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Saints Terminate Osvaldo's Contract

Southampton Football Club has confirmed that it has terminated the contract of Osvaldo with immediate effect.

It is not clear the terms of the termination whether this has been triggered by an event or whether it has been mutually agreed by both player and club, but certainly it brings to an end one of the most expensive follies in the history of Saints.

From the very start of his career at Saints it was unclear just why Saints had brought Osvaldo to the club in the fact that here was a player who had wanted to leave his former club because he was not used as a central striker yet Mauricio Pochetino never gave him a chance to play in this position.

You had the feeling that Osvaldo himself thought he had been signed under false pretences and it didnt need a crystal ball to predict that there would soon be a falling out, I dont particularly blame Osvaldo here in the fact that he was clearly not being played in the role that he had been promised to lure him to the club.

In fairness the few games he did play weren't that bad and he scored a wonder goal against Manchester City showing just what he was capable of but alleged assault on Jose Fonte in the January of 2014 saw his shipped out never to return.

It has been expensive, his £15 million pound fee, his rumoured £65k a week wages all add up to the fact that each game he played probably cost the club around £2 million when taking into account bonus's and other payments such as pension & National Insurance contributions.

So whose fault was it that he came, it would be easy to blame Mauricio Pochettino, he had managed him before at Espanyol, but knowing the player he then failed to use him properly, it was almost as if it wasn't a Pochetino didn't want him at all.

More likely it was Nicola Cortese and another of his marque signings, but again like Gaston Ramirez we paid well over the odds both in terms of transfer fee and wages for the player.

So whether Saints have got off cheaply by managing to find a loophole to terminate the contract and thus save themselves a small fortune in his wages for the next two years o or whether there is an agreement between both parties is not yet clear.

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