One of the drawbacks of Saints success this season will be that in January the press will be having a field day and trying to link their players with every club with big money to spend.
Already Sunday's Mirror has got in on the act by claiming that Tottenham will be making a bid for Luke Shaw and you can bet your bottom dollar that Chelsea will be in the frame shortly after that followed by Liverpool, Man Utd & Man City, however the difference between now and a few years ago when the likes of Oxlade Chamberlain, Bale & Walcott were sold is that now we are back in the Premier league, not only are we able to offer top flight football, but with that comes the large income and therefore the ability to pay big money to those having financial carrots dangled under their noses.
Before the days of the Premier League clubs outside of the top division could hold on to their players at least for a year or two by the fact that a youngster could develop and then collect the financial rewards, the gap between wages then was not as large as it is now, but in today's game that is not the case, if a youngster stays at a lower league club there is no guarantee that he will either make the big time or he could suffer a career ending injury, put bluntly he has to take the big offer as soon as it comes to make sure he has financial security, supporters don't like to hear that, but its the truth and sadly a player is always going to put his own finances before loyalty to a club.
Shaw will be on the radar of all of the perceived top clubs, but Saints should be able to repel all boarders at least for the time being, but as Spurs found out with Gareth Bale, if a player wants to go then there is little that his club can do apart from hold him against his will which isn't good for what you will get out of the player in terms of performance nor what it will do for team morale, at the moment the players hold all the cards.
But Luke Shaw wont be the only Saints player that could be the subject of a bid, almost certainly Adam Lallana is now attracting interest as will be Jay Rodriguez after their inclusion in the England squad, not to mention the likes of Nathaniel Clyne who had just about his best game for the club attacking wise on Saturday, so much so that I believe if the England squad had been announced on Sunday the right back would be in it.
Indeed it wont be just Clyne who is being watched by bigger clubs, Dejan Lovren has been outstanding as has Morgan Schneiderlin and the form of Jamie Ward Prowse wont have gone completely unnoticed.
Hopefully though Saints will be able to hang on to the players at least for this season, but making sure that all of them are here for next will be harder, that is why I was so disappointed at Saints capitulation in the Capital One Cup, we need to be offering our players the European Stage, even if it is the Europa cup and that was the easiest way to get it.
But some players will perhaps be on their way in January, Ramirez is struggling to get on the bench at the moment let alone get much game time, I don't think its all his fault, he clearly isn't suited to the way we are playing at the moment, or more importantly who we have playing and with the emergence of Jamie Ward Prowse as a passer of the ball, its hard to see where he will fit in.
Selling him however wont be easy, at least not at anything near the price we paid, firstly we paid well over the top to entice him to St Mary's, yes he was a promising player, but £12 million was far too much, his true value was probably nearer the £7 million we paid for Jay Rodriguez, but the real stumbling block will be his wages, potential suitors wont be willing to pay his alleged £50-65k a week and the player himself wont be too keen on what they will be willing to actually offer and with 2 1/2 years left on his contract he will be in no hurry.
Perhaps the best that he as a player and indeed Saints as a club can hope for is a situation where a club will take him on loan, not only paying a proportion of his wages but also a loan fee, this will help Saints recoup some of the massive costs of signing Ramirez and not getting too much back for our money.
Perhaps one who will definitely leave though is Jack Cork, he was a vital cog in our midfield last season, second only to Morgan Schneiderlin in terms of voting for player of the year, but although Morgan got the plaudits, Cork did the hard work and in many respects was more vital to the team than the Frenchman.
The arrival of Wanyama has seen him strangely frozen out of the team, prior to his 6 minutes against Hull on Saturday, he had only got on the pitch in the Premier League on 3 occasions and each of them was in the 89th minute of the game, with Wanyama off form on Saturday and withdrawn, Cork was the obvious replacement, yet it was Steven Davis who came on, that must have told Cork that he is frozen out, that it will take a big change to see him get any real game time on the pitch, given that he could walk into around a dozen Premier League sides I fully expecrt him to want away in January and that will be a big shame, sometimes in football players fall out of favour with the manager for reasons no one can quite see, this seems to be one of those occasions, perhaps he is approaching a clause in his transfer that invokes a further payment to Chelsea or perhaps with Wanyama's dodgy start they just wanted to make a statement to both the player and supporters that Wanyama would be played no matter what, whatever the reason the Saints squad will not be improved by Cork going.
So January will spawn a lot of column inches for Saints that is for certain, hopefully at least when it comes to outgoing transfers the only ink being used will be wasted on newspapers rather than on a contract at another club.