Duje Caleta-Car was meant to strengthen the Saints’ defensive unit, but he did anything but that last season
Southampton’s big takeover in January 2022, which saw Serbian media mogul Dragan Solak take a majority stake in the club, has not really gone as planned as the two-year anniversary of his arrival at St Mary’s Stadium closes in.
After four-and-a-half years of being at the club, Gao Jisheng decided he would sell his 80 per cent of the Saints for the right price, and a £100 million deal was struck with Solak and his Sport Republic group – that was a £110 million loss on what the Chinese businessman had paid in 2017.
The summer of 2022 was Sport Republic’s first chance to change things in order to push the south coast club up the Premier League table, but their plans ended up being an absolute disaster when it came to on-pitch matters.
New Director of Football Rasmus Ankersen invested in plenty of young talents, with Gavin Bazunu, Romeo Lavia, Armel Bella-Kotchap, Sekou Mara, Samuel Edozie and Juan Larios all having money spent on them, but after a half-decent start to the season, things quickly began to unravel.
Ralph Hasenhuttl was sacked as head coach and Nathan Jones was his replacement in a move that simply did not work out, and after some more investment by Solak into new players in the January window, Ruben Selles – Jones’ interim replacement – could not do enough to retain Southampton’s Premier League position for 2023-24.
The big-money sale of Lavia to Chelsea has showed that from a business perspective, some of Southampton’s moves last summer to enhance their squad weren’t all so bad, and it wasn’t just youngsters they signed.
A duo in their mid-20’s in Joe Aribo and Duje Caleta-Car were snapped up from Rangers and Marseille respectively, with the fee for Caleta-Car supposedly believed to be in the region of £10 million.
Caleta-Car had spent four years with Marseille in the lead up to Southampton’s transfer deal, and having played plenty of times for Croatia as well he was beginning to become an experienced international.
He struggled last season though at Southampton, starting plenty of matches in the first few months under Hasenhuttl and Jones but ultimately was part of a defence and a team that was sleepwalking its way to relegation to the Championship.
Caleta-Car found himself benched plenty by Selles towards the end of the season, and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to be in Russell Martin’s plans going into 2023-24, with plenty of European interest in the 27-year-old over the summer.
It was Lyon of France however who decided to loan the Croatian in, and they have the option to turn it into a €5 million (£4.36 million) permanent deal should they wish, which would be a big financial loss for the Saints.
However, Caleta-Car is really struggling over in Ligue 1 in an even further sign that Southampton made a huge mistake in signing him in the first place.
Starting in Lyon’s first four league matches of the season, Caleta-Car was on the losing end of results three times, conceding 10 goals in the process, and since Laurent Blanc’s final game in charge in early September, the defender has not been in new head coach Fabio Grosso’s plans.
Caleta-Car remains rooted to the bench at the Groupama Stadium, and he has been overtaken in the pecking order by 22-year-old Irishman Jake O’Brien, who was playing on loan in League Two for Swindon Town two years ago.
The last 12 months have showed what a disaster it was for Southampton to splash out so much money on Caleta-Car, and at this rate they will struggle to get a few million pounds for his services next summer when he returns to the club at the end of his loan stint in France.