Southampton's transfer dealings in the past few years have very much focused on signing young and up and coming players, but that may change slightly if Ralph Hasenhuttl's comments on the subject are to believed.
"You never win anything with kids" was the famous comment by Alan Hansen back in 1995, when referring to Manchester United's penchant for playing some of their youngsters in the first team.
Back then United had an outstanding crop of youngsters coming through, but they counterbalanced that with some experienced professionals in the team.
Saints have been in danger in recent years of signing two many youngsters and not enough experience, this is highlighted by the defensive signings of the past two years, Tino Livramento had not played in the Premier League, Kyle Walker Peters at 22 had played very few games for Spurs, Mohammed Salisu, 20 year old Mohammed Salisu had just 30 games for Vallodolid under his belt, 23 year old Romain Perraud just 54 games for Brest.
Lyanco was 24, but had amassed just 59 games in Serie A.
Jan Bednarek is the most experienced man in the back four at 25, but he has had to learn on the job, joining five years ago at age 21.
Indeed yet to break through they have two other young signings in Thierry Small & Dynel Simeu.
This season like most others has seen some basic mistakes at the back due to a lack of experience and leadership.
Ralph Hasenhuttl has been speaking about the upcoming transfer window and has suggested that Saints will look to move early, but they will also be looking to fine tune the transfer strategy regarding the age of players recruited.
"We will move earlier this season, this is for sure,I think we have a squad at the moment where we have young, potential players and they are going in a good way."
" The question this summer will be how much of young players we need or maybe even some, I won’t say experienced players but players that give us something different also. We have to balance it quite well and this is the goal for the summer."
"In the end, we are now back known as a developing club that gives young players a chance to play. This is definitely helpful for our transfer activities in the summer, the rest we will look very carefully and see."
That hints that the Austrian is aware of the shortcomings of his team and perhaps we might do something about it.
I have been banging on about a lack of an experienced leader in the back four since the departure of Virgil Van Dijk and Jose Fonte over four years ago, we have never replaced their experience.
I do not think there will be a drastic departure from the strategy, but there is a slight change of direction, overall both Saints over the past few years and Brentford under Rasmus Ankersen have pursued similar paths.
But the Bee's made signings not just of the untried, but those slightly older such as Ivan Toney and one time Saints target Pontus Jansson who was 28 when signed from Leeds in the summer of 2019.
Saints will be looking to clear the decks this summer, poignantly wide players Nathan Redmond, Theo Walcott and Moussa Djenepo all never even made the bench for the trip to Leeds, this was more tactical than anything else, but it showed the way that Ralph Hasenhuttl is thinking for next season.
As stated when Sport Republic took over at St Mary's, it isn't going to make a lot of difference in terms of the transfer strategy Saints pursue, but there will be changes, the opportunity to be able to sign players before selling others and doing things quicker than we have been able to do before.
But it now seems that we will also look for something different and that seems to be some experience.