Stuart Armstrong was a key player for Southampton over a number of seasons after his move from Celtic in the summer of 2018, but now it seems that his time at the club is nearing an end.
There has been a lot of speculation about several Saints players over the last few weeks, but mostly it has been about those who have fairly high transfer fees on their heads such as Romeo Lavia, James Ward Prowse, Kyle Walker Peters, Mohammed Salisu and Armel Bella Kotchap, however other members of thew squad are also the subject of speculation.
An article on FootballLeagueWorld has suggested that one of those players is Stuart Armstrong and they also suggest that the Scottish midfielder would prefer a move to a club on the Continent.
Initially the Scot struggled to adapt in his first season with Saints in 2018/19, but he came of age in the second half of the season after the arrival of Ralph Hasenhuttl at St Mary's.
For several seasons he was pretty much a regular, but in the last two seasons his influence has waned, although several injuries seem to have affected his performance.
In 2022/23 he featured in 32 of the 38 Premier League games and was an unused sub on another 3 occasions, but he was far from first choice managing just 1,403 minutes on the field, it was a similar number of minutes in 2021/22, although in that season he played in just 25 games.
That contrasts with 2020/21 when he played almost double the number of minutes, 2,774 to be exact, scoring 5 goals plus 3 assists and at this point in his career he was a vital member of the Saints squad.
But as mentioned in the last two seasons his influence has waned and although at times he has shown the levels of performance that we had grown used to, the truth is that there was something wrong that no one could quite pinpoint, was it injury issues or something else, either way he was not the player he was, in 2022/23 he started only 16 of the 32 games he was involved in, in the Premier League.
Now FootballLeagueWorld are running the story that the 31 year old who has started 96 Premier League games plus another 53 as sub scoring 16 goals in the process would like a move to a European club.
Undoubtably Stuart Armstrong even at 31 could still cut it in the Championship in the coming season, but taking into account his age and the fact that his contract is due up next summer, Saints might well prefer the option to move him on and get a fee for him.
Transfermarkt have his current value at around £5 million and that could well tip the balance in Saints thinking if they receive an offer in that region from a club.
The reality may well be that it would be slightly less, but with a squad top heavy at the moment a clear out is needed and I would think that we will soon be thanking Stuart Armstrong for what in the main has been a great 5 years service and I would suggest that there was something other than visible injury that was preventing him hit the heights in his last two seasons that he reached in his first two.