The signings of players such as Guido Carrillo, Sofiane Boufal, Jordy Clasie and Wesley Hoedt have not worked for Southampton in recent years.
These four transfers have commanded a combined outlay of over £50m but it would appear that few of them have a future at St Mary’s.
After a highly-successful recruitment programme that saw the likes of Sadio Mane, Dusan Tadic and Graziano Pelle given the chance to make the step up to the higher Premier League, the club gradually moved towards bringing in players who were more proven already.
And it clearly wasn’t as successful as the previous strategy.
A move to Saints offers a chance to showcase talent in arguably the best the league in the world and – although we as fans don’t like it – admiration from some of Europe’s biggest clubs.
However, the likes of Carrillo and Boufal arrived at a time when we weren’t going to see the best of them under negative managers with negative styles of play.
Some already proven players have gone on to become vital parts of the current Saints team.
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Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Nathan Redmond had played top-level football in the Bundesliga and Premier League before joining. However, Saints provided an opportunity to take their game to the next level and play at that top-level on a weekly basis.
But adding young players of great potential in with the players who are the strongest currently at Saints could be a winner.
This may well cause more player sales in the future as the new influx of talent is given the chance to perform, but this shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing.
Saints often get superb money when selling and can therefore go and buy the next top talent.
Most Saints fans will rightly want the club to keep these exciting players for longer, but we know from previous examples that this is not always the case.
And even so, two to three years of access to a team of great talent – under a manager renowned for working with and improving young players – can produce great results; albeit on a smaller scale than the top-six might experience.
Going back to strategy that served them so well is not a negative and could well be an important part of another recipe for success for Saints.