Today at the Fitness First stadium Saints continued their preparations for the new season with a solid, rather than spectacular performance. Goals from Kenwyne Jones and Bradley Wright-Phillips gave ten-man Saints victory. Saints were reduced to 10 men when Powell was involved in some "hand-bags" with one of the Bournemouth players. It seemed like a telling off would have sufficed, but the ref thought otherwise. It was good to see Claus complete 45 minutes and Jones looked in fine form. As I said before though, it was a solid rather than great performance.
There was no sign of two triallist that had joined Saints for their first three pre-season games. Today, George Burley said that he was trying to arrange a season-long loan deal for Vignal from Lens. But he said that they would not be pursuing interest in Hungarian international centre-back Tamas Vasko. It still leaves a hole in the centre of our defence which urgently needs filling.
Still, pre-season has been encouraging thus far, with a Saints opening with a 4-2 win over Eastleigh and then 12-0 and 4-1 wins on the tour of Norway. So if Saints can strengthen the defence in the couple of weeks, a good season should ensue.
The whole potential takeover situation has become a bit tiring and after the club released a statement to the LSE announcing that there were three interested parties and talks were ongoing, I've decided to just wait and see and not get my hopes up. Takeover or not, this season looks like it is going to be fun!!
So Chris Baird has eventually left for Fulham. It's a shame to see him go, but if he really wanted premiership football then fair play. It was interesting to see him snub a move to Sunderland in favour of waiting for one to Fulham. There are probably two good reasons though; Lawrie Sanchez and Mrs Baird (apparently she doesn't want to leave Hampshire). Plus we could do with the £3m we received to bolster the defence. We still need at least two centre backs and maybe another full back.
Looking at a full-back is exactly what Burley is going to do, Saints have taken Gregory Vignal on trial from Lens, where he would be available on a free transfer. He first came to England when he signed for Liverpool back in 2000, when he was one of the most promising french prospects, despite winning some cup winners medals, he struggled withg injury which led him to be sent out on loan to Rangers. He then opted to join Pompey (under Perrin), but was released when Redknapp returned. He sounds a good prospect and hopefully he can impress over the next week or two and can win himself a contract.
Another missing piece of the puzzle was a winger, someone to add pace, creativity and a cutting edge going forward. Hopefully this may have been filled with the arrival of Adam Hammill on a years loan from Liverpool. The 19 year old winger, who can play on either flank, played most of last season at Dunfermline in the SPL, where he helped them to the Scottish cup final. Hopefully he can proved an excellent addition to the midfield and add some really quality.
In takeover talk, something may or may not happen tomorrow or at the beginning of next week. But that is what's been said nearly every week for the last couple of months. The talk this week has sounded more believable with many people in the know (ITK) all agreeing on a big story, but not letting anything slip to the rest of us. Although, it has been commented that the proposal of one of the possible interested parties would rock the whole footballing world. To be honest this probably sounds to good to be true, which it usually is for Saints. Anyway, getting bored of the whole saga, lets just hope the whole thing is sorted (either way) sooner rather than later, so we can get back to concentrating on the football!
A musical tribute to Adam Hammill from the Dunfermline fans:
