All the dates you need to put in your diary for the summer including the new earlier transfer window deadline.
This summer is going to be busy for Saints and with the transfer window now officially opened at 00.01 hrs on May 17th there could be a quick burst before the World Cup starts in earnest on Thursday June 14th.
Saints will hopefully not putting too much stock on the World Cup, history is riddled with players who have been bought at over inflated prices due to a fine World Cup and the buying club has then found that their new signing is not quite what he is cracked up to be.
James Rodriguez still of Real Madrid is a good example, after a great World Cup in 2014 he was signed with great fanfare by Real Madrid for 63 million euros, but he has never established himself as a starter at Real Madrid and last season was shipped off on loan at his own request to Bayern Munich where he has recaptured some of his former glory but he will not go to this year's World Cup with the same reputation thathe ended the last one with.
The tournament means that it will be hard to sign players for approximately a month with the Final not due to be held till July 15th.
That means that there will be only a three week window before the start of the Premier League season and following an agreement between the clubs, the Premier League window will close on the Thursday before the start of the new season at probably 5pm on August 9th.
Absurdly Premier League teams can still sell players abroad once the domestic window is closed as windows in other countries remains at the end of August putting those clubs competing in Europe at a distinct disadvantage.
This is only a Premier League ruling and Championship clubs will be able to continue to deal in the transfer market both incoming and outgoing deals till the official deadline at the end of August.
So this transfer window is likely to have all the frenzy for Premier clubs at least of a January window, perhaps worse, it will be very difficult for clubs to sign players who are at the World Cup much after the end of next week, then the International squads will start to convene and even Countries who do not qualify from the group stages will not be releasing their players from duty till the final group games being played 25th-28th June.
Losing quarter finalists will be on the plane 30th June-3rd July, losing semi finalists 10-11th July and then the final on 15th.
No Country is likely to let their players leave a training camp and be distracted by transfers from the end of May till at least the end of June, that will leave an effective transfer window of barely 5 weeks.