Saints are starting the Will Still era in a state of uncertainty, they know that several of their assets will be coveted by others, but they are not going to lie down and sell players under the market value.
The Saints squad falls into several categories, firstly the one that the players who are in high demand, that would include Mateus Fernandes, Arron Russell, Tyler Dibling, these are probably the only ones who will potentially fetch a high transfer fee, at least £25 million for both Ramsdale & Fernandes & slightly higher for Dibling.
I would expect the first two to depart with no shortage of potential suitors, however Dibling may prove more problematic, in January his stock was high, but his lack of game time and performance level dropped in the second half of the season, so Saints may struggle to get top dollar for him.
This category should fetch somewhere between £75-100 million in total.
The second category is those who will probably be courted by Premier League clubs or other top flight clubs abroad, but may be a little stuck because firstly clubs aren't willing to match Southampton's valuations and secondly their own wages at St Mary's are unlikely to be met, here we find Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Jan Bednarek, Kamaldeen Sulemana, Armel Bella-Kotchap & Tall Paul Onuachu
.
In the case of THB, we will be looking to at least recoup the £20 million we paid, and with the rest if we can scrape £10 million each we will be doing well, so in this category we could bring in around £40 million, a lot less than what we paid, but getting something back.
Then there is the section that contains the unknowns in terms of their future at St Mary's, players whose future is uncertain, ie contracts in final year, have been out of favour or have been out on loan, here we find Sam Edozie, Juan Larios, Joe Aribo, Shea Charles, Adam Armstrong, Ben Brereton-Diaz, Yuri Sugawara, Charlie Taylor, Ryan Fraser & Cameron Archer.
Now I would hope some would stay, Adam Armstrong & Shea Charles for two, but I would expect around half to go and the other half to find they have to take a pay cut or stick it out for more money.
This category could see some leeway where Saints cut their losses to get players off the books, but again, if all were to go, I would think that we could get as much as £60 million if their current market values are reached.
I would not think that all will leave, but I would expect half to leave, i would not think that we would keep both Cameron Archer & Adam Armstrong for instance, but I would be surprised if either could achieve the wages they receive here at another club.
So if we sold all these players we could get anywhere between £130-200 million, although I would not expect this to happen as it would leave the squad fairly barren.
But I would expect Saints to be tough in negotiations as we were two years ago when we were relegated, certainly we need to be on the players we would like to keep and Johannes Spors has shown in his first weeks at the club that he is a man with a plan.
We will lose some key players that is for sure, we would want to lose some of them, but key here are the players that I would expect to stay and who may not be Premier League players, but are proven quality in the Championship, the core of the squad will be Gavin Bazunu, Ryan Manning, Welington, Nathan Wood, Ronnie Edwards, Flynn Downes, Will Smallbone, James Bree, Ross Stewart & then youngsters such as Jay Robinson and Joachim Sanda who have looked good in not only the U21 side but in a couple of Premier League appearances.
That is the basis of a squad that can compete for promotion and when we add half a dozen or so players from the three sections above, we will have around 18 players that are proven in the Championship, that is a good foundation.
Then it will be a case of filling the key positions, partly using transfer money we have received in, but also by utilising the loan system as we did to good use in 2023/24 season.
Of course some of you will disagree with me in some areas or some players, but that is football it is all about opinion's.
The good thing though is that we can look forward to next season with hope, instead of writing countless articles about how poor we have been, we can take actual fact, that many of the players who will stay formed the basis of our last promotion side and that we can improve that side with the likes of Ronnie Edwards.
I may not be proved right, but for the first time in nearly a year, there is something to look forward to other than constant possession football and errors costing us dearly. WE have a manager who looks like he can be the real deal, a Director of football who seems to have his finger on the pulse, we have direction.
I am not making excuses for last season, it is now done and dusted, it can't be changed and we now have to move forward, but we should not judge players in the context of the Premier League, we did not have enough proven Premier League quality to give those that may have been able to step up a chance of doing so.
But we do have a lot of proven Championship quality and that is what is needed now, a team to get us out of the division and then we can build on that next summer.