Manchester City are the latest club to be apparently queueing up to sign Luke Shaw in the summer according to the latest media rumour.
Luke Shaw has been the subject of much speculation of late, for month's before the January transfer window opened, the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and even Liverpool were supposedly camping outside St Mary's with a bg full of cash, now they are seemingly to be joined by those multi billionaires Manchester City.
Rumour though is one thing and making a bid is another, after month's of rumour in January none of the big clubs allegedly desperate to sign Shaw actually tested our resolve by making a bid and there has to be a reason for that.
Perhaps the reason is that knowing Shaw had signed a long term deal last summer that these club's believed that he was not for sale, yes that could be the case, but given the turmoil at St Mary's in January why did no one whack a cheeky bid in for a player who according to some was devastated with Nicola Cortese going and either about to walk out of his contract or considering his position at the club.
We will probably never know why a bid was not forthcoming in January, however if there was none then, what will make it any the more likely in the summer ?
Another reason could be that the so called giants of the Premier League after watching Shaw don't believe he is ready for their first team, certainly many people forget that he is still only 18 and still learning his trade, he is still a long way from being the finished article and these clubs arent interested in his learning his craft, they want first team ready players now, Shaw was much criticised on Match Of The Day for his positioning for Stoke's opener at St Mary's recently, he can learn from that playing for Saints, at Man City he would be in the glare, errors like that get the crowd on your back at places like the Etihad.
So I think the lack of bids so far is more down to Clubs biding their time and waiting for his career to develop a little, Shaw is still at a stage where his career could take off or it could stall a little, the Premier is littered with players who at 18 were going to be the next big thing, yet at 24 are little more than a squad player, their careers stalling because they took a big money move and found themselves not ready for first team action at the highest level in the game, one example of a player this nearly happened to was Gareth Bale, sold by us to Spurs and plunged into their first team, in his first season he managed 8 Premier League appearances before getting injured, Spurs won none of them and Bale was not impressing.
In 2008/09 he made only 16 appearances in the League, again Spurs won none of these and by mid season Bale was only second choice to Assou-Ekotto.
In his third season at Spurs he made his first appearance in the September of 2009 as a sub and took part in his first ever Premier league win, however he was still unable to win a place in the team with Harry Redknapp preferring Assou- Ekotto, by this stage it was common knowledge that Spurs were ready to offload him and it was rumoured that in the January transfer window Spurs would offload him, Nottingham Forest were apparently the club that he would be going to.
But that January would prove pivotal for Bale, Assou- Ekotto got injured Bale came in to the side and never looked back, Harry of course now conveniently forgets he was trying to get rid of Bale and will claim that he was responsible for the players development, but it was a close thing.
Bale was lucky the breaks went for him, but there are plenty of other instances of players rated higher than our own Luke Shaw at this age, who are now also rans, in the past the big clubs have signed any promising youngster that moved rather than letting him go to a rival, that may be the case with Shaw in the summer, but I just have the feeling that none of the clubs are quite convinced about Luke yet, yes he has promise, yes he is Premier class, but there are still aspects of his game that he needs to work on and i think that is why we have yet to see our resolve to keep him severely tested.
That is good for Saints and also I think good for Luke Shaw who will hopefully have the chance to get a good grounding in the Premier league with Saints, ultimately he will leave, but he will leave a better player than he is now and a better player than he would be if he had spent a season or two on the fringes of Man City etc's first team playing mainly in cup games.