Saints hopes of Virgil Van Dijk returning to the first team squad were boosted by last nights results in World Cup Qualifying Group A.
This week is a pivotal one in the Virgil Van Dijk saga, the Dutch defender is expected to return to first team training and put himself in contention for a recall to the team in the coming weeks.
The big question though is whether the player will do so albeit a bit reluctantly or whether he will continue to claim that he is not in the right frame of mind to play for the club.
However Saints hopes that he will return to action have been boosted by the results in Grouo A of the World Cup qualifying groups last night.
On Thursday this did not look to be the case after the French routed the Netherlands in Paris, meaning that it looked likely that Dick Advocaat's side could have been effectively out of the tournament on Sunday evening if they had lost to Bulgaria and the French had beaten Luxembourg, certainly it would have left them with only a chance of second spot to aim for and a slim chance at that with both Sweden and Bulgaria still having to play Luxembourg.
However with France only managing a home draw against Luxembourg and the Dutch beating Bulgaria it is now in their own hands going into the final round of games at the start of October.
If they can win their last two games the last of which is against Sweden then the Dutch could get what has looked like an unlikely reprieve at the last hour.
I am assuming here that the French do get the points needed to finish first.
It is going to be tight though, Holland have to go to Belarus and win and more to the point win well, they have to try and beat the score that Sweden manage against Luxembourg at home.
At the moment Sweden are six goals better off than Holland, so assuming that both beat their opponents in their penultimate game it is all lines up for the last game and will only be a question of if the Dutch can again win and then by how many they need to do so by.
If they manage to overhaul Sweden in second place then they will go into the play off round, that is assuming they are in the top 8 out of 9 runners up in the European group stages and that in itself is not as simple as it sounds.
This is where the Dutch revival can aid Saints chances of assimilating Virgil Van Dijk back into the team, they need Van Dijk in their side for these two games, they need to put out their best side if they are to stand any chance of getting what only yesterday morning looked an unlikely reprieve and if they manage this they then have those two do or die play off games as well at the start of November.
If they had been eliminated then perhaps Virgil Van Dijk would have had little incentive of returning to the fold at St Mary's, he might have decided that going through the motions for the next four months would have pushed Saints into selling him in January.
If we didn't then so what, with no World Cup next summer he had nothing to lose but a season out of the game.
But the balance of power has swung in Saints favour, the player knows that we are not going to be pushed around, but we have the bargaining tool now , at least for the next month and possibly beyond.
Surely Van Dijk will answer his country in their time of need and knuckle down and play the games in the Premier he needs to get under his belt to be ready for this brace of games in four weeks and if they get trough then he needs to keep playing and playing well, this can only help Saints in the short term.
But if the Dutch can get through to a play off then they have a good chance of winning it and if they do then suddenly Van Dijk has a big target to aim for, his first and perhaps only chance to play ina World Cup Finals tournament.
But the downsidefor him is that if the Dutch qualify then Saints have all the cards if he wants to play in that tournament, they will be under no pressure to sell him in January, but he will not be able to play in Russia unless he is playing week in week out and where he is playing will be firmly in Saints hands.
Although January transfer windows put up transfer fees so do World Cups and Saints will be quite rightly preferring to keep him till the summer.
In the next few days we will find out whether Virgil Van Dijk cares about football or he cares about money more, certainly I'm sure that every Dutch supporter is holding their breaths to find out what happens next.
Hopefully the player will see sense, the situation seems to have run out of his control this summer, he has been badly advised by his agent who seems to only care about getting him the biggest pay packet and not club, although Van Dijk is a grown man and should be capable of making his own decisions, he seems to have been carried along on his agents greed rather than what is best for his own career.
If he now chooses to continue the path he is taking his career could be affected going forward, as good as he is, defenders are not as sought after as attacking players and he is no Neymar or Coutinho, two players also attracting controversy, clubs do not like to sign trouble makers, if he still refuses to play even with his International future at stake then there will be serious questions asked about his character.
So we all wait with baited breath to see those first pictures of him training with Saints first team squad again, there could still be a happy ending to this situation for all concerned, but it could also see the messiest transfer story ever.