Its only a whisper and hard to find at the moment, but some media outlets are reporting stories of unrest behind the scenes at St Mary's and Claude Puel's position far from safe.
soccer-rumours.com are reporting that "insiders" at St Mary's are saying that Claude Puel is in danger of being sacked by the club.
Their source is quoted
'Last week, he (Puel) and Dusan Tadic got into a huge row over the team's negative tactics',
'Yesterday, the board had to intervene and prevent him from placing Tadic on the transfer list.' 'Things are crazy at the moment, as it looks as though the club is getting ready to end its relationship with Claude Puel.'
This would be no surprise, after all Tadic had been derogatory about Puel in an interview a few weeks back when he was not happy about the manager substituting him during games.
Add to that the issues with Shane Long being substituted shortly after coming on recently in what was described as a mix up and the claims from soccer-rumours that the French manager has lost the dressing room seem to have some substance.
Certainly in recent weeks Puel's team selections, substitutions and tactics have been found wanting and although his position with the supporters had improved after getting through to the League Cup Final, it is heading in the wrong direction again in recent weeks.
The board have been patient with Puel and on the surface he would seem to be having a decent season, a cup final and still 9th in the league, however the board will know that with the quality in the squad it should have been better, we have underperformed this season and have not manged to get any consistency and that has been down to the manager.
Saturday's game against Hull seems to have rung a few alarm bells around St Mary's, many supporters have taken to social media claiming they would not be renewing their season tickets with Puel in charge and although this has been something that has surfaced in virtually all of the past three summers, this might be the straw that breaks the camels back.
Saints home form has been terrible this season and games like the Hull fixture have been the norm and the supporters have not been happy with games where tactically Saints have been inept and despite on paper having plenty of strikers who can score goals, there was too much mixing and matching and keeping faith with some whilst dropping others who were scoring goals.
It should be noted though that Puel has not been completely to blame, the failure of Les Reed and his team to bring in a central defender in the January transfer window has cost the board dearly and has not helped the manager as suddenly Saints went from having one of the best defences in the Premier League to having the worst after the departure of Fonte and the injury to Van Dijk.
Perhaps Ralph Krueger and his men took their eye off the ball of late being distracted by the take over discussions, these look set to be concluded one way or the other before the season ends and an influx of cash as well as new owners could see them unhappy with the job that Puel has done.
At the moment these are only whispers, but they will get louder if Saints slip out of the top ten and season ticket sales do not pick up.