There has been plenty of media reports about Kyle Walker Peters and moves to West Ham or Tottenham Hotspur, but little has been seen of him in Southampton's pre season, so what is happening with one of our most important players.
Almost as soon as the dust had died down on our victory at Wembley, the speculation started that Kyle Walker Peters would be joining either West Ham United or Tottenham Hotspur during the summer transfer window.
With one year left on his contract, Saints have a dilemma, do they cash in on him now or do they risk losing him next summer for nothing, as happened with Che Adams this year.
With a value of around £20 million, that is a substantial amount to lose out on and a month or so ago it seemed that Saints were resigned to losing KWP, signing Japanese right back Yuri Saguwara.
But it seems that no one is willing to match the £20 million starting price, in truth a snip for a player who Saints signed from Spurs in 2020 for around £13 million, then he was player who at 23 had barely played a game for Spurs and now he is a player who has been capped by England and has 115 Premier League games to his name plus last season's Championship campaign.
Yet that doesn't seem to have pushed up his value by much more than £7 million, so I would suggest that Southampton are not asking an overinflated price for the player.
Spurs interest ended almost before the transfer window opened, but all reports in July were saying that KWP was on the verge of joining West Ham, but in the past fortnight the Hammers appeared to have cooled their interest.
They have seemingly moved on from KWP and the latest to be linked is Aaron Wan-Bissaka who at a similar age and appearances as KWP and a similar market value, suggests that something has gone wrong with the deal between Saints and West Ham. As I type reports have come through that the Wan-Bissaka deal is hitting a hitch due to the players demands that Manchester United pay off his contract.
But the question on all Southampton supporters lips is just where is Kyle Walker Peters, the only statement made by Saints boss Russell Martin is very ambiguous.
Speaking live on Sky Sports, Martin had discussed the future of the player and suggested that there was a lot of interest in him this summer...
"We have a lot of interest in him as we did last summer, and then Kyle ended up staying, maybe to the surprise of everyone, myself included. He was amazing for us last season, he did incredibly well, he is a superbly talented person."
But no mention as to why Walker-Peters has not appeared in any of the five pre season friendlies played by the club so far, nor why he doesn't seem to have gone to the club's training camp in Spain.
In simple terms the club or player are saying little about the situation, there has been no mention of any injury and Russell Martin has updated the media on other members of his squad on the injury list Adam Lallana & Ross Stewart for example, but nothing on KWP.
So if he isn't injured why has he not featured in any of the pre season games ? Flynn Downes travelled with West Ham to their training camp only days before he signed for us and Matt O'Riley seemingly our number one target played for Celtic at the weekend.
So why is KWP not involved with our pre season, is their some issue behind the scenes that neither party is saying anything about.
With a little over 3 weeks left in the transfer window, the bigger question will be what will happen if West Ham or for that matter another club do not make a move for the player.
That seemed to be the case last season, when most assumed that KWP would leave the club after the relegation to the Championship, he ended up staying, but back then despite his future being up in the air, he played a full part in pre season and started the games in the weeks before the window shut.
So why is this not the case this year ?
It would have been simple to put to bed speculation if it was something innocuous, so the silence suggests something a lot more problematic, that does not necessarily mean that there is an issue between KWP & Southampton, it could be other issues, perhaps he has picked up an injury ? perhaps he failed his medical at West Ham ? perhaps they were not willing to meet what is a very fair price for the player, hence their pulling out of the deal.
There is something going on in the background that is not right and the silence only adds to the speculation.
If KWP does have to stay has he done any pre season ? could he step straight back into the squad ?
All this will become apparent in the next few weeks.