Southampton travel to Anfield wondering what might have been

As Southampton travel to face Liverpool at Anfield on Saturday, it’s hard not to imagined what might have been.

With every player Southampton sold to Liverpool, the jokes grew increasingly tired. Boring. The Saints were Liverpool’s feeder club, they said. Liverpool should just buy Southampton, they laughed. The link between the two clubs was well established with the Reds’ success last season rooted in the start many of their players were given at St. Mary’s Stadium.

Between 2014 and 2018, Liverpool poached six Southampton players — Nathanial Clyne, Sadio Mane, Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert, Dejan Lovren and Virgil Van Dijk. The signings of Mane and Van Dijk, in particular, helped take Jurgen Klopp’s side to the next level. But where would Southampton be had they managed to keep hold of their best players? What heights would they have scaled?

It’s not just Liverpool, who host Mark Hughes’ side this weekend, who have raided the Saints in recent years. Victor Wanyama left for Spurs in the summer of 2016, as did Graziano Pelle for the Chinese Super League. In 2015, Morgan Schneiderlin was poached by Manchester United, with Luke Shaw making the same move in 2014 and Calum Chambers snapped up by Arsenal in 2013.

Going even further back, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was a Southampton player before Arsenal paid £12.5 million for him in 2013. Gareth Bale also called the St. Mary’s home, only making the move to Spurs in 2007. Over the past 10 years or so, no club in England has been so prolific in either producing or harnessing quality young players.

Of course, it’s unrealistic to suggest Southampton could have kept hold of these players. They might be a Premier League club, but they could never match the wages offered by the elite of the English and European game. Even in the cases where the Saints put their foot down, they were the subject of player revolts — see Van Dijk, who forced a move to Liverpool in the last transfer window.

This presents something of a chicken or egg situation for clubs like Southampton, though. Had they somehow managed to persuade their best players over the years to stay Southampton likely would have been challengers toward the top of the Premier League. But they couldn’t reach that level without the sort of revenue of a team toward the top of the Premier League. One couldn’t happen without the other, and vice versa.

Southampton exemplify why it’s so difficult for teams to break through English soccer’s glass ceiling. Spurs have managed it, to a certain extent, keeping the likes of Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen and Harry Kane despite a strict wage structure at the club, but even they have been forced to allow key players, like Kyle Walker, Luka Modric and Bale, leave every so often.

Monaco found themselves in a similar situation to Southampton just two seasons ago, sensationally reaching the semifinals of the Champions League with a team consisting of extremely talented, young players. But over two years those young talents have been picked off by bigger, more illustrious competitors. Kylian Mbappe left for PSG, Benjamin Mendy and Bernardo Silva signed for Manchester City, while Thomas Lemar went to Atletico Madrid and Fabinho joined Liverpool.

The disappointment for Southampton is that they weren’t able to hold on to their best players for just a little while longer. Van Dijk, for instance, was only on the South coast for a season and a half. Mane is another whose stay at the St Mary’s was a fleeting one, signing for Liverpool just two years after signing for the Saints.

The fact that so many elite teams have come calling for Southampton’s best and most talented players over the years should be taken as a sign of success for the club’s business model. This is what their scouting system is designed to do — find promising, young players in sometimes obscure markets and sell them on at a profit. But still, there will always be that hypothetical question: What if? In different circumstances, in another world, how far could Southampton have gone?