After being linked with Rubin Kazan star Elmir Nabiullin, Saints have become the first club to be linked with buying 500 players in a single season.
Saints have become the first club to be linked with 500 players in a single season after the Daily Mirror revealed that they are allegedly chasing Rubin Kazan's Elmir Nabiullin.
Saints had been stuck on 497 for the best part of a week and club officials were worried that Chelsea's poor form might lead to a late surge of rumours and the West London club might pip Saints to be the first club ever to have 500 players linked.
But the Saints PR dept is quite canny and after they trolled out Jose Fonte to give an impassioned plea for Saints to buy in January, the rumour mill started to roll again, Charlie Austin was the first up, but he did not count as he had been linked before, in fact so many times Saints would already be in the middle 600's if it was on different rumours rather than individual players, UEFA transfer rules state that a it is one rumoured link per player per season that count towards the stats and with UEFA considering awarding a Europa League place to the club with the most transfer rumour links this is an important stat.
Fonte's plea did not go on deaf ears and soon the agents in France were on the case, Bordeaux's Henri Saivet and Wahbi Khazri were quickly linked on Tuesday and that took Saints to 499 and on the brink of Soccer history.
That history making link came in the early hours of Wednesday morning when the Daily Mirror suggested Elmir Nabiullin might be on his way and Ralph Krueger and Les Reed who had both arrived at St Mary's at 2am this morning waiting for this very moment embraced and cracked open a bottle of Champagne before phoning owner Katharina Liebherr with the news.
Katharina as you would expect from a woman being woken at 3am GMT (2am European time) was very emotional at the news and could only get out a brief few words to the duo, which would have sounded in English very much like "what are you pair of *****'s getting me up in the middle of the night to tell me this"
By 8.30 am as staff arrived it was clear that the atmosphere at St Mary's was one of buoyancy and a special meeting was held at Staplewood to announce to the 24 man first team squad that we had been linked with 500 players to replace them such was the high regard they were all held in at the club.
The Queen it is also believed has been informed, she has taken a keen interest since attending the 1976 FA Cup Final and after that vowed never to attend another at Wembley unless saints were involved.
For those who like a statistic the breakdown is as follows.
Goalkeepers 7
Right backs 23
Left backs 7
Central Defenders 136
Wide midfielders 101
Holding midfielders 139
Strikers 87
South American Strikers with an attitude 0
In terms of nationalities it has also been very diverse
Kenyans 4
Senagalese 13
English 4
Spanish 1
Portugese 1
Romanians 1
Russians 1
Tunisians 1
Dutch 474