Sources in Brazil are saying that Southampton Football Club are in talks with the strikers agents.

Leandro Damiao could be on his way to an unamed Premier League club according to his agent who is indicating he is in talks with said club who Brazilian sources are claiming is Saints.

The players current club Internacional however are disputing this saying that they have not fielded any offers from any club and that they would first need to be in agreement before the player or his agent could open discussions., Indeed they told Brazilian Radio station Radio Guaiba

"There is no offer for Leandro Damiao,"

"We understand the following as an offer: when an agent or club make an official enquiry and expresses interest in the player."

They also stated that they would not entertain offers of less than 25 million euros for the player (approx £22 million in English money)

Spurs had a bid of £17 million turned down in the January transfer window and they may yet come back to the table, certainly the players agent is trying to stir up interest by saying he is in talks with a club, so whether this will be a case of Saints landing a real coup or whether this is could be another wild goose chase, or indeed whether we are actually interested at all will soone become apparent.

If we are interested then it could spell the beginning of the end for Rickie Lambert, Saints are likely to stick with a loan striker next season and to be blunt you dont sign a player at this level of fee either as second choice or one for the future.    

Photo: Action Images

REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 11:18 - Jul 4 If Saints got Damiao then I reckon he'd play with Lambert rather than instead of. Those two could be an excellent partnership. Lambert is great at linking the play, crossing the ball and playing other players in, so Lambert could play a little deeper with Damiao playing off the shoulder of the last defender. Damiao would be an amazing signing. If we got him then Cortese and Poche would need to be lauded for thier ambition. But I'm not convinced we'll get him. He could easily walk into a Champions League club like Arsenal or Man City, or his long time admirers Spurs. Saints might be punching well above their weight. In some ways though, its lucky for us that he got injured before the Confed's cup. He would've played instead of Fred and Fred turned out to be a hero. If Damiao had played and scored as prolifically as he did in the Olympics last year then the big clubs would've taken more notice and snapped him up. There is always the chance that Spurs will finally stump up the cash and they'll be able to match our wages so he'd probably go there. Its unlikely we'll get him but fair play to Saints for trying!!

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SaintNick added 11:29 - Jul 4 Im not sure why you think Saints would scrap their formation to fit in a player, Pochetinnos a strictly 1 man up front manager and a pressing formation, the only way he could incorporate them both is if one was dropped back into the third central midfield role, which of course would mean no place for Ramirez, also Lambert isn't fit enough to play the high tempo work rate game in midfield

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mark99 added 11:39 - Jul 4 He looks very tasty on all of the U-Tube postings but do we really want to spend the rest of our widely reported 30 Million transfer kitty on one player? PS 25 Million Euros in English money is just over £21.5 Million Nick.
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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 12:05 - Jul 4 It can be pretty fluid the 4-2-3-1 formation. Last season under Poche J-Rod was given licence to move in from the right flank and play centrally while Cylne bombed forward like a right winger. Maybe Lambert could do that role with Damiao playing up top. Lambert constantly dropped deep at times last season and looked very useful making the play so maybe he could play in that advanced midfield role at home, with Ramirez out wide. I'm sure Poche could fit them both in. If we signed Damiao I don't think it would be the end of Lambert but maybe in some tough away games Damiao would be prefered as the lone striker with Lambert coming on off the bench. Similar to last season.

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SaintNick added 12:14 - Jul 4 If they were going to play with that more fluid role, I think Lambert would find it hard to get a place in front of our existing midfielders
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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 13:19 - Jul 4 Yeah, Lambert would only last an hour or so in 'the hole' but would probably manage the same amount of runnning as Ramirez! I can't see us signing Leandro anyway so its a bit of a non-issue.
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Bulgarian added 14:48 - Jul 4 As usual, I will try to interpret these rumors from a wider angle: at this point it is irrelevant to speculate whether those big names linked with us are true. The most important thing is that the Club is being involved in the media hype of the "upper level" transfer market, which can mean only one thing: a serious signal of ambition. No matter the actual instant results, this tendency indicates the right PR if our aim is to be international recognition. Good things ahead of us, at least in PR terms, which is very important for our development. PS I won't have anything against a rumour linking Christiano R with us: the real football war nowadays demands wars of words. Cortese is doing some proper things here.

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blue_solent added 14:52 - Jul 4 "A serious signal of ambition" - like when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland. Look what happened to him!
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Bulgarian added 15:05 - Jul 4 To Blue_solent: We haven't reoccupied anything yet. If we want to go upwards we need to be involved in all elements of modern media presence. It's not a question of liking, it's a PR rule that is to be followed or rejected. Sadly, we are not in a position to implement other innovative PR policies, so we must compete at that level with the means we possess. Saints are no longer the provincial Hampshire club, so I think that type of behaviour is inevitable. Hopefully, we're no Cardiff, but we could do with some extra PR tricks.

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Jesus_02 added 16:01 - Jul 4 I agree that the arrival of a new forward could mean us using Ricky more sparingly although I don’t think Poch is that narrow minded when it comes to “one up front”. I can’t see us playing 4-4-2 that often but J-Rod did play at the same time as RL and RL was never really a “target man” anyway. The introduction of a Quality forward would really just give us a lot more flex ability depending on opposition. For instance our 4-2-3-1 formation was great against side coming to get a result against us, but arguably we didn’t have enough quality to break down stubborn defences.

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Jesus_02 added 16:12 - Jul 4 Against defensive team …………………Boruc……………….. Clyne….. Yoshida…. Lovren …Shaw ……………….Schinderlin…………… …..Ramerez…Wayama…..Lallana…. ………<<<<<<<<<<<<Lambert........ ……………Damiao……………….. Against attacking Team …………………Boruc……………….. Clyne….. Yoshida…. Lovren …Shaw ………… Wayama ….Schinderlin…… …..J-Rod……Cork/Davis…..Lallana…. …………………Damiao………………..

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thegeneral added 19:33 - Jul 4 Who knows what will happen in the end but its good to be linked with so many exciting players. A top ten finish this season will help to bring in higher quality next year as i think at the moment potential signings can't envisage the grand plan and are not willing to buy into it so i think we are far better signing another one or two decent players and relying on a squad that really didn't do badly at all last year in a very tight table.

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Snowy added 06:18 - Jul 5 Zero chance this happens. How much would a $24m player expect to earn each week? more than saints can afford I'd imagine
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saintmark1976 added 07:52 - Jul 5 On a different but connected note are their no home grown players around who could fit the bill? Surely there must be some players in the UK who would be worth a gamble bearing in mind that the fee for Lambert was only £1 million against a suggested fee of over £21 million in this case. Yes, I know we bought him when we were outside the Premiership but he has gone on and proved that he can play at the highest level. Is it now the case that foreign players are the only source of talent and are they really that much better or is it just a case of media and agent hype?

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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 09:49 - Jul 5 Saintmark: Damiao is Brazil's 1st choice number 9 striker, and there are no English classic number 9's as good as him. The closest England have to him is probably Daniel Sturridge (when he plays a striker) but Damiao is a better all round striker and goalscorer. England have a serious lack of quality strikers and what's worse is there don't seem to be any coming through at under 21 level. Wickham and Sordell were poor in Euro '13. So Saints are right to go for him as its impossible to get a striker as good that's English. He would be a massive, massive coup. I can't see that we'll pull it off but its a great sign of ambition from the club. We must've been assigned a transfer kitty of about £50m to spend this summer.

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