According to the latest rumours in the press Manchester United are set to offer Saints players in exchange for Nathaniel Clyne.
Nathaniel Clyne is generating almost as much transfer gossip as Luke Shaw did a year ago and Manchester United are reportably ready to trade players as well as cash in order to give themselves an advantage over their rivals in the bid to persuade Saints to part with the right back.
Saints apparently value Clyne at £20 million although that could go up if as many clubs are after the ex Palace man as are rumoured in the media.
Supposedly United are ready to dangle Javier Hernandez as a carrot to persuade Saints to do business with them in the summer, Hernadez has been on loan at Real Madrid all season although is season in Spain has not been as successful as he would have hoped and it looks likely that Real will not take up the option to buy him when the spell ends next month and that he will return to Old Trafford.
Saints were of course rumoured to have been interested last summer but given the choice of Real Madrid or a club who were supposedly in meltdown it probably wasn't a difficult choice for the Mexican.
However he doesnt seem to have a future with the Old Trafford club and they will try to offload him again for season 2015/16 for a permanent move involving a fee, but with Hernandez being in the last year of his contract next season, how much that fee is likely to be is negligible and when you add to the fact that the wages the player is on now are likely to be wellin excess of anything he would get elsewhere its likely he will not be in a hurry to move on a permanent deal.
Therefore if he goes to Saints the fee is likely to be a fraction of anything that the club get in return for Clyne, so the value to Saints may not be monetary but in the leverage in getting United to apply pressure on Hernandez to move South, but as we have seen in the past, a player moving under duress often does not make for a good piece of business.
The reality is that Nathaniel Clyne is biding his time, perhaps if Saints get into the Champions league he will want to stay, but he will be well aware of the interest in him and that being the case his bargaining power will be far greater then.