In need of a left-back, Southampton decided to gamble on Romain Perraud.
At Stade Brest 29 since 2019, where he had impressed following a transfer from OGC Nice, the player was bought by the Saints against a fee of £10.8m.
That money might have seemed minimal for the Premier League club, but for a club of the Ligue 1 side’s status, that went a long way to plug the hole left by the losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ouest-France sat down with Grégory Lorenzi, the club’s sporting director, who explained how the transfer window went, and what the €12m or so sent to their bank account by Southampton meant to them.
He said: “[The transfer] plugged part of the hole in the club. Maybe we didn’t communicate well about being in trouble. We lost €17m in TV rights plus Covid. It’s huge for us.
“We have little experience in Ligue 1. Little equity linked to past transfers. We could not develop an envelope to invest. So we found ourselves in a very complicated market to provide quality, and the president was conciliatory to allow us to achieve a minimum of things”.
So, there you have it. While Southampton found themselves a great little player who has already made two appearances for them in the Premier League, the sale might have been a technical blow to the Ligue 1 club, but a great one for their bank accounts.
