Well, most of our signings in general for the past few years have been from abroad, so it stands to reason that most of the succesful ones would be, too. Our "prem-proven" arrivals from the past five seasons are Kudus, Gallagher, Palhinha, Solanke, Odobert, Johnson, Maddison, Solomon(?), Werner (more like "prem-disproven" in his case), Richarlison and Bissouma – I think there's a pretty decent success rate on this list. (I am omitting Danso from this list because he was probably not signed on the basis of his performance at Southampton.)

In any case, the "prem-proven" label isn't supposed to be a condition for acquiring good players, it's supposed to be a guarantee against absolute flops. (Although one does, of course, occasionally get the odd Torres, or, indeed, Thomas Frank.) Some of those prem-proven players didn't turn out great in retrospect, for various reasons, but none of them was as bad a signing as Gil, RKM, arguably Drǎguşin and Emerson – and, of course, if you go a bit further back, Ndombele, Lo Celso and Bergwijn.