Dani Osvaldo is a wild card, accent on the wild, and his latest antics have put his relatively-new club in a bad spot.
Capable of wonder goals, sideline fighting and poor public relations, the Southampton striker has followed up his three-match suspension for kicking Newcastle assistant Andy Woodman with a team suspension for an incident at the club’s training grounds that will keep him away from the club for two weeks. One would be tempted to wonder whether the timing is a little bit of writing on the wall.
UPDATE: Osvaldo fought teammate Jose Fonte, reportedly drawing blood.
It’s unspecified, but another crater in the road for the Saints record signing. Coming from Roma for 15.1 million Euros, Osvaldo is on his eighth club at the age of 28. The 12-times capped Italian international from Argentina has played for Bologna, Espanyol and Fiorentina amongst other stops.
This comes on the same day that Southampton announced the loss of two players for six-to-eight weeks, as Gaston Ramirez and Deja Lovren were stretchered off last weekend versus Sunderland and both have ligament damage to an ankle.
Then there’s owner Katherine Liebherr’s appointment of Gareth Rogers as the club’s interim chief executive officer. Several names have been reported for the roles, even the CEO spot, over the past few weeks as Southampton’s dealt with the resignation of influential boss Nicola Cortese. There was the story of former Blackburn man John Williams taking the helm as CEO, and an NHL man in Edmonton switching continents to become a Saints advisor.
When do Saints supporters get to relax a bit? Certainly, this is a fertile time for news coming out of St. Mary’s and it’ll be interesting to monitor how the players continue to respond to a controversial time at their club. They’ll host Yeovil Town on Saturday in the fourth round of the FA Cup before hosting Arsenal in their next Premier League fixture on Tuesday.