McMenemy speaks to St. Mary's Musings - part two!

On Friday, in part one of our exclusive interview with Lawrie McMenemy, the former Saints boss spoke about his fondest memories of the 1976 FA Cup Final victory, his legacy at Saints and gave his thoughts on Ronald Koeman's team.

In part two, we speak to the former Saints boss about the summer transfer window, last summer's exodus and find out which player from the current squad he would have most liked to manage. <!-- ######## START FLOATED VIDEO SNIPPET ######## -->

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Connor Armstrong and George Galpin of St. Mary's Musings were invited to meet McMenemy, and members of his FA Cup winning side, at a Mayoral Reception at Southampton Guildhall on Friday morning.

Interviews with Hugh Fisher, Nick Holmes, Jim Steele and Paul Bennett will follow during the rest of the week.

Below is the transcript of part two of Lawrie's exclusive interview with St. Mary's Musings.

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If you had to pick one player out of the current squad to be part of your Southampton side, who would you pick?

I like Fonte and what he's done here. I think he's been here longer than most of the others. Every area has got good players - Schneiderlin, and up front Pellè.

If you take away the 12 goals against Sunderland and Newcastle that is the one area we've been a bit short on, goalscoring. If we can maybe spend, because the money must be there, I am sure that would be the area that the manager would be looking to improve.

The overwhelming answer from your players was that they would've had Morgan Schneiderlin in their squad if they had the choice...

Oh, yes.

But, not if your full-back was injured, or if your centre-forward was injured! He's only scored four goals, hasn't he?

There's a lot of speculation about Schneiderlin . He got injured in his last appearance: how big a loss do you think he will be to Saints and can they keep hold of him?

If you asked twelve months ago: ‘How big a loss will Lallana be?', I'd have said ‘Oh yeah, big loss'.

But, he hasn't. He hasn't been a loss - and that's football. People move on and people get replaced.

The question really is, if Schneiderlin goes - who will replace him?

He [the replacement] might be better, or as good - as has been proved this year with the replacements for the people who left. I mean, Lovren was outstanding here. What he's done since then? Forget it!

Everybody will be commenting ‘Ooof, the spine of the team has gone, we've got no chance'. Rickie Lambert was fantastic and he's hardly had a game since he left.

So to answer your question, twelve months ago we'd have been standing here saying ‘We can't win without them', and yet if anything we have won more. So, that's the magic of the game.

Lawrie was speaking to St. Mary's Musings at Southampton Guildhall to promote the build-up to the 40th anniversary of Southampton's only FA Cup victory.