With limited time between winning the playoff final and the start of the Premier League season, Southampton had to get some serious business done to try and build a squad that was capable of staying up. One thing that every newly promoted club has to do is to try and make the team at least as good as it was the year before.
This was always going to be difficult because of the number of loan players you are allowed to have, and the PSR rules that everyone tries to abide by, which are made even more stringent if you’ve spent a year outside of the top flight. With all that in mind, we had to secure our best player from the Championship season, who was Flynn Downes from West Ham.
The initial loan didn’t have any sort of clause to buy him at the end of it and his performances in the Championship were so good that it was thought that West Ham would want him back and it would be unlikely that we would be able to sign him. I would say that every Southampton supporter was delighted when this turned out not to be the case and he signed on a permanent deal and almost immediately, got made the captain.
I guess the deal was only made possible by the fact that West Ham changed their manager and the new one, Julen Lopetegui would want a different style of midfielder and so the money received for Flynn was more valuable to West Ham than the player himself, even though he is a boyhood Hammers fan.
So far this season, Downes has been used in his best position as a number six but has also been used as a number eight, driving forward from midfield and has shown ball carrying skills that he didn’t often get the opportunity to display in the Championship.
Flynn always seems to be a very positive character, though that positivity will be tested if our poor start to the season carries on over the remaining games. He was never going to come in and absolutely dominate games in the Premier League like he did in the Championship.
Last season he always seemed to be one step ahead of every other midfielder in the league but of course that’s not the case this year, with having to do things quicker and the team in general not having players that are as good as the opposition. Flynn has what it takes to rise above that and the hope is that with consistent game time, that’s what happens.
Of course, that wasn’t our only business with West Ham over the summer with Maxwel Cornet arriving on loan. Cornet built his reputation at Burnley, which is why West Ham signed him in the first place but for whatever reason, it hasn’t worked at the London Stadium, hence why he was available.
It really did seem like a bit of a panic loan for us on the last day of the window. It’s too early to make any sort of judgement on Cornet because to date, he’s only played about an hour in a Carabao Cup game and made a couple of cameos in the league. He did, in his first half appearance against Bournemouth, show a willingness to drive forward and to get shots away and I was also impressed by his tenacity at working back off the ball.
There are promising signs there but it remains to be seen if he turns out to be an asset for the rest of the season. The right-wing position that he was bought to play in, has been taken by the emergence of Tyler Dibling, so Cornet’s best chance of minutes may be on left hand side, which shouldn’t be an issue given he is naturally left-footed.
Of our West Ham business this summer, I would say that everyone will be happy with Flynn Downes come the end of the season and Maxwel Cornet is a 50-50 bet. The rumour mill has also been pushing David Moyes our way but I really can’t see that one, but as you know in football, you can never tell.
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