After the signing of Wesley Hoedt Mauricio Pellegrino has perhaps just one more piece to complete his jigsaw, but is that piece already in the box or does he need to buy it.

As the memory of some awful games last season starts to fade, a dose of reality is starting to kick in that the Saints had a decent squad last season but it was just poorly managed, that being the case Mauricio Pellegrino just needed a couple of key signings and a squad good enough to finish 8th last season could hope to do better.

With the arrival of Wesley Hoedt adding to that of Mario Lemina, Pellegrino has made two shrewd additions to the squad that no sees it in a stronger position than the end of last season, the big question though is whether it is as strong as it was at the start.

In the main the answer is probably yes, we did not have Manolo Gabbiadini and his goals will make a big difference, however the constant issue last season was in central defence where the petulant Jose Fonte disrupted our plans and then the injury to Virgil Van Dijk.

Fonte should have been replaced in January and I am convinced that had we done so then we might well have won the League Cup and perhaps even chased Everton down to 7th place, the failure to do so in my opinion was a big mistake by Les Reed and his team, a mistake compounded when Van Dijk was injured.

But forward to 23rd August and the squad is once again starting to look strong, we have good options in all positions and overall I think this could be our strongest squad ever with the emphasis on the word "Squad".

But there is still one piece yet to be slotted into place in Pellegrino's jigsaw and that is smack bang in the centre of our defence and the big question is whether Virgil Van Dijk will climb out of the toybox and fill it, or whether Saints should bring in another central defender.

Ideally Van Dijk will accept that he is not going to move this summer, realise that it is detrimental to his career to sit in the stands for the rest of the season or at least till January and step back into contention.

If he does so I would suggest that if Hoedt is as good as they say then we will have as good a defence as any in the division bar the top six and I would also suggest that it would be better than Liverpool's.

This is the ideal situation, it would give us a great platform to build on and more to the point and back to that word squad again, plenty of options for Pellegrino in all positions whether he needs to make changes tactically or through injury etc.

But will Saints get the ideal situation ?

If they don't the risk is that we repeat the mistakes of last season, ie persevering with a want away player.

So Saints have some thinking to do in the last week of the transfer window, especially if they get a late bid from anyone but Liverpool do they accept it ?

The problem for Van Dijk is that Liverpool cannot risk bidding, they have played such an underhand game, topped this week by a club employee in Steven Gerrard,urging that Van Dijk be signed, they know they are bang to rights, should they break their promise of earlier in the summer that their interest in Van Dijk was ended.

They are waiting for another club to bid and Saints to accept so they can move into action, they will then claim they are not chasing the player, merely joining in the bidding after Saints made him available, we all know the reality, but this is clearly their strategy and has been for the last few months, the problem for them is that no other club has yet bid, so Saints could not accept even if they wanted to.

The question for Saints is what to do if a club does so, with it so late it would leave it late to get a replacement.

The first option would be that Chelsea made an offer but were willing to throw in Andreas Christensen, that would solve all Saints problems in one swoop and would be acceptable to most Saints supporters in that it would let the club save face as well as having proved a point, the fact is keeping Van Dijk in this window is only delaying the inevitable, perhaps it would be better to deal with the problem now and move forward.

The second option would be that Saints accept an offer and sign Van Dijk's replacement independently make a direct bid for Christensen or perhaps another target like Kevin Wimmer of Spurs, but this would be leaving it very late in the window to do the deal but would work.

The problem on both of these options is that once a bid has been made Liverpool are going to put even more pressure on the player to exert his desire to go to Anfield, neither would go through smoothly unless Van Dijk has gone off moving to Liverpool.

Saints could decide to go out and sign Van Dijk's replacement whilst he still remains at the club, this would appeal to Saints fans, the likes of Wimmer or Christensen or indeed another identified target being in place and Van Dijk having to play for his place, it would be good for the squad, good for our season and also would leave us with a strong hand in the January window, again I think this would appeal to most Saints supporters as it would show the world we mean business.

The worst option for Saints is that nothing happens and Van Dijk continues to sit in the toy box throwing the toys out for the next four months, we all saw what happened when Jose Fonte did that a year ago.

