Mark Hughes did well to keep Southampton in the top flight late last season. However, he will not only have to improve on his squad this summer but will also have to retain some of his first-team stars for another season, to build on the foundation already laid. One such player, who is set to stay at the St Mary’s beyond this summer is striker Manolo Gabbiadini.
Having started his senior career with Atalanta, the 11 time capped Italian international spent time at Juventus, Bologna, Sampdoria and Napoli in Italy, before moving to England for the first time with Southampton in January last year. He was expected to be a goal scoring option for the club, and started off in fine fashion, scoring six goals in his first five games for the club.
However, he failed to hit such heights last season and registered just five goals in 11 league starts, used only off the bench by Mark Hughes. He is below Charlie Austin in the pecking order next season and has been linked with a move back to the Serie A with Lazio.
However, Gabbiadini is now happy to stay at Southampton, rejecting all such advances from Italy. He is ready to fight for his place in the first team next season and will hope to put in some match-winning performances next season, claimed his agent, in a recent interview.
He said, “A few requests from Italian clubs came but he feels at the top in the Premier League, also for how football is lived. It’s another world.”
“Gabbiadini definitely stays at Southampton, and we have to overturn last year’s performance in which we did not do very well. The team suffered a lot: a few goals, a very strange championship despite being very strong,” he added.
This will be a huge boost for the Saints as Gabbiadini, who is now 26, is a long-term option and can be a real match winner on his day. His style of play is perfect for the English game and he has settled in well under Hughes’s system. He scored the most important goal of the previous season for Southampton, when he found the back of the net against Swansea City, to virtually cement their top-flight status last season.
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Hughes will hope that he can find some consistency this season and can push Austin for a place in the starting XI. His decision to stay will give Hughes four attacking options to choose from as Shane Long and Sam Gallagher are backups to Austin and Gabbiadini, which will also mean that the manager does not have to dip into the transfer market for another striker.
