According to media reports this morning, Tottenham are offering central defender Vlad Chiriches in a part exchange deal for Morgan Schneiderlin.
If the North London club do dangle this carrot in front of Saints, then the board might need to be doing some serious back tracking given our failure to land a central defender so far, that is assuming that Ronald Koeman actually rated the Romanian.
Chiriches arrived at White Hart Lane last summer for £8.5 million from Steau Bucharest but his time with Spurs has not proved fruitful, playing only 16 times plus 1 as sub in the Premier league.
In many respects he looks the type of player that Saints should be looking at, however apart from his appearance record and the fact that he has 25 caps for his country, I know little of him, but from that point of view I knew little of Dejan Lovren this time last year either.
But the big stumbling block could be Saints refusal to sell Schneiderlin, although assuming that the two players arrive on loan from Inter Milan today we will be well stocked up on midfield players and the irony of the situation will be that Morgan Schneiderlin as good as he is is perhaps the one player that we could have afforded to lose at the beginning of the transfer window and by the end of today it could be even more so.
So if Koeman rates Chiriches who is also being chased by Roma should Saints go back on the bold statement made by Ralph Krueger or should they stick to their guns and refuse to sell him to Spurs or anyone.
My first instinct is that we should do whatever is best for the squad as a whole and if Ronald Koeman has a plethora of midfield players but is short in central defence then this is a deal we should consider.
However there is more to it than that and with Saints supporters already up in arms about the five departures so far, the damage done to moral amongst the supporters and their confidence in the board could far outweigh the benefits of doing the deal.
However I do think as poor as the PR has been from Saints this summer, they have in Krueger someone who is prepared to do what he feels is best fro the club rather than worry about what the fans might think, he seems confident in the ability for the club to come back stronger after rebuilding.
Perhaps Saints fans need to ask themselves this question, if we were offered Lionel Messi by Barcelona but had to sell them Schneiderlin would we prefer Krueger to stick to his word and refuse the deal or would we prefer him to do what would be best for the team ?
If the answer is the latter then we all have to consider that the princible should be the same whether its Messi, Suarez or a much needed central defender.
The only question that Saints should consider is that if Chiriches is good enough and that it is in our best interests to do the deal.