Whilst of course Saints would prefer Morgan Schneiderlin and Nathaniel Clyne to sign new deals and remain at St Mary's, the reality is that the club know that our strategy going forward is reliant on the fact that some players will leave.
Some football supporters are still stuck in the old way of doing things, that says that if a club sells its best players then it is a "selling club" and has no ambition etc. The reality could not be further from that way of thinking, progressive football clubs know that keeping a squad successful relies on being able to sell players on when a bid in excess of their value is received and reivesting that money wisely, perhaps on two players.
This is the way that many of the top clubs in Europe have operated over the past decade, of course there are those such as Manchester City or Chelsea that have seemingly bottomless pockets, but even they are to an extent adopting this strategy, the trick is to know when to sell and to replace well.
An excellent example of this was last summer when we sold Luke Shaw, Shaw was a player worth £30 million in a position worth £10 million, the economics or Soccernomics were plain, cash in and buy wisely and that we did meaning that even after buying Ryan Bertrand we had £20 million still left to strengthen the team.
Of course you cannot be successful with every incoming player, but if you apply the rules of Soccernomics then you will keep progressing.
That being the case Saints problem this summer is not the fact that Schneiderlin and Clyne want to go, but that the club's seemingly in the market for them are not serious, you have the feeling that having already sourced Clyne's replacement Saints would almost prefer he go then the current situation of limbo continue.
This can be evidenced by the fact that Saints have set several deadlines to either sign a new deal or ship out, the reason these deadlines have passed is that the only club in the market place for Clyne is Liverpool and to be blunt they are trying to cash cheques based on Brendan Rodgers ego and not reality, but for Saints this is a nightmare hence the stand off.
Schneiderlin is a similar case, although Saints are more in command here as he has two years left on his contract, the rumour is that there is a £24 million buy out clause in his contract, the club would prefer that United, Arsenal or even Spurs get down to reality instead of the phoney war of the media.
Saints these days are very focused on their strategy and they want to implement it rather than sit there with two players who may or might not be here, they are not afraid to say to them sign up or ship out.
In this respect they are almost looking forward to selling them, this forms part of the strategy, Saints having done their work want to see it come to fruition, unlike football supporters who see clubs letting players go as a negative, Saints will see it as a positive as long as they get in the replacement they are after.
So there will be those at Southampton Football Club who know exactly what a players worth is to the club, with Nathaniel Clyne like Shaw they will feel that they have a man in a £10 million pound position, if they get £15 million then that is good business given his replacement is already at the club, they will almost want that £15 million more than they would prefer Clyne to stay. They will feel they have a man in Cedric Soares who can do as good a job as Clyne and at a 3rd of the price, that being the case they want the other £10 million to strengthen the squad, perhaps losing Clyne will cost us 3 goals and 2 points, but strengthening the squad will gain us 4 goals at the other end and win us 3 points.
This is the basis that Saints strategy will work on when buying and selling players now.
So the fear factor is gone from Southampton Football Club, of course there will be rocky times and bad signings, but they will be outweighed by the good ones and if that is the case then the club will get that little bit stronger every season.
The only problem is that after our 7th place finish last season there are 6 clubs ahead of us who have more money and more resources than us, that being the case they can afford to get things wrong more, it will be hard to break into that top 6 on a regular basis so we should not base progress on our ability to do so or get into the Champions league, if that was the case Spurs and Liverpool would have given up over th past half dozen years.
We should base Saints progress on our ability to stay in the top 7 most seasons, to have a shot and perhaps achieve higher in some seasons and our ability to challenge for a cup or two both domestically & in Europe.
If we do that and we get our Soccernomics right then there are exciting times ahead.