Kyle Walker-Peters has spoken to Sky Sports of his desire to stay at St Mary's past the end of his loan period and complete in the restarted season with Saints rather than return to Tottenham Hotspur.
Sky Sports have reported that Saints on loan defender from Spurs Kyle Walker-Peters is keen to stay and finish the season at St Mary's.
They also claim that Walker-Peters wants to extend the loan beyond the 30th June given that when restarted the season is likely now to last till the last week of July.
It is also said that Saints want to keep him and help him develop, in order to determine whether they would be interested in signing him on a permanent basis.
None of this is attributed directly to the player himself or any of the clubs so presumably it is coming from someone close to the player ie his agent.
Just a few weeks ago Walker-Peters was speaking directly when he said he wanted to stay at Tottenham and with three years left on his contract fight for his place, but now it seems that perhaps Spurs have told him he has no future with the club and they are prepared to let him go permanently in the summer.
Walker-Peters is something of an enigma, he is one of those players spoken of as having a great future ahead of him in the game,
But a look at his career so far shows it has barely got under way and at 23 he really should have played a lot more games, for Spurs in the Premier League he has started just 9 games plus another 3 as sub. Given that he made his debut in August 2017 that is not a big amount.
He has exactly the same statistics in the Cup competitions, which is puzzling, given Spurs runs in Europe, he really should have played a lot more games especially in Europe where players are rested at times and youngsters get their chance.
An example and good comparison would be Ryan Bertrand who joined Saints at just a little older, he had kicked around Chelsea's squad for a number of years, even playing in a Champions League final, he joined us having played around 50 games for the Blues, but he had not kicked his heels in the Academy side at Stamford Bridge, he had played 3 seasons out on loan stepping up a gear with each loan move.
In many respects it is a similar trajectory as Walker-Peters, but Bertrand got the grounding before leaving his parent club.
But his arrival at St Mary's was strange in that in the 5 games he could have been selected for he was picked just the once.
In that game against Burnley to be fair he didn't look too bad, it was said he was injured for the following game and he wasn't on the bench, but in the final two games before th suspension of the season he was an unused substitute with Ralph Hasenhuttl preferring James Ward Prowse or the out of favour or injured/ill, depending on which rumour you believe Yan Valery.
The situation is very much like Kevin Danso, he likewise arrived on loan with a big fanfare and after a game or two suddenly found himself shunted to one side, it seems with Ralph Hasenhuttl he quickly decides if your face fits or not.
So the Sky Sports story smacks of an agent knowing his player is in limbo, unwanted by either Spurs or Saints and the job for the agent is to now try and get his player in the shop window.
At the moment his reputation is still intact, or was until he joined Saints and was that of a promising player capped at all levels for England up to U21 and with a great future.
But unless he starts to play games for not just Spurs but anyone, he will start to be seen as one of those who just doesn't have the temperament to match their skill and the lower leagues are packed with players who can tell that story.
It will be interesting to see if KWP is going to join his current team mates back at Staplewood next week or whether Saints will just use this break as a convenient excuse to cut short the loan period.
With the number of right backs being linked with a move to St Mary's it seems unlikely KWP has any future here.