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The latest rumours from North West London suggest that Saints will be looking to a deal with Tottenham Hotspur for a defender whom we saw a lot of last season, but do we need him.

tottenhamhotspurnews.com are linking Southampton for a loan move for Spurs defender Archie Gray, a player whom will be very familiar to Saints fans, playing against us on 3 occasions last season, firstly at St Mary's as a 73rd minute sub in our 3-1 win, then he again came on as sub in our 2-1 win at Elland Road, this time in the 62nd minute before playing the full game in the play off final at Wembley.

Despite only turning 18 in March of this year, Gray has started 40 League games for Leeds, plus 4 off the bench, since his debut at the start of last season, bizarrely 2 of those sub appearances against us.

This led to Spurs signing him in the summer for £30 million, but he has found games in the Premier League hard to come by, making just 5 appearances all of them off the bench totalling just 42 minutes.

Although he has started in all of the Europa league & Carabao cup games, it is being rumoured that Ange Postecoglou might not feel he is ready to play at regularly at the highest level yet and wants him to get games under his belt out on loan.

This is where Saints come in and he is being linked with a move to the South Coast on a temporary basis.

However primarily a right back, Saints are well served in that area, with both Yuri Sugawara and Kyle Walker Peters specialists in that position.

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Back in the summer it looked likely that Kyle Walker Peters would leave Southampton for Tottenham Hotspur, but that deal fizzled out after Spurs played their usual transfer game of offering a derisory fee for a player worth much more, but that now creates problems for Saints.

Southampton have been putting up with Tottenham Hotspur's tactics of making low offers and trying to push deals through by using the players desire to play for them for over 32 years now, meaning that we have to take the low offer with a disgruntled player on our hands.

This started in 1992 when after Spurs having sold Ruddock back to Millwall, Saints subsequently paid £200,000 for the 20 year old with only a dozen League appearances to his name, 3 years later Spurs refused to pay the going rate for a player who had now played 107 Top flight appearances to his name to take him back to White Hart Lane, offering only £250,000 and took the transfer to a tribunal, eventually it being settled at £750,000 a figure that was ludicrously low, Ruddock left after a year to join Liverpool for £2.5 million.

Fast forward 9 years and the North London club employed similar tactics to sign Dean Richards, eventually Saints caved in with the player seemingly refusing to play, despite only having signed a new deal with Southampton only a few months earlier.

Famously Rupert Lowe stated that he would not cave in to a "load of North London Yobbos" he pushed the fee up to £8.1 million, much much more than Spurs had been offering.

Now it seems history is again repeating itself with Kyle Walker Peters, with no one willing to match the fee wanted by Saints and now in the last year of his contract, reports are stating that discussions have broken down, spursweb being one of the Tottenham websites making this claim.

They say that he is not willing to sign a new deal with the suggestion being that Tottenham will come a calling again in January when Southampton will be unable to turn down even a derisory offer for a player whom as a 23 year old had played just 2 games in the Premier League for Spurs and now has 140 League games for Southampton plus a couple of England caps to his name.

So the dilemma for Russell Martin is does he play KWP or not, on Saturday it seems he opted for not, Yuri Sugawara played right back and Charlie Taylor was preferred at left back to Walker Peters.

Most would agree that KWP is the better player than both in either position, but clearly there is something that is going on behind the scenes and it seems that Russell Martin, as he has done before, puts a high price on loyalty, even at the expense of playing the best player for the job.

Whether that is right, depends on what we can't see going on and what his agents are doing, in truth I would say whatever the situation, KWP has never given less than 100% for the club even last season when he surely must have been disappointed not to have been one of those who left to go back to the Premier League.

Players leave clubs all the time, in fact the only thing certain about a player at a football club, is that one day he will play his final game, personally as long as KWP is showing good form and I would say that prior to the Ipswich game, he was better than most around him, we need to play him.

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Saints are reported to be in talks with Tottenham Hotspur about loaning a centre forward for the season, this one could be good news for Southampton supporters who want to see a genuine central striker come in.

According to hotspurhq.com Saints are in talks with Spurs regarding a loan deal for young Argentinian striker Alejo Veliz

In some respects this has some parallels to be drawn with the arrival of Armado Broja on loan from Chelsea three years ago, only Veliz is not a product of the Tottenham youth system but was signed from Argentine club Rosario Central for around £15 million last summer.

He came to the attention of Tottenham after scoring 17 goals in 53 appearances for Rosario Central in Liga Professional, the top tier in Argentina.

In the first half of last season he made 8 appearances as a sub in the Premier League, scoring in their defeat at Brighton.

Spurs then thought he would be best served with a loan in January and he joined Sevilla, but he struggled to get game time and made just 6 short appearances as a sub.

No it seems that Spurs want him to out on loan again, but they are picking their club more carefully and they feel Saints is a place where he will get a chance of first team football at the highest level.

If he comes the word is that there will be no option to buy as Spurs see him as part of their long term plans.

So comparisons can be drawn with Armando Broja, in that Veliz is a young striker who plays down the middle and nowhere else, Broja started well for Saints but petered out in the second half of the season, hopefully if he comes and lasts the distance, Veliz could do a job for Saints, even if it is just for a season.

Photo: Action Images

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