Southampton must get rid of this forgotten player when summer rolls around.
While the likes of Leo Scienza and Finn Azaz have stolen the majority of the headlines this season as electric new recruits, various players once damaged by the horrors of Premier League relegation have found a fresh lease of life, now, under Tonda Eckert.
The worry would have been, right at the start of the season, that the South Coast side were setting themselves up for the misery of back-to-back relegations, under the short-lived stint of Will Still.
Indeed, the Belgian was sacked back in November, after winning only two of his 13 Championship games in charge, leaving the Saints in a sorry 21st position in the league.
Thankfully, Eckert has steered the ship very much back on course, with the heartbeat of his revitalised side, actually players who once looked broken and bruised, under previous wobbly regimes.
Eckert has got so much more out of this squad
Southampton, at the time of writing, are only one point behind Ipswich Town, in that final elusive automatic promotion position.
It’s staggering the turnaround in fortunes at St. Mary’s, with a select group of players – who were so used to losing last season as the Saints finished bottom of the Premier League pile – now looking like top-drawer talents in the second-tier.
In particular, Taylor Harwood-Bellis looks like a completely different animal from the player who only kept three clean sheets all season long in the Premier League, with 11 clean sheets next to his name, right now, with six league goals under his belt, too.
Flynn Downes is also leading by example, after once looking downbeat in the direct aftermath of relegation, with three goals, and classy displays galore, this campaign so far in the demanding Championship.
Not every player has come out the other side of Southampton’s basement finish last season, though, with this former first-team regular surely destined for the exit door for good when the long haul of the 2025/26 campaign is over.
Southampton must make this their first summer sale
While Harwood-Bellis and Downes have now managed to turn around their once-waning Saints careers, Gavin Bazunu continues to stare the exit door in the face.
The Dublin-born stopper has never stood out as an assured pair of gloves at St. Mary’s, even when Russell Martin delivered his promotion heroics, with only 11 clean sheets collected from 41 league games, during that unbelievable playoff journey.
Staggeringly, Daniel Peretz – who is very much in line to be Southampton’s starting goalkeeper for good, if a permanent move can be reached from Bayern Munich – already has seven clean sheets next to his name from 17 league outings, as a far more reliable stopper.
Southampton knew they needed to swoop in for the agile number 41 in January, when Bazunu started this season in poor form, again, with only three clean sheets collected from 19 league encounters.
Peretz’s arrival saw the Irishman, unsurprisingly, be shoved to one side, with the 24-year-old seeing out the latter stages of his disappointing campaign with Stoke City on loan.
He has hardly set the world alight for the Potters, either, with injuries constantly getting the better of him, under the wing of Mark Robins.
Ultimately, it has now been proven that Bazunu cannot perform on the South Coast, whether it’s in the environment of the Premier League or the Championship, and so he must be ditched for good when the summer transfer window reopens.
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