Southampton manager Mark Hughes has dropped Soufiane Boufal and Guido Carrillo from the club’s pre-season tour to China.
Argentine striker Carrillo has struggled to establish himself as a regular player since his move from Monaco. The 27-year-old played 7 Premier League games last season and is yet to open his goalscoring account. On the other hand, 24-year-old Boufal has laboured his way through two seasons at the club arriving in 2016.
With both the players axed from the pre-season tour, it is speculated that the Saints will offload them to generate money. In hindsight, this could be a clever move by Hughes.
After signing Mohamed Elyounoussi, Southampton are in a position to get a few of their fringe players out of the door to sign fresh recruits. The next term will mark Hughes’ first full season in charge and he will have a huge task ahead.
In the previous campaign, Boufal had a stop-start season. He was already out of the reckoning when Hughes first took charge. The enigmatic Moroccan didn’t earn any favours after getting involved in a bust-up with the manager. This forced the latter to send the player to train with the U23s. Now, after getting excluded from the pre-season tour, Boufal’s time has certainly come to an end.
Meanwhile, Carrillo hasn’t had much game time to prove his worth. Hughes has usually deployed Shane Long ahead of him and he also has Manolo Gabbiadini at his disposal. In addition, Elyounoussi’s presence will close all doors for the Argentine.
Offloading Carrillo and Boufal won’t weaken the Saints squad one bit. In fact, they were both on the fringes and selling them would bring in some much-needed funds to strengthen the squad further this summer.
