Jose Fonte has questioned the depth of the squad and suggested that we need to spend in the January transfer window, but is he right and what positions do we not have depth in ?
Jose Fonte thinks Saints lack options and has urged Ronald Koeman to go into the transfer market in January.
"Obviously it’s hard for the team to get the right players in January but I’m sure they (the club) will be looking to add some quality,” he said.
"Any team in this league will try and look and try and add some quality for January. It’s always been like that.
"I don’t think it’s going to be any different with Ronald and the board.
"We’re going to try and get some more quality. It’s simple as that.”
"If you don’t keep up you see very clearly that you start dropping. We need to keep up,” he said.
Koeman, who said earlier in the season he was happy with the squad options, has said that Saints will not be in the market in January, although that could be a smokescreen.
"I’m not disagreeing with the manager,” said Fonte. "Who am I to disagree with the manager?
"He has his opinion and we have to agree that if he’s confident of course, he has to feel confident in his players.
"But if you saw the Liverpool bench the other night with Benteke, Firmino — all these guys [on the bench].
"There’s £25m in players - that’s like £100m on the bench.
"What I’m saying is that, although we have quality, other teams have possible higher in that aspect on the bench for solutions to change the game.
"But we have trust in our players and we’re going to try and make it work with the quality that we have.
"You can’t be too optimistic that to think you’re going to win the league because it’s very difficult.
"Other teams have more potential than us.”
When asked why Saints’ form has taken a nose dive, Fonte said: "Maybe we don’t have the depth that other teams have. That’s a factor.
"We have to play with what we have and what we have is good. It’s good enough, but like I said if you’re hard to beat and start keeping clean-sheets, we give ourselves a great chance to win games.
"That’s what we’re going to try and do — be really hard to beat.”
So is Jose Fonte right ?
He makes some good points, but to compare what Liverpool had on the bench to what we have is not fair on either the club or the manager, Liverpool have far larger resources and income than Saints and although in the past two seasons they have fared little better than us they still remain a big draw to quality players.
Saints do have their best ever Premier League squad that cannot be denied and in that respect it has a depth that none but the so called big clubs have. Of course any squad can use more players, but it is difficult to see where the addition of extra players can truly add depth and where we can get better quality than those we have at present.
So Saints nose dive in form I do not think is down to a lack of depth it is down to individual's not playing to their potential and a failure to use that depth to its full potential.
Taking the Liverpool game out of the equation as it was a freak result and is now of no concern as we are out of the cup, that leaves three Premier League games without a win, prior to that we were going well and second in the current form table and there was no talk of lack of depth then.
Fonte and his defence have to take their proportion of the blame for this and we need to look at the individual errors that cost us dearly, against Stoke, their goal came when the player was allowed to run unchecked and put the ball in, against Man City again our defending was awful and the way we allowed the Villa corner to cross the goal area was again schoolboyish.
So if Koeman does hit the transfer market then the defence is the first area that needs to be looked at.
Going forward Saints have plenty of options, they have five attacking options in the side, however with one of them Jay Rodriguez out till the end of January it has reduced them down.
But if Ronald Koeman has one fault it is that he hasn't used these options to the full in the Premier league, Shane Long has an excellent scoring record this season when played, but has not been played enough and Juanmi has barely been used, that is why it was slightly baffling that it was Juanmi who came on first against Villa and not Long.
The one area that Saints could do with quality is perhaps the centre of the park where we have plenty of options, but no true playmaker, James Ward Prowse has been touted for this role, but seems unable to step up to that next level, our options now are to consider using Tadic more centrally or to sign someone.
So Fonte is wrong when h complains of a lack of depth or quality, it is there, the last three league games have caught us out, but there is nothing wrong with the squad in general, a couple of good wins would see us back on track, indeed a late winner against Villa would have shot us up to 6th only 3 points behind Tottenham Hotspur, if that had happened then would we be whinging so much then, I would say no, we would be looking onwards and upwards.
So perhaps Jose Fonte would be better to look at the players we have putting things right themselves, rather than suggesting some of his colleagues need replacing.