Cedric Soares is set to be offered a new deal at St Mary's when it looked like he would be leaving this summer after what appears to have been a falling out with the previous manager.
Cedric Soares just seemed to have not only established himself in the Saints first team last season, but also to have adjusted to the Premier League and was putting in some consistent performances, when all of a sudden he seemed to be dropped for no apparent reason wit Cuco Martina taking his place.
The only reason I can think of is that there was some sort of falling out with former Saints manager Ronald Koeman, it was certainly nothing to do with Soares's performances on the pitch where he was starting to look like yet another great buy for Saints.
Then all of a sudden he was ostracised from the team, in the final ten weeks of the season he played only two games, one can only assume that there was some problem between player and manager, although now we will perhaps never find out what that problem was and to what degree.
The end result though was as the season came to a close it looked like Soares would be leaving Saints in the summer, the whispers from the football club seemed to be suggesting that.
But then in June everything in Cedric Soares world suddenly changed, firstly Ronald Koeman departed from Southampton and then after initially being on the bench for Portugal in the early games alongside fellow Saint Jose Fonte, both were suddenly in the starting line up and ended up with a winners medal in Euro 2016.
Now the future is different for Cedric, perhaps he might still leave, certainly he has many admirers on the continent, including Barcelona if rumours are to be believed, but the hierarchy at St Mary's always believed in him and with Koeman gone and a new manager in Claude Puel in place, it seems that Soares could stay.
Saints seem ken to ensure that he does and although he still has three years left on his deal they are being reported as already opening up contract talks to tie him down for longer.
That is good news for Saints supporters, Soares is a good ball playing right back with the ability to get forward and to hit in some decisive crosses as his opta stats showed.
He has the ability to truly become the player at Saints that back in February we all thought he was starting to look like, before all of a sudden he was persona non grata with Koeman.
It is good to see that Saints are not only looking to bring in new players, but are looking to tie down those members of the squad deemed crucial to moving forward, that means that wewill hopefully rarely see the issues that we have encountered over the past two summers and indeed this one, with two many players having had their contracts run down and needing to be sold to realise their value.
There was never going to be an immediate fix for that, but now two years on we have dealt wit that problem and have a quality squad of players who can see the potential of the club and what it is doing.