The last six months or so has seen Saints very active in tying up key players to long term deals, now comes news of another three being offered increased deals.
Saints have offered Jose Fonte, Cedric Soares and Dusan Tadic new deals according to the Daily Echo.
For varying reasons these three have not been high on the priority list for a new deal, in the case of Jose Fonte it was that he only signed a new contract last November and now after his starring role in the Euros, Saints are keen to reward him and to ward off the likes of Everton and Manchester United who have been linked in the past day or so.
For Dusan Tadic and Cedric Soares it is a case of the fact that both seemed to be unhappy under Ronald Koeman, Tadic athough a regular was known to be unsettled and the word on the street was that he would be looking to move this summer.
Soares looked to be turning into a decent signing at right back after initially struggling to adapt to the pace of the Premier League, but once he had done that he looked better week in week out and was a key reason why the team kept a string of clean sheets in January and February, but suddenly he was out of favour and played very little part in the final run in, despite being a far better player than the man who replaced him Cuco Martina.
So it looked like both Soares and Tadic would depart in the summer but with a new man in charge things could be changed, certainly Dusan Tadic appears to be a lot happier these days and could well sign a new contract, Soares has not had the time with Claude Puel yet due to his extended leave after Euro 2016 but hopefully he will feel the same way as Tadic appears to and be now interested in staying.
Of course all these deals cost money and supporters have to realise that some of that money will come from areas that might well have otherwise be used to generate transfer funds for new signings.
The reality of the situation at the moment is that we do not have the resources to fund all that we want to do completely from Premier League income alone, the club are working hard on increasing revenue from sponsorship deals and have been successful in attracting some big name sponsors such as Virgin Media.
Indeed the £6-7 million a year that the deal with Virgin is allegedly bringing in puts us in joint 7th place in the highest paid shirt sponsorship deals for the coming season according to reports in the press,
However that is around £10 million less than 6th placed club Spurs and almost £20 million less that 4th placed Liverpool and completely dwarfed by the £47 million that Manchester United are getting from Chevrolet.
This perhaps gives a snapshot of what Saints have to compete with if they want to hit the top six and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
But Saints can compete on their own terms and the strategy is to make sure that we dont get caught out too often with players running down their contracts, it will always happen, players will be attracted by money and we cannot compete with the top six in that respect, but by tying down our players when we can we can ensure that if they are lured away it will be for a big fee that will bring in the funds to not only replace them but help fund other signings as has been the case in the past two summers.