What Saints fans are actually saying
Titled "We need to wake up", the thread on r/SaintsFC put the case as bluntly as anyone has managed this week. Southampton are weakening rather than strengthening. The Taylor Harwood-Bellis story is only going to get bigger. Relegated clubs are signing the players Saints should at least be in the conversation for.
You can see where all of that comes from.
Anel Ahmedhodzic went to Burnley on Thursday. Aston Villa are circling the best defender in the division. Gavin Bazunu has not made a matchday squad this season and is being pointed politely towards the door.
Meanwhile the team sits bottom of the Championship on minus four points, having been outfought at Watford by a side nobody had tipped for anything at all.
Eleven days of the window left. From the stands, it looks like the club is running out of options.
The bit the anger skips over
Read down that same thread, though. The fanbase talks itself round.
One reply pointed out that a change to the wage rules means Southampton must trim before they can spend, leaving very little room to work in. Another said the club overspent last summer without going up, so the restrictions are self-inflicted rather than mysterious. A third simply noted that Saints always do their business at the end of the window. Annoying. Also true.
Perhaps the best line in the whole thread came from a supporter who reckoned anyone panicking about missing out on Ahmedhodzic had never actually watched him play.
That is a fanbase arguing itself into a sunnier picture than the one it started with.
Selling Bazunu or Aaron Ramsdale does not weaken a team that never picks either of them. Selling Harwood-Bellis does, badly, which is why Saints Marching has been consistent that the club need a defender either way. Lumping the two together is what turns ordinary frustration into despair.
Two versions of the next fortnight are still possible. In one, £25m arrives from Villa, a couple of players come the other way, and the squad looks ready to mount a challenge. In the other, the 1st of September arrives with a thinner squad and a fatter bank balance. That second version would deserve every word being thrown at the club right now.
Saints Marching has already made the case that being at the bottom will not last. Three points against Stoke tomorrow would take a bit of heat out of all this.
So, a verdict. Supporters are right to be furious about the shape of this window. But they are wrong to call it sleeping. Southampton cannot buy until they sell. Letting a fanbase find that explanation on Reddit instead of hearing it from anybody at St Mary's is the club's failing here.
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