Rumour Mill

Last updated : 04 July 2005 By The Editor

Still, the departure of Bernard, Camara, Dodd, Redknapp, Svensson, Le Saux et al will hopefully have freed up some cash. I started putting together a list of the players I would like to see the back of this week. Once I'd finished, it turned out I'd just written out the squad list for next season, minus Quashie. >sigh<

Redknapp is renowned for picking up bargains in the transfer market. So far we have the guy Fitz Hall replaced at Palace and a bloke into the midnight of his career, never mind the twilight.

With the club having cleverly offloaded their only left back on a season long loan, this is clearly a position where we're going to have to strengthen. The thought of Higginbotham pulling duty here next season, should be all the impetus Redknapp needs. So far, however, the only name that I've heard is Ian Harte. Readers may fondly remember Mr Harte being roundly subjected to torrents of abuse from Leeds fans who thought he was utter pants. He did take a mean free kick though.

When we signed Wise, I had laughed that we should just sign Paul Ince and bring Mark Hughes out of retirement. That would be Redknapp's dream midfield, to kick our way to promotion. It's not so funny that we've now been linked with octogenarian Teddy Sheringham. While Teddy's goal exploits for West Ham were impressive, I'd like to think we could build at least a little for the future. We have Crouch and Ormerod, and next season should see the emergence of Blackstock, Jones, and perhaps Best if we're lucky. Unless of course Harry can't resist bringing in short term fixes to throw in the first team, of course.

Having reassured myself that we wouldn't get Sheringham, I was a bit unprepared for the link to Lee Clark. Clark, 90, has been a stalwart for Newcastle and Fulham throughout the decades. With a Clark and Wise partnership, Saints fans could delight in opposition players sweeping past our midfield to punish our already dodgy defence. Yay!

Having no decent left back and no left sided midfielder could be considered a bit of a handicap for next season. While I'm confident that Harry will do his level best to mix and match with the existing squad, we can always speculate. Alas, the only left sided player I've seen us linked with is Lee Trundle and he's more of a forward anyway. Bah.

With no one decent being linked with a move in, let's see if we can't help assist Harry in removing some of the deadweight in the squad through spurious rumour mongering.

West Ham, Manchester City and Liverpool are now all interested in getting their mitts on Peter Crouch. Losing Crouch, who was one of the few bright spots last season, would be quite a blow. We really don't have a ready replacement with Blackstock being largely untested. No doubt we'll be trotting out the "we don't have to sell, but every player has his price" comments shortly.

It's gone a bit quiet on the Lundekvam to Celtic story. While I would have screamed at the thought of his departure a year ago, now I'm not so sure. He was so far off his game for much of the season, and made so many errors that it's hard to look at him in the same way. Of course being surrounded by a dodgy defence and constant managerial and coaching changes won't have helped any.

While trawling for rumours, I spotted Middlesbrough being linked to Higginbotham for a million. Normally I'd be squealing at delight here, but his commitment last season will do him well in the Championship. He's not Premiership class, but sadly nor are we at this moment in time.

So, in summary, we're stuck with lots of dead weight that we can't shift, we can hardly afford to bring in any real talent, and we could well have to sell Niemi and Crouch to get any kind of funds together.