With the silly season opening imminently the media is full of stories about who Saints are interested in and who they are not, the truth is most are just rumours spread around by agents but that doesn't stop the media merry go round.
If you take a tour of Saints related websites this morning of the two dozen or so stories posted up in the last 24 hours, around 3/4 of them are about Saints alleged interest in one player or another.
Headlines like "Southampton & Liverpool keeping tabs on 20 years old" Southampton weighing up move for Bristol City star" or Southampton leapfrog Liverpool in race to sign absolute beast" tempt the viewer and are soon taken up by those websites who seem to exist only to pass on rumours and make them seem real.
The truth is actually that very few of the original sources of these stories have any credibility, they are at best agents trying to elbow their clients into view in a packed market place and at worst lazy journalism to fill up column inches by someone who just puts two and two together and says if Southampton need a striker then Aleksandar Mitrovic MUST be on their radar given his situation.
Then their is the rumours about the so called latest big sensations, and this is where it is easy to come a cropper,
"Southampton make £20m bid for Standard Liege ace Moussa Djenepo " is perhaps the latest one of those.
Hitc report our interest in signing the "Forward" starting with With "no one in Southampton’s squad scoring more than seven Premier League goals this season, it is clear where the club need to strengthen"
They then go on to claim that Djenepo has 11 goals and 6 assists to his name, tat is correct but they are not all in the Jupiler League where he has scored only 7 exactly the same number as our leading scorer.
A closer look at his stats reveal that at 20 he has only played around 40 Jupiler League games for Standard Liege scoring 8 times. This season has been patchy, he has been a regular in the team but goals have been hard to come by, after 4 in the first 9 games of the season he would then score only once in the next 20 games, before netting a couple of goals in the final game of the normal Jupiler League season t the end of March.
Since then in the play off stages (dont ask me to explain) he scored only once in six games and was not included in the squad for the 7th game.
His lack of goals could be attributed to the fact that essentially he is a left winger rather than a striker, but HITC call him a forward and suggest he will be a solution to our lack of goals.
His current market value on transmarkt is given as £4.5 over four times his value of a year ago.
So to recap his agent is essentially trying to tout him around Europe at £20 million that for a player who essentially has one years first team experience behind him and that not in one of Europe's strongest League's.
Ironically HITC see his potential arrival as raising questions about Mo Elyounoussi's future at the club, they are right but the questions asked should be more about not making the same mistake twice.
A year ago Elyounoussi arrived as a far more experienced player and two decent seasons behind him at Basel with a goal per 3 game ratio, yet he has failed miserably in the Premier League.
I am sure that Saints will have looked at Djenepo, perhaps very closely, after all that is why they have an extensive scouting network as well as the famed black box, but whether that will equate to a bid is another thing.
There has been a tendency in the past couple of seasons to make the odd panic buy to placate the fans, Boufal, Carrillo and Elyounoussi spring to mind, but overall even over the past couple of year when Saints have stuck to the formula they have done what they do well, the message is they need to keep doing what brought them success in the first place not trying to outbid the opposition.
Perhaps Djenepo will sign for Saints perhaps he will be another Sadio Mane, or perhpaps he will go elsewhere and be a sensation and message boards will be full of yet another failure for Saints in trying to sign a player.
The reality is that in the football transfer market there are no guarantees, like football matches themselves you will also win a few and lose a few in the transfer market and things are not always in your control, stupid late bids from clubs with money to burn can always happen, we have been that club and paid the price.
So the stories this morning are just that nothing more than stories some will perhaps become truth, but the majority will not !