According to reports yesterday Southampton have a serious interest in Swans defender Nathan Wood after his impressive breakthrough campaign last season.<\/p>\n
After an underwhelming loan in Scotland and barely playing a game for fellow Championship side Middlesbrough, Wood arrived with little fanfare that he would become as much of a mainstay in the first team as he has.<\/p>\n
Indeed his call up to the England U21 squad just a few months ago further demonstrated his rise in prominence within the game prompting speculation to Arsenal and Tottenham.<\/p>\n
Young, pacy English centre halves are a rare commodity in the game and come at a premium therefore Swansea City have a real asset on their hands.<\/p>\n
And as a club that needs to sell to somewhat balance the books it wouldn’t be a surprise if he was to leave SA1 in the next nine days as the summer transfer window edges towards a conclusion.<\/p>\n
This is where Southampton and Russell Martin come in; we all know the former Swans boss was a huge fan of his and, after linking up with Ryan Manning and former charge Flynn Downes, he is still looking to strengthen.<\/p>\n
According to reports yesterday on the South Coast Sainfs had submitted a \u00a310m bid which consisted of \u00a37m up front and the rest as add-ons (presumably based heavily upon a promotion back to the Premier League at the first time of asking).<\/p>\n
On first viewing that seems reasonable money for a player that cost barely \u00a3300k just over a year ago but beware of a hefty sell on clause to Middlesbrough which could be as high as 35%.<\/p>\n
That would seem less enticing despite it being a help and would allow Michael Duff to recruit the 2\/3 new players he still wants.<\/p>\n
Wales Online reported yesterday afternoon that a bid was yet to be submitted by Southampton for Wood but did confirm a genuine interest in the player.<\/p>\n
So, what happens from here? My personal view is that a sale will still happen of a marquee player despite the spending this summer broadly matching the income from those who have left.<\/p>\n
That could still be Joel Piroe but Wood may make more sense with Duff known to be targeting a left sided, left footed centre half – a position that Wood has played despite obviously being right footed.<\/p>\n
Watch this space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to reports yesterday Southampton have a serious interest in Swans defender Nathan Wood after his impressive breakthrough campaign last season. After an underwhelming loan in Scotland and barely playing a game for fellow Championship side Middlesbrough, Wood arrived with little fanfare that he would become as much of a mainstay in the first team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":85083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203,295],"tags":[1409,726,1507],"class_list":["post-85079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","category-transfer-rumours","tag-nathan-wood","tag-southampton","tag-the-2023-24-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}