Cuco Martina could be the first casualty of the Claude Puel reign and could he be linking up with Ronald Koeman at Goodison Park.
The media are reporting this morning that Cuco Martina could be on his way out at St Mary's with Claude Puel looking for an attacking right sided defender to compliment Cedric Soares for the coming season.
Martina unexpectedly had a late season run in the side after Soares fell out of favour with Koeman in the final months of the season, but the truth was that although he did a job, he was too often caught out of position and going forward did not offer the accuracy of crossing that Soares did.
But his time at the club was always going to be short, he only signed a two year deal with a transfer fee of £1 million, he was brought in to add depth to a squad early season with the Ryan Bertrand injured, Virgil Van Dijk not yet signed and a Europa League campaign starting.
So the actual number of games he ended up playing was a surprise, indeed I did not expect him to be playing much after the turn of the year but Soares falling out of favour with Koeman meant he had an unexpected run in the side.
But now Claude Puel is looking for a little more quality in his squad and the rumour is tat Saints are putting it around that Martina is available, an obvious link would be Ronald Koeman at Everton, the Toffee's squad lacks depth and Koeman's first job is to beef up his squad and so far with only three weeks to go to the start of the season he has yet to spend much of the £100 million trnsfer kitty.
Graziano Pelle was expected to be his first signing but that has fallen through due to being hijacked by ironically a salary offer from China so high that the Italian striker could not refus , so his big deal so far is former Saints loanee Maarten Stekelenburg and he needs to beef up his squad fast.
So that could mean that Koeman will return and sign Martina for the second season running.
Whoever he goes to the Curacao international, who has represented his country on 24 occasions will not fetch a big fee, with one year left on his deal Saints will be lucky to get half of the million they paid, that is not an issue though, for the money we spent Martina did a job and will perhaps do a job at Everton.
Koeman's problem will be though that Everton fan's, having been promised big signings will not be too impressed by Martina's arrival, with Koeman now having been in situ for over 5 weeks the lack of signings is becoming an issue, although in the Dutch man's defence the transfer indow has only truly been open since 1st July and many of his target have been pre occupied at Euro 2016.
For Martina though it looks like his Saints career will be short and sweet, although in fairness he was always aware of the fact that he was only ever coming to St Mary's to help bolster the squad rather than as a starting line up player, in that respect last season turned out to be better than he could have hoped for.