Southamp­ton should look ahead to the sum­mer by replac­ing David Brooks with for­mer Celtic winger Karamoko Dem­bele.

In their attempts to avoid FFP issues, Southamp­ton have done most of their shop­ping in the loan mar­ket this sea­son.

It has proven to be an effec­tive strat­e­gy for Rus­sell Martin‘s side as they’ve brought in Tay­lor Har­wood-Bel­lis, Fly­nn Downes and Ryan Fras­er in the sum­mer while lur­ing Joe Roth­well and David Brooks from Pre­mier League side Bournemouth in Jan­u­ary.

Brooks has been a qual­i­ty addi­tion, sup­ply­ing five goal con­tri­bu­tions in eight appear­ances, includ­ing a goal and an assist in the 4–3 vic­to­ry over Birm­ing­ham City.

The 26-year-old has formed a lethal for­ward trio with Che Adams and Adam Arm­strong with the Saints scor­ing eight goals in their last two Cham­pi­onship out­ings.

The Welsh wiz­ard has made the desired impact at St Mary’s and sup­port­ers will be keen for him to stay beyond the end of the cur­rent cam­paign.

How­ev­er, there is no oblig­a­tion in his con­tract to pur­chase the play­er and while seal­ing a per­ma­nent move isn’t out of the ques­tion, Southamp­ton could look else­where by try­ing to lure Karamoko Dem­bele to the South Coast.

Russell Martin could replace David Brooks with Karamoko Dembele

Dem­bele was the play­er who set social media alight years ago, danc­ing through defend­ers far old­er than him as a 13-year-old play­ing for Celtic’s under-20 side.

The 21-year-old has been a rev­e­la­tion while on loan at Black­pool from French side Brest, and is threat­en­ing to live up to the poten­tial that his for­ma­tive years promised.

Accord­ing to HITC Foot­ball, Southamp­ton are one of sev­er­al inter­est­ed clubs after watch­ing him tear apart League One.

Pre­dom­i­nant­ly play­ing from the right wing or as an attack­ing mid­field­er, Dem­bele has scored sev­en goals and sup­plied 12 assists in all com­pe­ti­tions this term.

It’s form that has seen Black­pool team­mate James Hus­band hail him as a “spe­cial” tal­ent, and Southamp­ton should cer­tain­ly pounce at the chance to sign him to replace Brooks.

Dem­bele, sim­i­lar­ly to the Welsh­man, pos­sess­es dev­as­tat­ing close con­trol and excel­lent run­ning pow­er that can see him glide past defend­ers.

When run­ning at full speed, the ball gets stuck to him like glue and he’s so good at manip­u­lat­ing the ball in tight areas.

The next step for Dem­bele is to play high­er up the pyra­mid, per­haps in the Pre­mier League or Cham­pi­onship and of course, the Eng­lish­man will want to go some­where he’s guar­an­teed reg­u­lar min­utes.

With Mar­tin able to offer him the promise of reg­u­lar foot­ball at St Mary’s, they should cer­tain­ly use that pull to sign the tal­ent­ed younger.

And if the Saints need­ed fur­ther encour­age­ment to sign Dem­bele, foot­balling leg­end Ruud Gul­lit once labelled him as “excep­tion­al­ly good” dur­ing his time at Celtic.

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