LONDON — Chelsea took in more money this year selling players than it spent on replacements, and it looks unstoppable in the English Premier League. Southampton took an even more frugal approach by selling high and buying low, and it, too, is offering a lesson in financial management.
With almost a third of the season gone, few people doubt that Chelsea is the real deal in the Premiership. But it will be more of a shock, a pleasant one, if Southampton really sustains its start and finishes above the Manchesters and Arsenal or Liverpool.
“Now you have to believe us,” sang the Saints fans as the rain poured down Saturday on their St. Mary’s Stadium. “We’re going to win the league.”
Maybe, maybe not.
But their club’s turnaround is the most refreshing sight in the season thus far.
Chelsea’s victory at Liverpool was to be expected. Diego Costa’s winning goal demonstrated, again, that it isn’t how much you spend, but rather on whom.
Costa is Brazilian by birth, Spanish by national team preference, and English by residence. He fits the physical approach to the game in England perfectly, as the coach José Mourinho knew when he asked his owner to buy Costa from Atlético Madrid in June.
Sometimes spectacular and at other times a belligerent menace, Costa wrestled, elbowed and scratched his way against Liverpool’s tough Slovak defender Martin Skrtel on Saturday. When push came to shove, it was Costa who did what he does, game after game: detach himself from all that fighting to strike the winning goal with clean viciousness.
Chelsea came from a goal down to beat Liverpool, 2-1, at Anfield. It was the third loss in a week for Liverpool, which was denied a clear penalty when Chelsea defender Gary Cahill blatantly used his left arm to deflect a late shot from Steven Gerrard.
It has been obvious all season long that after the sale of Luis Suárez to Barcelona and the wholesale recruitment of new players (notably from Southampton), the Reds of Anfield are less of a force than they were a year ago.
All those new players still have yet to settle in, and it appears that Coach Brendan Rodgers has no clear idea even who best fits his starting lineup.
What is evident, however, is that Mario Balotelli is no Suárez in attack. Where the Uruguayan Suárez, for all his malevolence, could and did lift his team through his unquenchable spirit and efforts, the Italian Balotelli just simmers and broods.
One man might never make a team, but he can reflect its character.
Right now, the nearest thing to Suárez in the Premier League is Manchester City’s Sergio Agüero. The Argentine has the Uruguayan’s nose for the goal.
Where Suárez carried his team with 31 goals last season, Agüero already has 12 in his nine league games this time around.
There were moments — two to be exact — in Manchester City’s 2-2 tie at Queens Park Rangers when Agüero proved unstoppable.
Agüero darted between the Rangers’ defenders, smaller than they but better balanced, more alert and simply more gifted than those trying to stop him.
There is poetry in sports when a man moves the way that Agüero can: plucking the ball out of the air with his right foot, feigning to shoot and then, as opponents cluster around him, flicking the ball to his other foot and shooting deftly.
He did that twice Saturday. The first time the ball glanced off his arm, unseen by the referee. The second time, one defender actually fell to the ground, swept off his feet, so to speak, by Agüero’s change of tempo.
Magnificent, and yet with City’s defensive problems continuing, this artist’s pair of goals was worth only one point against the struggling, defiant Rangers.
Q.P.R. has spent more than Southampton. Most of the Premier League teams have. Yet the Saints are flying higher than anyone anticipated after they lost their coach, Mauricio Pochettino, to Tottenham, and sold players to Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United last summer.
Part of the reason is the club’s youth system, which, like a Barcelona on the English coast, seems to find new talents all the time to replace the old. In large measure, their success comes down to their new coach, Ronald Koeman, who, with his younger brother Erwin assisting, calmly filled in the missing parts and set the style of the new Southampton.
The Koemans, disciples of the Ajax school in Amsterdam and the coach Johan Cruyff, quietly got on with the task while the club resembled a revolving door throughout June, July and August.
After bringing in Graziano Pelle, an Italian who scored regularly for Koeman in the Dutch league, the coach instilled his own calm in a defense that has conceded only one goal at home this season, and five total in 11 league games.
“Clean sheets win you matches,” is the mantra Koeman espouses.
Clean sheets, patience, and a keen attack.
When Pelle or the quick Senegalese Sadio Mané or the energetic Kenyan Victor Wanyama are not scoring, it becomes time for somebody else to get the job done.
Against Leicester’s efficient defense on Saturday, Koeman summoned Shane Long off the bench midway through the second half. Within 10 minutes, Long had bagged two goals, the first created by Pelle and the second by Wanyama, and Southampton emerged as 2-0 winners.
How long can the Saints keep it going?
Wait and see, but enjoy the element of surprise while it lasts.