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Osvaldo To Leave As An Expensive Folly
Wednesday, 23rd Jul 2014 08:36

Perhaps not the most surprising news that Saints fans have ever heard, but Saints are trying to sell Osvaldo in what will turn out to be a very expensive episode in the history of the club.

When Osvaldo arrived at the club he was heralded as another marque signing, in many respects his signing mirrored that of Gaston Ramirez a year earlier, here was a player who quite plainly was not that interested in joining Saints, but eventually after protracted negotiations was persuaded to come purely because in the end we offered him too much money to be able to turn it down.

When he arrived he came with a reputation and he was leaving Roma due to the fact that he felt in order to achieve his aim of going to Brazil with his country for the 2014 World Cup, he needed to be played in a central striking role, rather than the more wide role he had usually operated in for his now former employers.

The issue with this when he joined Saints was that suddenly and unexpectedly, in Rickie Lambert Saints had a player with exactly the same aspirations so something had to give.

At this point I do have some sympathy with Osvaldo, apart from the money in order to sign he must have been given some guarantees about his role in the team, Ok no one can be guaranteed a place, but he would not have come unless he had those reassurances about the way he would be used.

This is where the problems started, Mauricio Pochettino could not seem to make the decision as to whom should play this central striking role, hence in the early games of the season we had a hybrid system where the manager seemed to be trying to keep everyone happy by shuffling Osvaldo and Lambert around a bit like volleyball after each play.

This didn't suit either player and early Saints results were not good, however a run of games against mainly struggling opposition glossed over the problems, but the reality was that Osvaldo was not being handled well and a collission was inevitable.

To be fair to Osvaldo he did give his all, but when Pochettino did drop Lambert and use him in the way he really should have done it was in games like Manchester United away a difficult test even given United's poor form, Lambert was also struggling in the system and in many games was inneffective, again a goal or two against poor opposition glossed over this fact, indeed just about the only person who was benefitting was Jay Rodriguez who suddenly found a burst of form and goals and again probably made it seem like the Osvaldo/Lambert partnership was succeeding rather than failing.

When December came and the harder opposition we struggled, finally Osvaldo was geting the nod ahead of Lambert but it was against the likes of Chelsea away you could see his frustration about his treatment, this burst out away to Newcastle away when he erupted during a spat between the two benches, a week earlier we had thrilled to his goal against Man City and thought he was about to blossom, yet the trip to St James Park would be his last game in a Saints shirt, this flare up brought a ban and before he could return the training ground spat with Fonte saw him ushered out of the door on loan quickly.

Whilst there is no condoning the assault on Fonte there is the feeling that all of this may have been avoided if the manager had handled him right, Pochettino had worked with him before and must have been aware of his temperament, yet after paying a club record fee of £15 million we did not use him as you would think a record signing.

In short Osvaldo was like Ramirez before him, an expensive folly brought in to convince the fans that the club had ambitions and the proof was that we were paying big bucks for players, the problem was that in Ramirez and Osvaldo we were spending big but we werent getting players worth the money we were spending.

Allegedly £15 million went on Osvaldo and wages in excess of £65k a week, far more than the rest of the squad were on and I suspect this was a cause of unrest and ultimately perhaps sowed the seeds of greed in some squad members, but Osvaldo was not a £15 million pound player nor was he worth the weekly wage, but our transfer committee determined to make a statement went for the deal at any price as the costs spiralled, again Osvaldo cannot be blamed for this, he merely eventually seccumbed to wages he could not dream of anywhere else.

Now Saints will try and offload him and it will be at a great loss financially, at best last year he was a £10 million player, now we will struggle to get that or anywhere near it come to that, when signing on fees and wages are added to the totals, even if we did manage to get £10 million for him I would hazard a guess that it will have cost us around £10 million for this folly (£5 million loss in transfer fee plus £5 million in wages and signing on fees etc) an astronomical amount for a club of Saints size to waste and when you consider a similar amount for Ramirez its beyond belief.

A swift ending for both parties is in the best interest, but the difficulty will be to find anyone willing to take a chance on a player with known issues even before joining Saints as well as Osvaldo being willing to take a big pay cut, financial negotiation will be neccessary and that will not be good news for Saints bank account.

