1. Sam Gallagher
Imagine being told, three days before you face the club that raised you, that your manager is out looking for somebody to do your job better.
That is roughly where Gallagher finds himself. Robins named him this week as one of two forwards who need competition, and George Hirst spent Wednesday having a medical at Stoke.
Gallagher was sixteen when Southampton took him off Plymouth Argyle. He got a Premier League season out of it before the loan spells started stacking up. Saints Marching were weighing up Eckert's own strike options before Watford, so both dressing rooms are having the same row.
Which is it on Saturday, then? The striker with a point to prove, or the one watching a new signing take his shirt?
2. Rory Delap
You never needed the scoreboard to know Delap had won a throw-in. You could hear it, in the noise that went up when he started wiping the ball down.
Southampton had him first, in central midfield, doing nothing of the sort. They never found a use for the arm.
Stoke did, and for the better part of a decade half the division defended throw-ins the way they defended corners.
3. Peter Crouch
Ask most people to place Crouch and they will say Stoke, and eight years there gives them a case.
Saints fans get to be smug about this one. Twelve goals in twenty-seven Premier League games, in a team that went down, and Liverpool were on the phone by the summer.
It raises a question Southampton supporters of that vintage still chew on, which is how many players like him the club had to sell simply because the money was right.
4. James Beattie
Beattie going in the January of 2005 is still the one that hurts.
He was the best centre-forward Southampton had in the Premier League years, sold mid-season by a club scrapping for its life, and the version Stoke got four years later would not have been recognised at St Mary's.
5. Ricardo Fuller
There is no graceful way to sign a striker straight out of Portsmouth, and Southampton managed to find the least graceful way going.
Fuller came across the divide in 2005 because Harry Redknapp wanted him there. Redknapp then went back to Pompey, which left a Portsmouth forward standing in a Southampton shirt with nobody in the building willing to speak up for him.
The goals never arrived. By then that surprised nobody.
Stoke took him for half a million the following summer and got six years, a promotion, and a generation of Saints fans who would rather not discuss it.
Four of these are distant memories. The fifth might be running at Jack Stephens on Saturday afternoon. The fixture list handed Southampton a tricky start, and Saturday is when things start getting interesting.
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