Southampton: Saints looking at France international with expiring contract

Southampton are reportedly interested in bringing in young France international Malang Sarr, whose contract with Nice is close to expiring.

According to skysports.com, the 21-year-old is on a list of targets that has been drawn up by Saints ahead of the summer.

It remains to be seen how much the club will be able to spend this off-season and whether there is a transfer window given the impact of the Coronavirus.

An overhaul of the Saints squad still needs to go ahead to enable Ralph Hasenhuttl to work with the players he wants, and Sarr could be part of this.

The same skysports.com report also mentions other targets that are supposedly on the scouting list and it seems the club are after a certain type of player.

Evan N’Dicka, a defender from Eintracht Frankfurt who is capable of playing as a centre-back or left-back, is mentioned and is also a France youth international.

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Real Valladolid centre-back Mohammed Salisu has been linked to St Mary’s before and his name is included alongside Sarr and N’Dicka – meaning that Hasenhuttl clearly wants a young central defender to work with.

The report also refers to Kyle Walker-Peters’ situation, which is different entirely.

He is well down the pecking order at Spurs but has only played one game with Saints since joining on-loan in January.

However, Saints can surely take advantage of his lack of playing time and could offer him some game time that he would otherwise not have.

This obviously depends on whether the club feel that he is the man they want to replace Cedric.

Once the club get some of these talented youngsters in once again to supplement the senior players that are already on the South Coast, there is no reason why Saints cannot begin to look up the Premier League table once again.

They have a committed manager who was thankful for the faith shown in him at the beginning of the 2019/20 campaign and now just need to build a squad that will deliver success in the style that Hasenhuttl wants.