Emmanuel Mayuka has gone off to the African Cup Of Nations with Zambia but will anyone notice.
For a player signed for a rumoured £3.5 million fee never in the history of Saints has a player been so overlooked.
When he originally arrived from Young Boys of Berne it was obvious why we had signed him, in that he had plenty of pace, initially it was thought by many Saints fans that he would be the answer to our problems out wide and add the pace we needed out there, however it soon became clear that Mayuka was a striker and if played on the wing was Ok going forward, but defensively was a liability.
A look at his record for Young Boys didnt actually suggest a £3.5 million pound striker, the Swiss Super League had been going since mid July and although Mayuka had made seven starts in it, he had only scored two goals and in most of the games seemed to get taken off just past the hour mark.
The big question though was given we had so many strikers on the books and that we intended to play a lone striker formation, why did we need another one ? Mayuka also looked a player that needed to feed off another striker up front and use his pace to get on the end of knock ons etc, even to the layman it seemed a strange signing because there seemed to be no logical place he could play in our preferred 4-5-1 formation and that just about his only function would be to perhaps come off the bench as an impact player.
That certainly seemed to be how Nigel Adkins viewed him and he gave him his debut off the bench after 75 minutes against Man Utd at St Mary's, Mayuka impressed the crowd with his pace, but its generally agreed that the managers substitutions cost us the game that day although all the blame cant be lumped on Mayuka for that.
Certainly though Adkins didnt seem to consider him an asset to the team and perhaps would have preferred to have kept Billy Sharp who not only had been in goalscoring form in mid season, did genuinely offer a goalscoring threat, by the end of the West brom defeat away from home Adkins had used him only as a sub getting him off the bench six times out of a possible eight with a total game time of only 97 minutes.
After the West Brom game the manager seems to have decided that Mayuka was not the player for him, in the next six games Mayuka was on the bench for every game, but never got onto the pitch, even when as at Liverpool in the last ten minutes there seemed to be nothing to lose in chasing a game in which we were only a goal down, at that game I thought if Adkins doesnt bring him on in this situation whats the point in even having him on the bench.
But suddenly Mayuka was making his full debut for the visit of Sunderland a totally baffling selection which Nigel Adkins excused by saying that the player had been outstanding in a behind closed doors friendly, the Zambian lasted 55 minutes before being hauled off for the first appearance of the season for Steve De Ridder, certainly the manager had put something different on his cornflakes for this game which was a very disapointing defeat. Mayuka returned to the bench and again has been an unused sub for the three league games plus the visit of Chelsea in the Cup.
So Mayuka has now departed to join up with the Zambian squad and could now be away till the start of February at least in a tournament that begins on the 19th January and finishes on the 10th February.
But will he be missed, I would say perhaps not Adkins put him on the bench every week but in the past two months has been loath to play him despite many opportunities, perhaps most pertinent is that on Saturday against Chelsea Adkins used Tadanari Lee as his final sub, of course there was the fact that Mayuka is about to leave for Africa, but if thats the case why have him on the bench, Tadanari Lee looks to be the player who will benefit from the Zambian's absence and given his impact on his arrival last year, I think he will be an option on the bench that the manager feels far happier having than Mayuka.