Saints have 14 players on International duty this week and that only goes to highlight the difference between today's squad and the one that finished our first season back in the Premier League four years ago.
Staplewood will be quiet this week as 14 players have joined up with their international squads.
Ryan Bertrand, Fraser Forster, Nathan Redmond and James Ward-Prowse are in the England squad for their friendly in Germany followed by a World Cup qualifier against Lithuania.
Maya Yoshida, Dušan Tadić, Shane Long, Cédric and Steven Davis all have crucial World Cup qualifying fixtures with their own countries and Cuco Martina, Sofiane Boufal and Richard Bakary have friendly fixtures with their own countries.
Add to that Jack Stephens and Sam Mcqueen with the England U21's and that makes 14 players away on International duty.
But it could have been even more, Manolo Gabbiadini had to pull out of the Italy squad after tweaking his groin at Spurs on Sunday, Virgil Van Dijk would surely have been in the Dutch squad if he had not been injured and Pierre Hojbjerg was omitted from the Danish squad due not only to his lack of game time of late but the Danish coach's decision to only name 5 midfielders but 9 defenders for their game in Romania.
That would have meant with everyone fit Saints could have had as many as 17 of their squad on International duty.
Compare that with the squad from our innaugral season back in the Premier League four years ago, that season saw very few of our players away on International duty.
Artur Boruc was in the Poland squad, Steven Davis Northern Ireland and Yoshida the Japanese one, but after that it was sporadic, Gaston Ramirez could still get in the Uruguayan team, but with the likes of Adam Lallana etc yet to win full caps it was pretty much a full squad that trained at Staplewood in International breaks back then the odd U21 call up aside.
This shows just how much progress Saints have made in the past few years, those who went into meltdown earlier in the season suggesting that the squad was our worst ever were far off the mark as is exemplified by the number of International call ups this week.
It shows that we now have solid foundations to build on going forward and that we as supporters just need to recognise that and not go into panic mode everytime the media stir things up.