Southampton, England's Young Guns, Part 2

Article by e-Southampton Correspondent Bastian Houdini

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This article will carry on from last week's "Southampton, England's Young Guns, Part 1." and look at the remaining Saints players mentioned in England manager Roy Hodgson's recent statement about potential young England players.

So without further ado, let us get straight into part two by looking at Calum Chambers.

Calum is another player Southampton have brought up through the Academy, just gone 19 years old, he joined Southampton Academy as a seven-year-old. He has played for England at under 17 and under 19 levels, and, when he was younger , was known for being an attacking right-sided midfield player.

Now though he seems to have swapped midfield for the right sided full-back position after his step up to the 1st team last summer, it is a tactical move that has definitely worked, for him professionally and the club strategically. As a youth player he was very much a creative attacking right-sided midfielder, his change to play in the right back position was a bit of a surprise but, with Southampton's game, right full-back is kind of midfield anyway!

Due to injuries to first choice right back Nathanial Clyne, Calum has had to play more than most of us expected after watching him in pre-season, playing in some big Premier league games against very good opposition and making some very well known players look nothing short of average (I'm looking at you here Samir Nasri!).

Chambers has been a bit of a revelation this year though and he has proved to be an excellent stand-in for, in my opinion, the potential heir to the England right back position, Nathanial Clyne. Clyne, at the moment anyway, seems to have lost his place to Chambers in the Saints first-team, and although admittedly, that may be down to a spell of bad luck injuries Clyne has suffered, more than a little of it is down to the fact that Chambers has been excellent since taking over.

He's tall, quick and, whilst he is still learning in the right back position, he doesn't really look out of place. His engine more than complements that of Luke Shaw on the opposite side, is really becoming really good, quick and strong right back.

Arsenal have recently been linked with him by a number of red top newspapers, I do think this is probably quite tenuous, a touch of the "Arsenal have bought talented Southampton youngster's previously, they're bound to buy the next generation as well…".

Anyway, for now he has supplanted Clyne in the 1st team and is making quite a name for himself considering this is his first season as a first-team player in the top flight, my only problem as a Saints fan is trying to figure out how to play him AND Clyne in the same team!

Next on Roy's list is Jack Cork, until recently, and to use a hackneyed cliche, Southampton's forgotten man.

Jack plays as a defensive midfielder, in fact he is probably one of the better proponents of this midfield art in the younger generation in Britain at the moment, he's 24 years old and the son of ex-Wimbledon player, Alan Cork.

Unusually for Saints, he's not a product of the Southampton Academy, having played for Chelsea since the age of 9, although he did have a loan spell at Southampton during our wilderness years in the 2008-9 season, then he seemed to be used much more as a utility player and I think suffered a little from not really having a "best" position.

He went on a number of loans to different clubs while signed to Chelsea without ever looking like he was going to break into the Stamford Bridge club's first-team, with probably his most successful spell, just before he joined Southampton, with Burnley. However, he signed for Saints from Chelsea in 2011 and immediately made an impact by playing in every league match and helping Saints get promoted back to the Premier league at their first try after coming back up from league one.

Jack was established and confident right from the beginning, although he can be used as a right back if required, it's not really his best position. Where he really fits in is as part of the midfield defensive pair, although as mentioned previously, this is a reasonably fluid concept with the Southampton system and the way the team plays.

He has very good awareness of what's going on and is able to intercept, track, tackle and generally disrupt opponents offensive play incredibly effectively. Not the fastest or the strongest but very tenacious with great stamina and he is a good passer of the ball who is always available as an outlet for teammates right across defence and midfield.

His main weakness is his lack of goalscoring ability, he has scored for some of the teams he's played for but never scored in the league for Southampton and, despite hitting the woodwork recently against Sunderland, never really looked all that likely to do so. This more than anything else is possibly why his place is under threat from Victor Wanyama, Southampton's Kenyan midfield signing from Celtic last summer.

Whether he should actually be threatened or not by Victor is open for debate, at the moment I'd say he's probably holding his own, but without that cutting edge to his game I'm not sure he will stay with Saints if Victor gets the nod over him on a regular basis.

That would be somebody else's gain and definitely our loss, he's a good player, a good team player and an intelligent, industrious and diligent midfielder, the kind that rarely gets the plaudits but often is the key to any great team's success.

Last but not least is Jay Rodriguez, like Jack Cork, Saints bought J Rod from elsewhere, namely Burnley, whilst he was still young, paying a substantial fee, rumoured to be around £7 million, for his signature in the summer of 2012.

Whilst he struggled initially to get to terms with the style of play of Southampton and the pace of the premiership, he gradually adapted and demonstrated the foresight of the Saints transfer apparatus as well as his own ability, aptitude and ambition by recently winning his first cap for England.

Jay is 24 years old and he plays as a forward, but not really a centre forward. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that originally the plan may have been that he would one day replace Rickie Lambert as Saints main attacking player although he hasn't shown he would be effective in this role as yet.

He is a quick, but not lightning quick, and physically strong. Known for his surging runs that are very direct from the left side of an offensive trio of attacking players. In the past Jay has also tended to go on "runs" of goals, but his current form with Southampton means he is scoring about every other game at the moment, which shows he is improving all the time and is becoming more consistent, the sign of a player becoming more and more confident and truly coming into his own.

On the negative side, he is slowly learning the duties required of a player with a very attacking full-back overlapping him on the outside, when he forgets or doesn't concentrate quite enough there's a lot of pressure on Luke Shaw and the left sided central defender.

Saying that, even though his England start wasn't terribly auspicious, it wasn't dismal either,
he was mostly bypassed by the players that should have been bringing him into the game so he can't really be blamed for not really showing what he can do. I do expect him to be named in the squad for the Denmark friendly just to give him one more try before Roy starts thinking on who is going to go to Brazil.

So there it is, the end of Roy's list and hopefully, something to whet your appetites. So remember to look out for these players next time you see them (or as the case usually is, don't see them) on Match of the Day.

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