Southampton Record Bid For Striker Turned Down But Was It Another Tall Paul Wednesday, 11th Sep 2024 08:56 The media in Greece are claiming that Saints had a late £25 million bid for a Panathinaikos striker turned down, it would have been a record fee, but would it have been another Tall Paul Onuachu blunder ? southamptonfcnews They quote Greek journalist Giannis Chorianopoulos who posted this on his X account: "Before the end of the transfer market, Southampton made an offer to Panathinaikos for Fotis Ioannidis. Offer at €30m. plus bonus. Offer has been rejected" On the face of it, that looked a positive move from Southampton, but a look at the stats of Ioannidis perhaps suggest that he was firstly badly overpriced and secondly that it had all the hallmarks of the January 2023 transfer to the club of Paul Onuachu.
The 24 year old 6ft 2 centre forward Ioannidis according to transfermarkt.com Ioannidis value is only 13 million euros, far far short of the amount supposedly offered by Saints and turned down by the Athens based club. Secondly the stats of the striker are not great, he started at Levadiakos in the Greek Super League and in 41 appearances scored 7 goals, that earned him a move to one of the big clubs in Greece Panathinaikos in August 2020 for a reported 60,000 euros His first 3 seasons with the club were not exactly proficient in the goal scoring stakes and he scored just 15 goals in 85 games plus 6 assists. An unnamed MLS club were reported to make a bid in 2022 of 2 million euros that was turned down. It was in 2023/24 that he started to show some potential, in 28 Greek Super League games he scored 15 goals putting him on the radar of clubs outside of Greece, he also scored for the Greek international side, although he now has 13 caps and 5 goals, he is still far from a nailed on starter. If you add to that his injury record, last season he missed 7 games, then that is perhaps a third alarm bell that rang. It all sounds very similar to the story of Tall Paul Onuachu, a big strong centre forward who has just scored for fun in a lower European League. The truth is on the face of it his record is perhaps more in tune with that of Ross Stewart than that of a player who would have seen us smash our transfer record. At his current value of 13 million euros, he was probably worth a punt, perhaps even paying a few million euros more, but at 30 million euros he was badly over priced and a real gamble.
I would say that Ross Stewart probably represents a better bet in the Premier League than Ioannidis, however with England playing Greece at Wembley on 10th October we will find out how good Ioannidis actually is. However as it stands I would say we have dodged a bullet on this one if we were really going to pay that 30 million fee, although I suspect that although we may well have made an offer, that this is more of his club trying to put him in the shop window at that price. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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