Mark Hughes has spoken about the last week of the transfer window, although he did not rule out a new signing, he did not inspire confidence that a new face would be brought in.
The problem with football managers speaking to the press is that they rarely ever reveal the real truth, it is not in their interests to show their hand, whether it is about team selection or transfer targets.
From a transfer point of view the last week of any window is a rush with teams trying to hijack deals etc, Mark Hughes would rather that everything is done quickly and quietly, that being the case why would he want to alert anyone that a signing is in the pipeline.
He said:
"At this moment in time as we stand here we are probably at a point where we are not likely to do any business, but you never know.
"If there is something that presents itself and makes sense and you have the means and resources to do it then we will look at it.
"As we stand I wouldn’t have thought we would be doing much.”
Very non committal from the Saints boss, but exactly what you would expect any manager to say at this stage, why would Hughes say that we are desperate for a striker for instance and see every club we contact raise the price as we know we are desperate.
Far better to give the impression as he has done we are happy with what we have got but ruling nothing out.
Saints have got a lot of business done early this year which is good, the difficulty now though is that the UK transfer window shuts three weeks earlier than in the rest of Europe, as we know a lot of business is done in the last weeks of that window, clubs lile to sell late in the window to push up prices as the deadline looms, on the continent we will now suffer as they prefer to wait to see what develops in those final weeks rather than sell early to the English clubs.
Hughes also confirmed that the club are not expecting any departures before Thursday evening, some younger players may go on loan but they are still trying to find a club for Fraser Forster.
"We have a lot of interest in a lot of the younger players but they may be best served staying here and waiting for an opportunity.
"It’s maybe a different conversation in January if I haven’t been able to give them decent enough game time. Then it might be preferable to send them out, but I think at the moment we keep everybody in house.”
The Forster situation is a difficult one for Saints.
He wants to play games and having slipped to third choice that is not likely to happen at Saints at the moment unless injuries or serious loss of form. the issue of the major contract after signing a new five-year deal last summer makes it more difficult to do anything but a loan deal de to his wages.
"Fraser is looking at options really,” admitted Hughes.
"I had a conversation with him earlier in the season and said from his point of view he needs to get back playing and he agrees with that.
"We are looking at options and seeing if we could get him to a place that he would feel is appropriate for his talents.
"We haven’t been able to manage that so we will have to play that by ear.”
So five more days to go on the transfer window, reading between the lines it looks like we won't lose anybody of note, that we are probably looking for a striker but time is running out, my personal opinion is that we do need a striker, but as long as everyone stays then we are in better shape than we were a year ago, we just need to use our striking options in the right way, something we never did under either Puel or Pellegrino.
Yes another striker would be good, but we can get by as long as they are all fit.