Perhaps the most likely scenario is that he goes on loan till January with an option to buy, however this was the deal when he went to Juventus and his failure there has not exactly increased his transfer value nor our bargaining power.

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ThereIn76 added 10:17 - Jul 23
Excellent analysis Nick. At the time the only thing in favour of this signing was that he'd worked with MP before. But that just made MP's indecisiveness over how to use him all the more bewildering. Maybe Spurs will buy him? 😉
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Horndeansaint added 10:34 - Jul 23
Or maybe Liverpool? Ideal replacement for Suarez..............

We would also be guaranteed silly money to mitigate the losses.
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slynch added 10:44 - Jul 23
Can't they get him to bite somebody - that seems to work.
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SanMarco added 12:42 - Jul 23
Yes - two dreadful signing errors. Wouldn't have happened under Cortese... but hang on a minute - it DID.
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Jesus_02 added 13:02 - Jul 23
While I accept that the majority of people will disagree I would like to put my opinion forward:

He wasn’t as expensive as you have said:

His fee was £12.8 + £1.5 in add ons. I’m not sure that he would have played enough to warrant us paying those.

Wages wise. Did we pay his wages while he played for Juve? I shouldn’t have though so. Wiki states “Manager Antonio Conte revealed that Osvaldo willingly accepted a pay-cut to join the club”

I am unsure how expensive this folly has been but depending on how much we re-coup the final is yet to be calculated.

I would also like to point out that signing Osvaldo wasn’t just about buying a good value player. Although he hasn’t covered himself in glory recently Lovern inadvertently makes a good point:

“When I began training there, I realised they had a very good team. They promised to buy two more players. They bought Osvaldo and Wanyama. They are great players.

The aim was to qualify for Europe, to get into the Europa League at least”

My argument is that buying Osvaldo was part of demonstrating ambition. Perhaps if we didn’t make such an expensive folly maybe Wanyama and Lovren wouldn’t have come, we may have even lost players like Shaw, Lallana and Lambert.

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hawthorn1 added 13:05 - Jul 23
Great read Nick.
I am thinking that your summary on buying this 'white elephant',was one of the reasons that KL had to intervene, and thought NC attitude to spending her families money had got out of hand,maybe we are now reaping what NC sowed.
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abingdonsaint added 13:48 - Jul 23
Some fair analysis there, but also an awful lot of assumptions, and Jesus02 makes some fair points.

As I have said before regarding player purchases, it is not so much about 'marquee' signings, it is more about having to spend more money on a relatively small number of players significantly superior to what we have coming through the academy. And yes, it is also about demonstrating some ambition. Whilst I have no doubt that the recent player losses are largely about money, I am sure that the perception, rightly or wrongly, that we are no longer 'ambitious' is a contributing factor. This perception will not help in attracting new talent either. I am afraid that RK will need to pull some rabbits out of some hats soon to replace what we have lost, and that is not going to be easy at all!

Keeping the faith, but have to say I am not as optimistic about the coming season as I was last. I said then that top 10 was easily attainable, but as things stand, any bodies guess this time round. Still better than League 1, but can't help feeling we have lost an opportunity here.......
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TorontoSaint added 16:18 - Jul 23
Good article Nick....Osvaldo is an expensive lesson I hope the new board will learn from. I stated my distaste for hunches in my first post but I think Ramirez might have a shot for some increased playing time under RK and could blossom. We have spent the money and like Osvaldo, have not given him a proper opportunity so until he knocks someone out he should get his chance. Maybe RK will see something MoPo did not...let's hope that's true for a few others as well.
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saintmark1976 added 18:27 - Jul 23
So lets get this straight then.

Osvaldo is still a contracted Saints player who wants to play at centre forward and was considered good enough so to do when we paid £15 million or so for his services less than twelve months ago.We have sold our "old"centre forward to Liverpool and with three weeks to the start of a new season we have no replacement with established Premier league experience. Not forgetting that last seasons top scorer is injured and will not return before October at the earliest and with no guarantee as to his form then.

Why then are we wanting to also sell Osvaldo?

Please tell me if I am missing something, because nothing the Saints management team do appears to make any sense to me at the moment.

Maybe it's the hot weather.
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