Nigel Adkins is reluctant to discuss the details of Gaston Ramirez's proposed move to Southampton, but believes the deal highlights the club's ambition.
Saints boss waiting for transfer to be pushed through
Nigel Adkins is reluctant to discuss the finer details of Gaston Ramirez's proposed move to Southampton, but believes the deal highlights the club's ambition.
The Bologna playmaker is reported to be on his way to St Mary's in a club record £11.8million transfer.
Inter Milan, Liverpool and Tottenham have all been linked with the Uruguayan starlet this summer, but it is the Saints who appear to have pulled off quite a coup in securing his signature.
Ramirez is yet to complete a move to the Premier League new boys, though, and Adkins is keen to look at the bigger picture until all of the relevant paperwork has been completed.
"It looks exciting, doesn't it?" he said ahead of Southampton's season opener against Manchester City on Sunday.
Ambition
"I think he has come out in Italy and said it is already sorted, but I think you'll find the policy of the football club is until the player has signed on the dotted line and we announce it then really we try to do everything privately. We have been consistent with that over the years and we'll probably stay that way.
"If it is true, then it obviously shows the ambition of the football club. I know the chairman, Nicola Cortese, is very ambitious here and it is great.
"We were in administration a few years ago and we've come a hell of a long way in a short space of time.
"To be linked with players as such - and don't forget we broke the transfer record in the summer when we signed Jay Rodriguez - shows we're very ambitious, but likewise we'll cut our cloth accordingly.
"Having been in administration once, the last thing we'll do is end up in that situation again. The club is run very well, very prudently.
"But we're very, very ambitious and having reached the Premier League now, very quickly, we've got to give ourselves an opportunity to do well there."
Link
While discussing targets, Adkins has also taken the opportunity to distance Southampton from reports suggesting they are the club to have incurred the wrath of Blackpool boss Ian Holloway by making an illegal approach for Matt Phillips.
"We've been linked before with players and it came out last week because Blackpool obviously weren't happy with something," he said.
"I probably think it's best that I don't make any further comments on that, while people are doing it.
"I'd like to think we do things properly here at Southampton and I made a
comment last week about it and I think if you need to take anything you can take it from that."
