Southampton set to pursue 47-goal/assist Man City talent following Shea Charles deal | OneFootball

Southampton snagged Samuel Edozie and more importantly Romeo Lavia from Manchester City last summer, and they are about to follow in the same footsteps once again by bringing Shea Charles to the south coast.

It looks as though just a year after arriving from the Etihad Stadium, Lavia is set to move on for a significant profit to a top Premier League club in the next few weeks, but the Saints have a succession plan.

Lavia arrived on the recommendation of Joe Shields, who arrived last year as Head of Recruitment after being at Man City as Head of Academy Recruitment, which is why he knew about the talent of the Belgian midfielder.

Shields has already moved on to Chelsea, but Southampton's links to City's youth setup continued with the appointment of their Academy Director Jason Wilcox as the new Director of Football at St Mary's Stadium.

That is where you'd imagine the idea came from to bring Northern Ireland international teenager Charles to the club, with a fee of up to £15 million being spent on the 19-year-old.

And it appears that Southampton's raids on the academy of the Premier League champions may not be done there, as according to The Athletic they are re-igniting their interest in prolific teenage winger Carlos Borges, who they were believed to be keen on a number of months ago.

Who is Carlos Borges?

Borges is a 19-year-old winger who arrived at City in 2015 at the age of just 11, signing from Sporting CP in his native Portugal.

Despite being a wide player, Borges has showed a keen eye for goal in City's youth teams over the years, with his breakout season coming in 2020-21 for their under-18's when he scored 13 times and notched 19 assists in 22 youth Premier League matches for the Citizens.

Borges continued that form for the under-18's in 2021-22 with 14 goal contributions in seven matches, whilst at the same time he was gradually eased into City's under-21's ready for the following campaign.

That seemed to do the trick for Borges as the 2022-23 season was his best to date - across 33 matches in all competitions at under-21 level, Borges scored 29 times and also racked up 18 assists in what was a spell-binding year for the Portuguese starlet.

He has still not debuted for City's senior side though, and he could end up being on the move this summer with Premier League and Bundesliga clubs also interested as well as Southampton.

Would Carlos Borges be a good signing for Southampton?

Russell Martin will likely utilise wingers at the Saints this season, and he has plenty of options already with the aforementioned Edozie, Kamaldeen Sulemana and Moussa Djenepo among those.

But Borges looks to have incredible potential and his record at under-21 level is too hard to ignore - he hasn't encountered mens football yet but it's only a matter of time before he does.

City have a great record of selling on their youth prospects and putting in buy-back and sell-on clauses, and this is a route they could go down with Borges too as there's no real pathway into the first-team right now under Pep Guardiola.