The situation at Southampton surrounding Sofiane Boufal is a bit strange, but RMC Sport in France tried to clear it out on Tuesday evening.
The Morocco international hasn’t featured in Mark Hughes’ squad since April 14th, when he was on the bench for their 3-2 loss against Chelsea.
According to the French outlet, the Southampton manager accused the forward of ‘warming up too lightly’ towards the end of the game, which ended up in the pair needing to be pulled away from each other after Boufal asked Hughes to ‘stop blaming him for the defeat when he wasn’t even on the pitch’.
However, the former Lille star apologised to everyone the next day, which was accepted by the Welshman, but not other members of the squad, who asked the board to stop Boufal from training with the first-team.
This was accepted, meaning the 24-year-old has since been forced to train alone or with the U23s, causing him to apologise once again before their away game against Leicester.
At this point, Hughes is said to have wanted to bring him back into the first-team, but the board, ‘still influenced by certain players’ refused to let that happen.
Since then, Boufal has stayed silent, not wanting to damage his club’s chances of staying in the Premier League, which have now hugely increased thanks to their 1-0 away win on Tuesday night against Swansea.
What all this means for the £17m recruit’s future at St Mary’s remains to be seen, but unless something drastic changes over the summer, it sounds like there’s a good chance the board have circled his name for a transfer in the coming months.
