With the European transfer window now shut we take a look at Saints summer business in the transfer market.
Overall Ralph Hasenhuttl will feel reasonably pleased with the activity in the summer transfer window, but he will temper that knowing that he still has not addressed a couple of key issues.
The signing of Moussa Djenepo early on was a statement of intent from Saints, it showed that they were not going to be content to sit back in the summer and had targets in mind.
That was quickly followed by making Danny Ings loan permanent and bringing in Che Adams, but then things got tougher.
The problem was two fold, Saints clearly had targets in mind and the manager seemed knew that he was strong in most areas now apart from at the back, but we needed to offload players.
Of course we all know the issues behind this and already some websites are regurgitating twitter comments as headlines, but although it cannot be denied that Les Reed was culpable in some areas, he should also be given credit where it is due, in that of the starting line up on Saturday against United of the 14 players used, only Che Adams and Kevin Danso were not Reed signings, add to that all three subs used and all of the unused subs and it is not a bad record overall, it was just the last year or so of his reign that let us down.
We have to put this all behind us now though, stop moaning about Reed, we can only change the future not the past.
What we were crying out for though was a central defender, one with experience. a leader and the difficulty there was they didn't come cheap, the whole World knew that we needed to sell or at least get money of the wage bill and the issue here was always going to be that our transfer window closed almost a month before the European window,.
This meant that with clubs on the continent hanging on to players till the closure of that window to maximise the price, we were always going to struggle, we did well to get Kevin Danso in on loan, but as good as he may be, he is not the experienced leader we need at the back.
So the incoming dealings were good, but not quite enough, although with players now off the book for the season we can perhaps rectify that in January.
Outgoings again saw some good early business, £17 million for Matt Targett was good money and perhaps shows where the transfer window is at in England, I liked Targett but he was not a completely proven player at this level and certainly not worth that money just yet.
The task though was to offload as many of the deadwood as possible hopefully for a fee, sadly Targett aside Sam Gallagher was the only other player to move for a fee with the rest going out on loan, that was not good, but late on we managed to shift most of the players we needed to albeit not permanently.
With Carrillo, Hoedt, Lemina, Elyounoussi and Forster now all out on loan, that could be as much as £15 million saved in wages this season when some of the bit part players like Harrison Reed and Josh Sims are added and that is not insignificant.
We still have some deadwood at the club and as bad as some will say those who have moved were in the past two years, we should consider why they have found it relatively easy to find a club whilst others stay.
Overall though this is perhaps as good as we could get in this window, the regeneration of the squad cannot be done over night, we now need to have a solid first half of the season so we can improve the squad in January if need be.
WE are stronger as a squad than at any time in the last two seasons, perhaps 2 1/2 since we lost Fonte and Van Dyke through injury, we certainly have the best manager since Ronald Koeman.
Hasenhuttl is committed to the club, he wants to move forward without the baggage from the past with a trim squad all committed to the cause, he has asked the supporters to get behind him and his team, we have to listen to what he is saying, forget the past, stop moaning about Les Reed and those players who have gone on loan and concentrate on the future.
Things have moved forward this summer, not quite to the level we would have liked, but enough to suggest that the future can be brighter than the past couple of years, there will be hiccups along the way, but lets make them just that and not turn them into drama's