According to media reports Saints are looking to get three of their wide men off the books and in doing so not only bring in some transfer money, but also trim the wage bill.
Sun journalist Tom Barclay is claiming that Southampton are looking to offload Theo Walcott, Moussa Djenepo and Nathan Redmond in this transfer window.
Walcott & Djenepo became peripheral players during 2021/22 season, Walcott who arrived on free transfer started just 5 Premier League games plus another 4 off the bench without scoring.
It was a similar story for Djenepo he too started 5 games but managed 7 off the bench, again without troubling the scoring charts.
Nathan Redmond gets stick in some quarters, but he did contribute to the team, not least in his performance away at Newcastle when he came off the bench to launch the fight back.
He is in the last year of his contract as is Djenepo so Saints might well want to cash in on them now.
Tom Barclay goes on to claim that between them they are earning £190,000 a week, I think that is a little bit high, I would say that it would be nearer £150k, I can't see any of the three earning much above £50k a week,.
From a squad perspective we are top heavy on wingers, even if we got rid of all three, we would still have Moi Elyounoussi, Stuart Armstrong, Nathan Tella able to play in these positions and new signing Joe Aribo can also play out wide.
But I also suspect that we are going to change our formation a little, 3 central defenders, 2 holding midfielders in the centre behind a central attacking midfielder and then 2 wing backs and 2 forwards.
We may adapt this a little and at times revert to 4-4-2, but I think that Ralph Hasenhuttl will feel he has more depth in his squad now, he just needs to tweak that depth to bring in a forward or two and get at least two of the three aforementioned wingers off the books.
Of course Tom Barclay is merely speculating, only those within the club truly know what the situation is, but I don't think Barclay is too far off the mark on this story, although I would say it is quite easy to put two and two together when looking at how many wide players we do have on the books.