Arsenal seem to see Saints as an extension of their academy lately as they seem to want to just walk in at will and sign our youngsters.
Arsenal are being linked with Saints 16 yearold midfielder Callum Slattery and if some media reports are to be believed they will have competition from Bayern Munich.
But Slattery would do well to look at the other players that have left Saints at an early age for so called bigger clubs (and Spurs) and how their development has failed to perhaps match their promise.
Gareth Bale is perhaps the best known of Saints youth production line in recent years , but his career at Spurs did not take off for several years after leaving Saints and at one time Harry Redknapp was trying to offload him to Championship side Nottingham Forest.
Theo Walcott was a year ahead of Bale in leaving St Mary's and with that move came a lot of hype, what didnt come though was plenty of first team chances and almost a decade since leaving the South Coast, Walcott has still only started 131 Premier League matches for the Gunners plus another 71 as sub, barely half of the games he could have played in, OK he has had injury problems, but he is hardly considered a regular for either club or country and the question has to be asked whether moving to Arsenal at such a young age helped him or would he have been better getting more experience before he left.
Alex Oxlade Chamberlain is another case in a little over a year he started 27 games(9 as sub) in a little over a year between his debut and leaving the club, in his three years at the Emirates he has only started 40 Premier League games(37) again another who has suffered injury problems but the fact remains he has yet to get anywhere near fulfilling his potential and his 6 league goals for the club is sill short of the 9 he got for Saints, like Walcott he has shown glimpses of his class, but Arsene Wenger's policy of rotation is not beneficial to youth
The third player now at Arsenal, Calum Chambers has started 17 of Arsenal's Premier league games this season but he like his fellow ex Saints is far from being a regular and is in and out of the side.
So the message to Callum Slattery is clear, from a footballing point of view you would be far better at St Mary's, you will stand a far better chance of getting into the first team here and getting invaluable grounding that will stand you in good stead in the future, Premier league squads are littered with former golden boys who made early big money moves and have failed to live up to expectation, sometimes if you chase money you never catch it, chase success however and the money will come.
Money is the key word here, clubs like Arsenal are willing to pour multi millions into buying in players who develop early, they have very little interest in developing their own talent, they pay lip service to a youth set up however it produces little and they prefer to buy in youngsters when they have made an early impact, take a look at the squads of Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal, Man Utd they have few players anymore who have genuinely come right through the ranks since schoolboy.