Perhaps the most overused and boring jokes amongst football fans are the ones relating to Liverpool constantly buying players from Southampton.
There was a period where you couldn’t log onto social media without seeing a barrage of tweets from ‘banter’ accounts talking about the Reds raiding the south coast club, and to be fair, it was quite an uncanny trend.
However, a similar pattern that somehow slipped under the radar was the number of players Southampton have purchased from Celtic.
Indeed, the Saints have signed a number of fantastic players from north of the border.
Of course, Virgil van Dijk is the most high-profile of these, but the arrivals of Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster and Stuart Armstrong have also been brought in to differing levels of success.
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Indeed Wanyama earned a move to Spurs, Forster cemented himself as a regular in the England squad for quite some time and Armstrong has become quite an important player, starting 28 games over the past two seasons.
It seems as though Southampton had a bit of a policy of looking at Scotland when it comes to looking for new talent, and they could do much worse than once again trying to implement that as a strategy.
Celtic’s squad is as strong as ever after winning three trebles in a row and there are some talented players within their squad that are definitely worth taking a punt on, especially as they now sit 13 points clear of Rangers in the quest for yet another title.
Southampton clearly have experience dealing with the club and there are scouts at St Mary’s who know what they’re looking for when making trips to Scotland. After all, they managed to sniff out two future Champions League finalists in the shape of van Dijk and Wanyama while they were still relative unknowns.
Whether or not the Saints do once again look towards Celtic Park remains to be seen, but this policy has worked time and time again for the south coast club. Heading into the summer, they should consider having a look at what’s on offer after the Bhoys’ continued success.
At the moment, Kristoffer Ajer looks set to be available while Odsonne Edouard is locked in contract negotiations. Neither player has been linked with a switch to the Saints but both have been eyed up by Premier League clubs – namely Leicester – in the past.
In other news, Southampton need to ditch this transfer policy.