The most memorable signing that Southampton made from Celtic might be Virgil Van Dijk, but profit and loss isn’t everything, and Victor Wanyama proved to be a crucial cog in the Saints’ wheel for three seasons.
The middle of the 2010s was an exciting time to be a Southampton supporter. The club’s previous period of financial crisis, which saw them drop to League One and fall into administration, was comprehensively ended by two successive promotions that took them back to the Premier League in 2012 following an absence of seven years, and their first season back in the top-flight had ended with them finishing in a creditable 14th place, with a relatively untested manager by the name of Mauricio Pochettino having taken over as their head coach in January 2013.
But in the summer of 2013, there was a need for further squad strengthening. Dejan Lovren arrived from Lyon for £8.5 million and Dani Osvaldo arrived for £15 million from Roma. The purchase of Osvaldo was the second time that the Saints broke their club-record transfer fee that summer.
A couple of weeks prior to his arrival, a powerful defender had arrived at the club from Celtic. By signing for Southampton for £12.5 million that summer, Victor Wanyama became the first Kenyan to play Premier League football in England.
Victor Wanyama was already twice a national champion by the time of Southampton transfer
Although only 22-years-old when he arrived at St Mary’s in the summer of 2013, Victor Wanyama was already twice a champion, having won the SPFL in Scotland in each of the previous two seasons with Celtic.
Wanyama’s arrival at Parkhead wasn’t just another young player looking to boost his career chances by moving to a bigger club. As he told the Celtic View podcast in 2023, although born in Nairobi, he’d grown up as a Celtic fan on account of there being a Nairobi-based club called Kibera Celtic.
He’d started his senior career with the Belgian club Beerschott in 2008, but Celtic – at the second attempt – signed him for £900,000 in the summer of 2011. Wanyama was hugely popular at Parkhead. His team won the SPFL title in both of the seasons that he was with the club, and in November 2012 he became the first Kenyan player to ever score in the Champions League, netting the first goal in Celtic’s shock 2-1 win against Barcelona in the group stages of the competition. He wore the number 67 shirt, a nod to the 1967 European Cup-winning Celtic team, throughout his stay in Glasgow.
But the lure of the Premier League proved too great for both the player and his club. His transfer to Southampton was completed in July 2013 for £12.5 million, at the time a record transfer fee for a player sold by a Scottish club.
Victor Wanyama would be a key part of Southampton’s best team of the 21st century – Saints struck Celtic transfer gold
Wanyama’s St Mary’s career got off to an explosive start. By the second week in November, Southampton were second in the Premier League, having lost just two of their eleven matches and seven clean sheets.
This run couldn’t last. Their dipped in form later in the season and finished the season in 8th place in the table, while a big shock came to the club the following summer, when Mauricio Pochettino left the club for Tottenham Hotspur.
But still the improvement continued. The 2014-15 season ended with Southampton in 7th place in the Premier League and qualifying for European football for the first time since the 1984-85 season under Ronald Koeman, and Wanyama was an integral part of a defence which conceded just 33 goals all season, the second-lowest in the division behind the champions, Chelsea.
The 2015-16 season headline-makers were shock champions Leicester City, but the Saints defied expectations again by finishing in 6th place in the Premier League, above both Liverpool and Chelsea. However, the end of that run was starting to approach. The Saints’ progress hadn’t gone unnoticed elsewhere and bigger clubs were starting to pay attention.
At the end of that season, one of them swooped for Wanyama. Spurs, who’d just finished third in the table and qualified for the Champions League, approached with an £11 million bid for him which Southampton accepted. After three seasons and 97 appearances in all competitions he left the club for White Hart Lane, reuniting with Mauricio Pochettino. He’d go on to become an important part of the Spurs defence, playing in the Champions League final for them against Liverpool in 2019.
In a strict financial sense, Southampton didn’t get the return on Victor Wanyama that they did from Virgil van Dijk. In fact, they sold him for £1.5 million less than they paid for him three years earlier. But in terms of what he brought to their team for those three seasons the Saints hit the jackpot on the pitch, and fans may well agree that this is a better place to do so than in terms of the club’s bank balance.
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