Saints and for that matter West Ham United have been told by Juventus that they will need to find £19 million if either are to succeed in buying Simone Zaza.
Although Zaza has played a largely peripheral role at Juventus in the season just gone, he is highly rated in Italy and is in the preliminary 30 for the Italian squad for the upcoming Euros.
Given that Juventus paid £15 million euros for him only last summer and that his career is still in the ascendancy despite his lack of game time, unsurprisingly they want a little profit on their investment and that profit is around £6 million.
Saints do have one chip in their bargaining power and that is the fat that Juve want Graziano Pelle and he could be worth around £5 million to Saints as they try and eke out a deal.
Ronald Koeman has spoken of wanting to see the club show ambition and this is going to be a test of it, the club record transfer fee still stands at the £15 million Saints paid for Osvaldo three years ago, since then although we have paid several fees in the region of £12 million this has seemed to be a line that we don't wish to cross.
Bidding for Zaza will be a show of ambition, that we are ready and willing to take the next step forward, to sign players who are a level above the ones we have previously brought to the club.
This is no guarantee of success though, indeed we have been very successful in doing what we do, that is finding players who have plenty of potential but have not yet quite made that step to the top level and helping them make that step.
This has worked well in the past few seasons and can be seen as a definite strategy going forward, however sometimes you have to have an exception to the rule and do something different that might make the difference between finishing sixth or fifth or even fourth.
We have a proven strategy going forward, it has worked well these past few seasons that have seen us move up a place every year, but now we are at a crossroads, our strategy can only getus so far, we now need to take a step forward.
I do not think we should abandon what has proved to be a successful formula, this is the foundation of how we move forward, but we have to keep tweaking it with every step we take.