Whatever the official opening of the transfer window, the reality is that thing's don't start to happen until July 1st and that for those that don't have a calendar is at the end of this week.
Supporters of all Premier League football clubs have been taking to Social Media since the end of the season and moaning that their club is not making any signings of note and it is fair to say Saints supporters have been as active as most in this department.
But experience should tell them, that up till the end of June it is very much a phoney transfer window, yes deals do get done, but little of any real significance.
Indeed with the final week of June now underway out of the 22 Premier league clubs for the coming season, there have only been 25 actual deals done this summer, although if you include one loan signing and Naby Keita whose transfer to Liverpool was done long ago but it was agreed he wouldn't join them till now it could be said to be 27.
Amazingly if your name starts with a W you seem to be quite active, West Ham, Watford and Wolves accounting for 10 of those transfers, with the only other team to make any real investment being Huddersfield with 4 signed so far, that means out of those 25 deals so far, 14 have been done by 4 clubs, meaning the other 16 clubs have signed only 11 players.
But a look at those transfers shows that most have been fairly insignificant, 7 have been free transfers, and a further 8 fairly insignificant amounts changing hands, with only 10 players costing over £10 million.
So why is this ? The answer is simple money, all player contracts run till July 1st, if you are still at a club on that date and you haven't asked for a transfer then you usually have a loyalty bonus built in to the deal.
This is now well exploited, although deals are negotiated and it is common knowledge a player is going to leave a club, he won't do so before he has got his July 1st loyalty bonus which is usually not an insignificant amount and designed to compensate players who remain loyal to their club and don't keep moving to rack up loads of signing on fee's.
Many football supporters don't realise that a club like Saints will spent multi millions just rewarding the loyalty of their current squad every summer.
Of course some deals are still done, but they are mainly ones where the player who is coming is getting a significant pay rise at his new club and the loss of what would have been a small loyalty bonus is more than compensated by his new income.
Likewise free transfers clubs have to pay those out of contract to the end of it, indeed if they are still without a club on July 1st they get another month's pay as well, most free transfers done before July 1st are not actually full ratified deals, players who are in the last six months of a contract are free to sign pre contract agreements from January onwards and that is what is usually done.
So far only 5 deals have been done with transfer fees over £20 million and 3 of them it was only slightly over, the only truly big deals done so far being Liverpool's signing of Fabhino from Monaco at £44 million and Manchester United's £55 million for Fred.
But that will all change at the end of this week, once the player has popped down to the ATM to check his loyalty bonus is in he will then suddenly start to be interested in what other clubs are about to offer, or at least his agent will.
So football fans who have spent the last six weeks whinging that their club's have not signed any players would do well to realise how the transfer market works and that up until July it is very much the Phoney Transfer market with a lot of bluster but little actually getting done.
But the real action is now about to start !