Saints manager Mauriccio Pochettino will have a very big headache in the coming weeks, but its one that every football manager likes to have.
Saints fan welcomed the arrival of new striker Pablo "Dani" Osvaldo for the club record transfer fee of around £15 million this week, but ironically just as those same supporters acclaimed the greatest week in the footballing life of Rickie Lambert alongside the new arrival, it could be that the new England striker's place is under threat at St Mary's for the first time since he arrived four years ago.
There are those that prefer to assume that the manager can accommodate both of them in the line up, but I would say that is going to be hard to do and that neither player will be happy in any other role than as a striker.
Mauriccio Pochettino is unlikely to revert to two up front, last summer Saints adopted a formation that they now use and like Barcelona the thinking behind that is that a variation on this formation is used by every team at the club, the thinking is that if the younger players are comfortable with something from an early age, they will find it easier to slot in to the first team, so a two man strike force is highly unlikely, not just for that reason, but the plain fact is that Pochettino himself is known for his liking of that formation.
So its quite clear that in terms of playing up front, its a case of one or the other.
Some Saints fans have pointed out that Osvaldo can play on the left, to a degree that is true, although Roma played a very particular formation that involved the lone striker playing very deep and the two wide men coming in from the wings, Pochettino could opt for this formation, but Osvaldo fell out with Roma because of this, he doesn't particularly like playing it, his caps for Italy have been as a striker and he realises that if he is to make next years World Cup then he needs to be playing up front and not out wide, I would find it hard to believe that he would have agreed to come here unless he was very much promised that he would be the main striker.
That will be the problem for Rickie, as Jack Cork found out, it doesn't matter how vital a cog you were last season, if a big signing is made you could find yourself out of the team, put bluntly apart from the likes of Chelsea, you don't sign a player for £15 million and leave him on the bench for very long.
So it could well be a straight fight between Rickie and Dani for that lone strikers role, this is where both want to play and its where both are most effective, they are central strikers and both know that if they aren't playing regularly for their club in this role then they aren't going to make the World Cup in Brazil.
The headache could get worse for the manager here, again to be blunt, we haven't signed Osvaldo to play on the bench, although Lambert is likely to start on Saturday with the Italian on the bench, that wont be the case for long, unless Lambert is hitting hat tricks week in week out, Osvaldo will be in the team and in to stay, if you spent £15 million you tend to play the player as mentioned earlier, this is where that England cap for Lambert could actually work against Saints, approaching 32 in January, without that cap Lambert could well have been happy in a squad rotation system, content with still playing his part, but now he has that cap and knows he has a chance of going to Brazil, he knows he has to be playing and scoring, if he finds himself playing second fiddle to Osvaldo, then in January Rickie himself will be reaching for the aspirin, does he stay loyal to Saints or does he look for a club, even on loan where he will play week in week out and get a chance to go to Brazil.
On that note, there was a strange comment from Rickie in a Sky Sports quote about how he had never looked to leave Saints at any time, was that setting the scene as he could see the writing on the wall.
In football of course you always have to move forward, in replacing Cork, a player who was probably second only to Schneiderlin last season in how important he was to Saints with Wanyama it showed there is no sentimentality, I think that we could be just about to find that out in a big way.