It’s not unfair to say that former Southampton Dusan Tadic largely split the fanbase.
Having come in from Dutch Eredivisie side FC Twente for a reported £10.9million back in the summer of 2014, the 30-year-old went on to rack up 134 starting appearances for the club, with a further 28 showings from the substitutes bench – contributing 23 goals across all competitions, including the better days of our short-lived European adventures.
With some stellar high points from his time with us, there were some lows as our form overall saw us slip backwards and last summer, we largely made our money back on him as he departed back to Holland and Ajax.
Speaking recently to former footballer Andy van der Meijde’s YouTube channel, Tadic discussed his departure from the club and he admitted he’d become ‘tired of everything’ at the club.
“For me, it was enough in England because I was a little bit tired of everything. I played all the time for four years. In Southampton, for the first two years, we had a great team with Ronald Koeman and we had very good seasons. We finished number six and number seven, which is the best in the history of the club and we had very good players. Then after that, in the third and fourth year, we were getting worse and worse. We sold a lot of players and, after that, it was difficult. We finished number eight in the third year, but it wasn’t the same feeling. When you are there when it was the best, and after when it’s not so good, you feel a little bit like you need to go and I was also tired from the Premier League.”
I’m sure plenty of fans will find a commonality with his thoughts and I’m not sure, given how things ended, that anyone will be surprised with what he says.
Sadly he is showing us what we miss from him as so fart his season he’s already found the back of the net 22 times in 34 matches, and amazingly that’s only 12 less than we’ve managed all season so far across the whole squad.
Tadic did also say that the lack of protection from referee’s figured in his ‘tired’ outlook as he was also bored of being kicked during matches, and even though he had offers from other Premier League clubs, it’s one of the reasons he wanted to return to the Netherlands.
