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Russell Martin Is Shopping At St Mary's Bid Made For Southampton Player

According to reports from Scotland, new Rangers manager and ex Saints boss Russell Martin is heading back to St Mary's with his credit card and the Scottish giants have already made a bid for one player.

Ibrox News are claiming that Rangers have made a firm bid to Southampton for Sam Edozie.

They say that the Gers have been interested in the player for some time and that now Russell Martin is ready to firm up that interest and they have made an offer to Saints.

The article also claims that Rangers will face competition from several other clubs for Edozie's signature.

However it seems strange that Martin should be keen to sign Edozie, in 2023/24 as he took Southampton to promotion from the Championship, in 46 League games he started Edozie in just 16 of those, he made another 16 appearances as a sub and had another 12 games where he sat on the bench but didn't get on the pitch.

In the play offs he sat out the first leg at West Brom, made a short sub appearance in the home game and bizarrely played 48 minutes at Wembley after one start against Stoke aside, barely playing in the previous 13 matches.

This was not much evidence that Russell Martin rated Edozie as a player and that was emphasised further when he shipped the winger off to Anderlecht after 2 sub appearances in the opening 3 Premier League fixtures.

So why is he so keen to sign a player whom he clearly didn't rate or felt that fitted into his 100% possession football way of playing.

Saints signed Edozie for around £8 million when he joined in the summer of 2022 and still has two years left on his contract, so Southampton are in no hurry to sell.

My personal view is that Saints would be better keeping hold of him, in our promotion season Edozie scored 6 goals with 3 assists that was a good return for the number of minutes played and this compared favourably with Ryan Fraser whom he was in direct opposition with for a place on the left wing.

This may well be the case for the coming season and it may be Saints would rather get a fee now for Edozie and rely on the experienced Ryan Frazer or indeed make a new signing.

However the claim that Rangers are in for him still sounds strange given Russell Martin's previous disinclination to actually play Edozie.

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