In the second part of the series we take a look at the theory that our transfer dealings and a lack of investment in the squad over the past two seasons has been the root cause of last season.
There is a lot of shouting on social media about Saints being a selling club and how this cannot be sustained, I said in the last piece that put bluntly Saints had no choice but to do this, they can't afford to match the big six pound for pound and as the three relegated clubs showed, if you build solid squads and keep them intact eventually you slide down the table.
So Saints strategy of buying and selling is a good one, of course it is dependent on being successful in our dealings in the transfer market, but we have no real other choice we have to succeed in it or join the rest.
But has this been the root cause of our problems, certainly for the two years under Ronald Koeman it wasn't an issue, but the fact remains that not every signing can be another Mane or Van Dijk, we have to use the market to our advantage and that includes loan signings and we have to accept that the real problem that we can't control it as much as we would like.
Ideally we would keep players for a 2-3 year period and then move them on, but the Virgil Van Dijk situation should have shown us all that when we have a quality player on our hands and when he is in demand actually contracts mean nothing, some when told they have to stay have knuckled down given us another season and then departed with their reputations intact, others like Van Dijk have refused to accept it and have caused problems in the squad because of it.
So it is a fine line and we have to walk it, but overall I don't think the strategy in itself has caused the problems, if you look at our arrivals since Koeman most have contributed over the past two years.
In 2016/17 we lost Mane, Pelle, Wanyama, Fonte, Juanmi and brought in £58 million, coming through the door were Hojbjerg, McCarthy, Boufal, Gabbiadini, Redmond, Pied and Cacerres, £57 million we spent and brought in £58 million there could be no accusation of failing to reinvest the income from transfers there, indeed it would have cost us more by the time agents fees and signing on fees were taken into account.
In essence given that Pelle's replacement Charlie Austin had been signed in January and Wanyama's Oriol Romeu was already at the club on paper at least the squad looked stronger.
Our issues that season were beyond our control, the petulance and disruption caused by Fonte and indeed our failure to replace him when he left and also the injuries to both Charlie Austin and Van Dijk.
But through all that we finished 8th and got to our first cup final in 14 years and only our second in 38, statistically speaking around our 5th or 6th best season ever, I will go into the reasons deeper one of the next pieces, but it wasn't about a failure to reinvest money or bring in substandard players, in general most signed in this season have contributed, some like Redmond may be whipping boys but he has scored vital goals.
In 2017/18 we looked to keep our squad intact and also invest, in the summer we spent £40 million and had only raked in £12 million for the sale of Jay Rodriguez, a deal that looked good money, then came Virgil Van Dijk.
The club held firm and refused to let him go to Liverpool they did everything in their power to prevent it, they wanted another season out of Van Dijk and hoped that with him and Hoedt forming a solid partnership that would provide the springboard for the club to build on the past four seasons.
All four players brought in played a part in the season, but for varying reasons it was not one of consistency, even Guido Carrillo who is much maligned put in several good displays at West Brom and Burnley creating goals that ultimately kept us up, his problem was he wasn't scoring goals, but then again nor was anyone else, if you judge him against his team mates, then he perhaps has a future here.
However all it really did was show the supporters that when a player has been tapped up it is difficult to hold on to him, that didn't make us a selling club it made us the victims, eventually Van Dijk had to be removed from the squad and spend the last few weeks of December training on his own till the transfer window opened.
As I said the Saints way of identifying players and selling them on is a good one, the problem apart from the odd bad signing and to be fair there haven't been that many whom we have paid big money for, is that we cannot always sell them when it suits us.
2017/18 showed a transfer deficit of around £29 million in terms of what we spent against took in, but that was solely due to the inflated price we got for Virgil Van Dijk and our failure to spend it in January, hopefully most of that deficit is now available in this transfer window.
So over the past two seasons I don't think we have fared badly in the transfer window, Bednarek, Hojbjerg and McCarthy, three players who back in the Autumn were being held up as Les Reed wasting money on poor signings are now held up as the shining lights of the season, overall I think we had a decent squad it was just poorly managed but more of that in another article.
So I do not think that the transfer dealings of the club can be blamed for our woes this season, yes we have made mistakes, the biggest being in not replacing Fonte in January 2017 and when we did last summer not replacing Van Dijk as well or in January when he eventually left.
I personally think that this cost us any chance of winning the League cup last season and ultimately Claude Puel his job and has been the root cause of all our problems this season.
Those that say we haven't reinvested the transfer money back into the squad were wrong up until the sale of van Dijk and to be blunt that was a lot more money in that we expected and although the club itself would admit they wish they had just sold him, a point had to be made and ultimately standing our ground made us another£15 million.
Supporters have to accept that Saints are not a selling club, they are a pragmatic one, they have a planned structure to keep moving forward, that will mean developing and selling players, some say we can't keep doing it, I would say why can't we ? I would also say we have to do it because we have to, otherwise we just drift into relegation.
This season has hopefully been a big wake up call for the club and they won't make the same mistakes again, our transfer structure is part of the solution not part of the problem, but we can't get it right all the time, we have to learn to accept that.
This may lead to some accusing me of being a party political broadcast for the club, I'm not, I just try to look at where we have made the mistakes, as the saying goes one bad apple doesn't spoil the whole barrel, not everything can be perfect.
So in essence the transfer policy and structure is sound, the issue has been our failure to sign a replacement central defender, not once but twice , if we had done so I think both seasons would have turned out differently, so scrapping the whole strategy is not the answer, internally the club have to look at themselves and ask why they failed in this area.