The old adage is that you never say never, that is very true in football, but perhaps Mauricio Pellegrino should not have been so honest in his press conference ahead of the trip to Liverpool.
All the talk in the media ahead of the visit to Anfield will of course focus on Virgil Van Dijk, so perhaps Mauricio Pellegrino should have picked his words more carefully when asked about his Dutch defender ahead of Saturday's game.
The Saints manager refused to rule out Van Dijk being sold in January when asked.
"You never know because the market when we talk about money everybody has got a price.
"The budget to sign players, the biggest teams have got money to try to sign players.
"I can’t decide about that. This is a question for our owners.”
"I don’t know, I can’t control the market."
"I cannot control the whisper about my player because we have got a lot of good players, and most of the teams want to sign them.
"The majority of the teams in Europe want to try to improve their squad and the market is huge now around the world, and information is enormous right now.
"We can’t control this and we have to be focused.
"Right now Virgil is thinking about us but a lot of players are thinking about other clubs, we are thinking about maybe other players to try and bring here next year.
"Everybody is focussed on their area to try to bring the best players possible for our club. It is something that happens every single transfer window.”
In essence Pellegrino has said very little, he has said nothing tat has not been said before by a thousand other managers about a thousand other players at a thousand other clubs, but the Van Dijk saga has not been your standard transfer, being surrounded by major shenanigans and dodgy approaches and meetings.
He would have been better served to have batted off the questions by saying tat Van Dijk is a Saints players and that he remains focused on that.
Now the fact that Pellegrino has not done that means that every media outlet and closely followed by every ex Liverpool player you can name, will be claiming that a move to Liverpool is close.
However that he will go to Anfield is far from certain, Chelsea, Manchester City and Barcelona are all also being linked and all have more clout than Liverpool at present, add to that that Saints may feel that a move to Anfield is totally out of the question due to Liverpool's behaviour and things are far from as the media would have you believe.
But Saints are not naive, they know the player has ambitions and they wil be looking for a way out that leaves them having saved face and done the best for Southampton Football Club, they have done that in the first nstance by standing firm to Liverpool last summer, but if they could now cash in on the player to another club in January and reinvest the money in a quality replacement, they may feel that this is the best ending to a sorry sage that has made every decent football fan despair for the way the game has become.
But it would have been better for Saints if Pellegrino had been less honest and more discreet yesterday.