Of course with Hoedt now in the position is stronger for Saints, the optimists in the Saints support will say that the defence is still stronger than at the end of last year and if we can finish 8th then, we can do better now, they would have a point, but the truth is we want to take some more steps forward and we need everything in place.

So the club has some tough decisions to make, there remains one big piece of the jigsaw yet to be slotted into place and they have to decide what to do about it, do they hope that Van Dijk accepts his situation for the moment and is professional about it or do they try and solve the problem now ?

One thing is for sure the next week or so will see some movement the only question is in what direction, but for Saints and their supporters the closure of this window cannot come soon enough, once it is shut we can get to the roots of the issue and know what we are dealing with, either a model professional or a spoilt brat !

Photo: Action Images

SonicBoom added 10:27 - Aug 23 Just because we have strengthened doesn't mean we can automatically expect to improve on last year. Everton were above us and have arguably made bigger improvements. We can of course do well, but who above us last year, isn't going to improve?
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ChristchurchSaint added 10:44 - Aug 23 I think that the other thing is, that we have to give the "jigsaw" a very good shake up, so that certain other players I.e. Tadic, JWP, even Forster, are fully aware that they have to fight for their places with excellent performances, and not think that they are going to automatically be given a place in the team. They all have the ability, but just seem to think that 60-70% effort is good enough.

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Butty101 added 10:46 - Aug 23 And it assumes that the player is an upgrade. 15mill in this market probably gets you a Yoshi/ Stephens unproven equivalent. Pierre-Emile Højbjerg was rolled out to a similar fan fare last season, and been largely a flop.
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Bettwsresident added 10:51 - Aug 23 Another CB? That would make it 8 in the first team squad, time for a bit of thinning. We don't need more than 5. The problem last year was coverting chances, highlighted in the three missed pens in the last few weeks. If we had scored those and not been the worst in the league at shots/goals (we needed 17 to score a goal in the last 10 games!) we would have been pushing Everton hard and odds on Puel would still be our manager.

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Sanguin added 10:59 - Aug 23 We have six central defenders, the missing piece in our jigsaw is scoring goals. The question is whether Pellegrino can get our current crop back to form and remain injury-free, whether he wants to sign anybody or whether a youngster can have a breakout season.
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helpineedsomebody added 11:05 - Aug 23 midnight 31st aug every one will find out whether he sticks or twist
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JDawg added 11:18 - Aug 23 Sell / Release Gardos and buy Gibson. Make all the CBs fight for a place then sell the weakest/most uninterested in Jan. wonder what VVD would do in that situation! They should do something similar in midfield as well! I honestly can't imagine why I don't buy and sell football players for a living! :)
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SanMarco added 12:03 - Aug 23 Is it not possible for us to simply exclude Liverpool from any bidding process? A secret deal with Chelsea for a sale at 5 seconds before the deadline would we a way of doing it I suppose. Can VVD then refuse, stating his preferred alternative? I would like to see us already have a replacement in. Not sure about Christensen and Wimmer - are they any better than Stephens? I wonder if Saints are quietly doing something re the quite extraordinary behaviour of Liverpool - the Gerrard comments took things to yet another level. They are making the EPL look foolish - what are the point of rules if they are simply and brazenly ignored? PS this transfer window feels different - the club is behaving differently and it feels better. All will be for nowt if we capitulate now though.....

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LordDZLucan added 12:23 - Aug 23 The replacement for van Dijk has already been signed - Hoedt is the replacement. If we can get a top class midfielder (£20m+) in before the end of the window then it will have been a good one for us compared to previous windows.
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bstokesaint added 12:43 - Aug 23 I really don't think we need any more central defenders. If Hoedt is the current "replacement" for VVD (assuming he doesn't come back) then I personally don't have too many concerns with seeing Yoshi or Stephens play alongside him. It feels almost damaging to team morale to bring in another defender in front of VVD, Stephens, Yoshi, Gardos and Bednarek. Then there's the youngster we have out on loan. Whilst I don't believe in sentimentality there's only so much healthy competition you can have! For me the biggest piece of the jigsaw still missing is a consistent playmaker. It'd be nice to have one player we could constantly rely on to terrorise opponents' defences every time they play. Someone our forwards will just greedily feed off time and time again. I appreciate players of that magnitude cost some wedge, but surely we have some TV money we could spend? It would cap a brilliant window. As for VVD I said before I didn't want to sell him sold to Liverpool, but if I was Les now, I would be tempted to test Liverpool by telling them that the deal's on the table if they sell Coutinho to Barca for £130m and we'll just send them our bank account details so they can transfer the whole balance. Either they want a **** defence or they don't, but I'm sure we could improve our squad with that kind of money. Oh yeah, and the deal would need to be concluded like by the weekend so we could go on a final week splurge.

