Over the past couple of years Tottenham Hotspur have had a reputation in football for their unsettling tactics, but their antics in that time have paled into insignificance after the events of yesterday.
Spurs have received major criticism in the past few years for the way they approach trying to get a player or manager, Saints had experience of this first hand with firsty the way Mauricio Pochettino was poached from his job at St Mary's and then the way firstly Morgan Schneiderlin was unsettled and then last summer Victor Wanyama and Saints were far from being the only victims of these bullying tactics.
However the madness of yesterday and the way that Everton tried to publicly lure Ronald Koeman, made Spurs look like angels.
Of course I am not naive enough to believe that club's don't talk to players & managers agents behind the back of their current clubs, that is the way football works and has done virtually since it began, but Thursday 2nd June will perhaps go down in history as the date that the rule book was torn up completely rather than quietly ignored.
The day started quietly enough until a tweet from a journalist in the Netherlands started a media frenzy, initially the stories were leaked to the press presuambly by Everton or somone close to them that Everton would be launching a final bid for Roanld Koeman and they were prepared to break the bank to do so both in terms of managers salary but also in the transfer kitty at his disposal, a figure that seemed to increase with each new story that went out.
But then came the tweet from Holland that this was almost a done deal and that Koeman's agent was already on is way to Merseyside to conclude the negotiations, quickly this story esculated with each media outlet trying to get a headline that would persuade readers to click on their webpage.
Soon it wasn't just Koeman's agent going but Koeman himself and the figures kept getting bigger and bigger.
This was a very pubic display and o be blunt it can only have been orchestrated by Everton.
So why would they do so, the simple answer is probably that they have already been rebuffed by Koeman and were making a final and desperate attempt to show him what he would be missing and trying to lure him into changing his mind.
But why such a fuss, after all surely it would be better to conduct all negotiations in private and then make a formal approach to Southampton, this would be the normal way.
The fact that this did not happen suggests that Everton were far from being able to even conduct these negotiations, it was a simple case of one last attempt to try and get Koeman and his agent to be interested. To be blunt, if Koeman was that near to joining Everton then they would not have needed to have this media frenzy, indeed completely the opposite, they would have been trying to avoid it.
It could also have been a case of Koeman's own agent trying to stir Saints into offering his client a little more, if that is the truth then I would suggest that it might work !
Whether it will be successful or not is yet to be seen.
The media however seem to think it will be and went big on it, although it should be noted that the more serious sports media outlets ignored it completely.
Everton are not coming out of this in a good light, in the past they have had a very good reputation in football as a club who do things the right way, Bill Kenwright their Chairman
was in the old school mode and they prided themselves on their reputation as the people's club and not like their near neighbours across Stanley Park.
The arrival of Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri seems to have changed all this, he does not seem to be a man who plays by the old rules and like many billionaire owners of football clubs before him seems to think that rules do not apply to him, he has paid his money so he will do what he wants.
Men like this have big egos, they want to be seen to be major players, how much of this is Moshiri just trying to show to the Everton fans that he is the real deal.
In the next few days we will see whether this blatant unsettling of Koeman has had any effect, he has always stated that he will not break his Saints contract and will at least see the deal through, hopefully that still remains the case.
But if it should not be then Southampton Football Club will march on, it has always been the case that Ronald Koeman has made no secret of his desire to manage a truly big club or at International level, we knew he would not stay for ever, his resolve is now being tested though, from a footballing point of view he has done a great job at Saints, one more good season and he would be firmly in the spotlight for a big job.
But going to Everton is almost back to square one, yes he has a lot of money but he will need every penny, it is a far bigger rebuilding job than Saints was, it will take time and the chances are that even with all this money the sixth Saints achieved this season is the best that Everton could hope for given the club's they are trying to compete with.
That being the case Koeman has everything to lose at Everton and not much to gain in terms of reputation.