great Ings was for us, but I’ve also not forgotten those games he floated alone, isolated in a defensive block that his teammates couldn’t break down.

Finally, I also thinking its worth considering what signing a fourth recognised centre-forward will do to the talent we are presumptively trying to develop. Che Adams is now our top striker, and broadly agreed to be “good enough” for us at this level. Assuming we play two forwards (not a given), the intention would presumably be to pair Gakpo and Adams, consigning Mara and Armstrong to the bench. Many Saints fans are unmoved by Armstrong’s contribution so far, and wouldn’t object to his being made second string. My personal belief is that Armstrong needs better midfielders, he relies on speed and positional intelligence and wants the ball played into space he can run into. His movement is consistently excellent, but suffers because we do not have the players to feed him (and he’s ickle). What I wouldn’t give for a Tadic to supply him. Not a Koeman-era Tadic, but even just a checked-out, halfway-to-Ajax, Hughes-era Tadic, who would sleep for an hour but roll something through to Charlie Austin at least once a game. Adams has the advantage of being a viable target man, but lacking the Ings-factor, he too I think would benefit from better midfielders to create space for him.

It is reasonable to think I am being generous to Armstrong. But what of Mara? It is worth noting that Mara had a better goals/90 ratio in each of the last two seasons (0.60, 0.39) than Cody Gakpo (0.57, 0.38), at a worse team, in a more difficult league. The big caveat is that he achieved this over a much shorter playing time (34 games, 10 starts), but he has already shown his quality in a Saints shirt with an exquisite assist (Leeds) and a classy (disallowed) solo finish (Leicester). Gakpo’s CV is longer and thus the more valuable player, but I suspect Bordeaux’s financial struggles means £12m undersells Mara and the gap is smaller than we think. We should be really trying, right now, to find out if Mara is future of this team.

Obviously, in a few years Dom Ballard will be on for the Ballon d’Or and none of this will matter. But in the meantime, if Sports Republic are gonna get a bottle in, just once, it will go down all the sweeter in we spend it in just the right place.

1. Author’s embellishments added. Rasmus Ankersen is a wealthy man and probably doesn’t even have his HGV license.