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SaintBrock added 12:53 - Aug 23 Nick, it is far too early to write this sort of guff. Two matches in we have no idea where we are vis-a-vis last season. The new players may or may not solve perceived problems. Pellegrino is untested in the PL, we won on Saturday only because of a dubious referee.
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saintpaz added 13:08 - Aug 23 I'd still like us to buy one more striker, then we would have 4 strikers. We didn't score enough last year and that was also partly down to not much creativity. But if Austin gets injured again, Gabbi has a bad patch then we only have Long to look to, who with all his energy and commitment to the team just doesnt score enough. 1 striker and I'm happy.....let's hope we have enough creativity this year, otherwise I will suggest an upgrade on a few of the attacking midfield players.

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BoondockSaint added 13:44 - Aug 23 When I read the headline, like many others, I thought you were going to say another striker.Since then end of last season, we have needed two CBS and two strikers. We finally seem to have the CB situation sorted. When it looked like we might get dragged into a relegation battle, Les finally opened the club vault and bought Gabbiadini in the winter window. So we still need another (effective) striker. As Bettwsresident says our conversion rate is awful. As for shifting VVD- we can freeze the Scouse out by making sure whatever team we sell him to gives us a player as part of the deal. That way we can use the usually Prem double talk to say the deal fit our needs better than the Scouse offer, no matter who they would offer, we just had to turn them down. "Yes, Coutinho was offered to us, but we don't think he would suit our system. We think Jonjo Shelvey is a better fit." Everyone will know it's a load of cr@p, especially the Scouse-that's the best part.

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SanMarco added 16:00 - Aug 23 SaintBrock - I agree Mason is as 'dubious' as refs come but how was our victory due to him? The only incorrect decision that favoured us was the Stephens handball. His other major mistake was not sending off Noble.
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lemmsy added 16:59 - Aug 23 IMO We were fortunate in Saturday to a degree with many decisions going our way, Looking at other games so far this season tadic & lemina could have gone & they could have had a pen (Stephens). We could also of had two pens against Swansea but that's football. We actually deserved to beat Swansea & probably a draw against wh.Realistically we can't be judged until at least 10 games, especially with our home fixtures & easier run to start with.Also I think the jury's out on hoijberg & boufal, it's well known young players & those new to the prem take time to adjust so hopefully they'll both shine this year

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kenis added 19:14 - Aug 23 We do not need another central defender if VVD leaves. Can't see us buying another one even if they offered Sakho in the deal I think we'd say no. Stephens has been promoted into the Fonte space in the squad and Bednarek signed to replace him and Hoedt is here as a VVD replacement even if the club say he's not - as one way or another VVD will be gone by next summer. If Yoshi doesn't sign a new contract (and when we release Gardos then next summer) we might need need another CB or could promote from youth and promote Bednarek. Suggesting we should signs other one is just weird! I thought with Gabbi, Austin, Long, Rodriguez and Gallagher we had enough strikers but now Jay and Sam have gone we look light - I thought ok you are selling Jay and Sam must be filling hay space in the squad. I know we are only going to play one up front but I would still like to see Austin and Gabbi overlap and at least play together for 10-15mins when one is going on and coming off and think Long should get used a lot as well - so given all three of those on average miss some games though injury we might need to bring someone in, but who is going to come and be 3rd/4th choice and what sort of quality and how much will we spend for 3rd/4th choice?

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Letiss7 added 20:45 - Aug 23 It is laughable that you are of the opinion that a CB, and not a striker, is the final piece to the so called jigsaw. Last seasons stats, do not support you, nor do the current form of Stephens or Yoshida. Our achilles heel last year was scoring goals, not letting them in.
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