10 Southampton Foreign Import Strikers Who Were Major Flops
3. Dani Osvaldo
Cost: £12,800,000 Games: 13 Goals: 3 Southampton's record signing just over a year ago, Argentinian-Italian forward Pablo Daniel Osvaldo was an arrival that signified the ambition of manager Mauricio Pochettino and the club's keenness to build on their first season back in the Premier League and improve for the new season. Osvaldo was a regular goalscorer with a goal every other game in the four years leading up to his signing for Saints and this wasn't in the Latvian or Norwegian leagues, these were goals scored in the toughest leagues in the world. He had worked with Pochettino at Espanyol where he'd scored 20 times in 44 games before moving to Roma and netting a further 27 in 55 in Serie A. He was an Italian international and had already scored three times in the qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup. Everything about Osvaldo's past form suggested that he could be well worth his hefty price tag. There was just one more thing, he didn't just have a record for scoring lots of goals, he also had a record for trouble. Any Saints fans wondering why Roma were willing to give up such a frequent goalscorer just needed to look at incidents like the time he had insulted manager Aurelio Andreazzoli over team selection, refusing to take part in the Coppa Italia ceremony after only being given 15 minutes of playing time, or the time he was banned after punching teammate Erik Lamela in the face. If Pochettino thought that his past experience of working with Osvaldo would enable him to control this side of the striker's game he was wrong. After a patchy start to his Saints career, which did at least include one brilliant moment with his goal against Man City in December, Osvaldo was involved in a touchline bust up against Newcastle and then a fight with teammate, and current captain, Jose Fonte that saw his four year contract in England cut short after just 5 months with a loan deal to Juventus. Now at Inter Milan, Osvaldo is technically still under contract at Southampton, but it seems unlikely that he will ever again pull on the red and white stripes.
