Southampton Table Offer For Middlesbrough Ace To Replace Fernandes
It seems Saints are already looking at their options to replace Matteus Fernandes as West ham United look to increase their offer for the Portuguese midfielder and they could be shopping in the North East.
According to The Mail Online Southampton have set their eyes on Coventry City's Jack Rudoni as a replacement for Matteus Fernandes, but with Rudoni making Noises about staying with the Sky Blues, the latest reports suggest that Southampton have already made an offer to Middlesbrough for their attacking midfielder Finn Azaz.
Despite his exotic sounding name, Azaz is a London born Republic Of Ireland international, so will already be familiar with potential team mates at St Mary's Gavin Bazunu & Ryan Manning.
Saints are said to have started the bidding with a £12 million offer to Boro, but with Azaz valued at about £14-15 million, that is a little lower than Boro will want to accept for their star player.
Azaz has been linked with Saints before, two years ago after a loan spell at Plymouth for his then club Aston Villa, there were rumours that he could join Saints, in the end he opted for a second year at Home Park.
In his first season in 2022/23 he helped Plymouth to promotion from League one with an impressive 8 goals and 9 assists, in his second season on loan he came up against twice, he failed to score or get an assist, but in the other 44 games in the league he scored 11 goals with 10 assists.
This earned him a move from Villa to Middlesbrough and last season in his 45 games in the Championship he scored 12 goals and 11 assists, again an impressive total.
So that has led Saints to see him as the ideal replacement for Fernandes, should the man from Portugal depart.
What to read next:
U's Vs Accrington Match Preview As the round of matches over the festive period draws to a close, we have the visit of Accrington Stanley on that most rare of events in our football history, a Sunday afternoon kick-off. If you filter out play-off and cup games, in the league this accounts for just 25 games since we were formed, seven won, six drawn and 12 lost. As you would imagine, Sunday games are generally focussed around Christmas and the New Year, or more recently, Sky-mandated final games of the season. It’s been a pretty positive holiday schedule for the U’s too, eight points from four games, and with other results often going our way, we’re now just two places and three points outside the play-offs.
U's Vs MK Dons Match Preview Happy New Year U’s fans! After two hard fought 1-1 draws away from home across the festive period we kick off the New Year with a home match against Milton Keynes. Tickets look to be selling well, although not in the West Stand it seems, so should be a decent crowd providing MK bring more than their normal coach load. I know it doesn’t count for anything but the calendar year League Two table has us in fifth with 72 points from 46 matches played so 2025 hasn’t been a bad year to be a U’s fan.
Gillingham Vs U's Match Preview First and foremost, I hope you are all having a pleasant Christmas break relaxing with family and friends, and wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. This will be our final match of 2025, with a trip to Priestfield to face old adversary Gillingham, our second game against them this month and our third this season. This will be our 112th game in all competitions against the Gills, a relationship that started with a Ted Davis U’s side winning 2-0 at Layer Road on 27th August 1938. At the final whistle tomorrow we will also be at the halfway point of the season, so considering at the end of September we were 20th, plenty of optimism for the second half of the season.
Crawley Vs U's Match Preview Merry Christmas U’s fans! Boxing Day in proper football leagues means football matches and the U’s face one of their shortest trips of the season as they venture across the Thames to face creepy Crawley. Crawley’s “stadium” is one of the few grounds I’ve gone away with the U’s (the 3-1 League Cup win back in 2019) and it felt like a ground that should be in the National League South but Crawley have been established in the football league since 2011 with two promotions to League One during that time which is impressive given the relative size of the club. We don’t have a huge history against Crawley Town, with just 24 meetings to date of which Crawley have won 11. In fact since that memorable League Cup win we hadn’t managed to beat Crawley until the, not as memorable but probably more important, 3-2 away win towards the end of the 2023/24 season that went a long way to helping us stay in this division.
U's Vs Newport Match Preview And so, Danny and Nicky enter their second century of games managing the U’s, at home to struggling Newport – let’s hope it starts a bit better than the first century finished. There won’t be many games we score three and lose, trouble is there’ll be even fewer where we concede four and win. That being said, I couldn’t fault the first hour of the Salford game, with the U’s in control of a game against good opposition, and on a typically heavy pitch. Then we kind of fell apart, certainly defensively, helped in no small part by a masterclass from ex-U’s Luke Garbutt (how is he only in League 2?). Credit must also go to 250+ of the faithful, a long trip starting at stupid o’clock – they deserved more than that for their support.