Wow, why has no-one else thought of that?????

Copying successful clubs, what a revolutionary idea.

The leagues are choc full of teams trying desperately to copy the likes of Southampton. Do you think clubs deliberately sign rubbish players? They hope the players they sign will be good enough to emulate clubs like that. But it is a bit of a gamble. Nobody really knows for sure which players will succeed or fail.
Saints basically got one batch of players in over a couple of years that turned out to build enough of a reputation to persuade the big clubs to throw pretty much a couple of hundred million pounds at them for them (that's part skill and part good fortune). That one batch of players funds everything since then. They don't have to keep replicating that ability to discover 'hidden gems' any more. They can now go and spend £20m-£30m on players with the proceeds of those previous sales, so it's self-perpetuating.

Posted By: mr carra, Mar 14, 18:31:24