Southampton will have a busy summer as they work to prepare their team for the Premier League.
Compared to the other Premier League teams, Russell Martin’s team has had a little less time to organise their summer activities since they won promotion through the play-offs.
According to the conditions of his loan from Manchester City, Taylor Harwood-Bellis’ season-long loan became permanent along with his promotion, and Southampton is pushing to sign other loanees Flynn Downes and Ryan Fraser as well.
This summer marks the expiration of contracts for three prominent Southampton players.
Stuart Armstrong is one of those, and the club has stated that he will be leaving. The other two are now in talks with the club.
Che Adams and Alex McCarthy face uncertain future
Alex McCarthy and Che Adams are those two players.
Adams scored 15 Championship goals, and McCarthy filled in for the injured Gavin Bazunu for the final eight games of the season, both players contributing to the promotion.
With the explanation that ‘long-serving custodian Alex McCarthy and striker Che Adams are also reaching the end of their contracts, with talks underway over potential new terms’, Southampton revealed Armstrong’s exit on Tuesday when they released their retained list.
Over the previous two seasons, Adams’s name has been frequently associated with a move away from St Mary’s; Wolves are the most recent team to be strongly linked with his signature.
Adams has had a contract offer on the table for the whole of the season, so it seems improbable that he would commit to the team in the future.
McCarthy, on the other hand, did not even make the match day roster for the most of the season, but he outran Joe Lumley to earn the gloves after Bazunu was forced to withdraw from the Preston victory during the warm-up.
Before then, it would have been unthinkable that he would sign a new contract, but with his play-off performance, it appears Southampton is trying to hold onto the 34-year-old, who has been connected to Celtic, Newcastle United, and Liverpool.
Southampton should move on from Adams and McCarthy
Although it makes sense for Southampton to want to lock down two of their more seasoned players, it’s possible to argue that the majority of supporters would have preferred to see Armstrong stay longer.
With transfer rumours circulating about him apparently every window, Adams has done little to quiet the speculation over his future. It might be time to break things off.
Regardless of whether Adams stays, the Saints would need to recruit an improvement because he has scored 25 goals in 124 Premier League games, according to Transfermarkt. Adams is also unlikely to want to stay if he is not the starting striker.
The same is said for McCarthy, who reportedly wants assurances that he will be chosen first.
But given McCarthy’s shortcomings with the ball at his feet, Martin has placed a lot of faith in Bazunu, and it is quite doubtful that he will feel fit to satisfy these demands.
Although Bazunu’s achilles injury will keep him out of the game until far into next season, Southampton should aim to find a custodian who is as at ease playing out from the back as Bazunu is.
It might be time to thank Adams and McCarthy for their services and move on because any promise to re-sign them could impede the club’s efforts to sign the required upgrades to the pair.
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