Sky Sports are reporting that Saints and Vitesse Arnhem have agreed a fee for the transfer of Alexander Buttner to St Mary's.
Rumours have been rife for the last week that Saints would be signing Alexander Buttner from Vitesse Arnhem with reports that the player had been staying at a hotel in Botley prior to talks with the club and several quotes attributed to the player speaking highly of Saints, the stumbling block was the fee and now it seems thats out of the way and the player is reported by Vitesse on their official website to be heading to Southampton for a medical.
The confusion now is whereabouts on the pitch does Buttner actually play, it seems that he has been used by Vitesse as both a left sided full back and in midfield, so the question here is whether he has been bought to replace Danny Fox or whether Nigel Adkins is instead planning to use him on the wide left side of midfield with aAdam Lallana being moved more central.
Adam Lallana is of course one of Saints best players and certainly one of those of Premier quality, however there is one reason that he has not been the subject of any serious bids from Premiership clubs before and that is a lack of pace, wide players in the Premiership have to be able to track back and this is certainly not Adam's strength, he has the skill and every other attribute needed for a Premiership player, but genuine pace is not one of them, so could Nigel Adkins be considering a tactical reshuffle.
If we are to not get exposed to pace down the left side of the pitch, we need to have players there that can match the opposition stride for stride, the Fox/Lallana combination was a match for any team in the attacking play, but even in the Championship our left back would often be exposed when on the back foot, also in the centre of the park, Schneiderlin, Cork and Hammond are all too defenisvely minded and rarely got forward and created or indeed scored goals, perhaps Nigel Adkins has seen this and is going to solve two problems by the signing of Buttner.
Certainly it could be a viable option, Buttner playing in midfield has the engine and experience we need and if Lallana was moved to a central role he could indeed be a revelaltion, he would get the ball a lot more and could do a lot more damage from this position, it could also solve the problem in that area, Cork, Schneiderlin and even Chaplow could hold the centre giving Lallana a bit of a free creative role where he could link with the forwards even more.
Hopefully this option might be in Nigel's thoughts, at times last season we were too predictable in the centre and so we need to do something different, this might just save us a few bob in the transfer markey allowing us to invest that money in other areas.