Saints have been warned that they will get short shrift if they try to prise Norwich City's Nathan Redmond away from Carrow Road in the summer.
Norwich City chairman Ed Balls has warned Saints and other Premier clubs circling over Carrow Road and looking for cheap pickings after the Canaries relegation.
Of particular interest to Saints is of course Nathan Redmond who Saints previously tried to sign a couple of years ago in Ronald Koeman's first season at St Mary's.
But Balls is saying Balls! and warning that Norwich intend to hang on to their prize assets and that Redmond is one of them.
"Nathan is showing his stuff out in the Under-21s (Toulon Tournament) at the moment, scored a great goal last night and I think everybody at the football club wants to keep all of our players - and our best players - with us into the Championship next season."
"As Alex Neil has said, the reality is there are going to be people looking at what's happening at Norwich.
"But we have no need to make any short-term, foolish decisions that are bad for the best interests of the football club - and we're not going to be doing that."
So are Norwich just bluffing to try and hike up the price, some suggestions are that it would take about £15 million to persuade Norwich to sell, or are they serious about trying to get back to the Premier League at the first attempt.
The problem that Norwich have with this in regard to Redmond is that he only has a year of his contract left and would be a free agent, although Norwich would receive a development fee next summer it would be far less than they could get now and would be a risky gamble, given that Redmond did not want to sign a new contract last summer when they returned to the Premier League so seems to want to leave Carrow Road in the near future.