Southampton previously went head to head with John Eustace's Derby County, and now he has opened up on one shrewd signing Saints thankfully missed.
Nathan Wood's wonderful September definitely clouds it, but Southampton fans leave Joshua Quarshie quite underrated. The 21-year-old needs to be more immune to errors, but he is the only summer shopping who saves Will Still on some tactical mind-maps.
The rest of the recruits haven't necessarily seen less of the Championship grass than Quarshie, but their good displays just never add up. What it does is it unintentionally puts Will Still's lineup jigsaw capabilities to the test.
There is an unspoken optimism that with players hitting top rhythm, Still will have fewer missing tiles to sort. Mind you, this could all have been so awesome, and then it would have been so much aching.
Failing to acquire Clark was a Southampton win in hindsight
Weirdly, it's due to Southampton failing to pen a deal for midfield target Bobby Clark, and note carefully, he didn't show up as a flop. Clark is hitting the right midfield notes at Derby County and dropped a stellar showing against Southampton close to fifteen nights ago.
Quite an open chance that Scottish outfit Celtic also stayed put for that occasion, and now The Times are lauding them to bag Clark for their camp.
Without bothering much, that would be some void for Derby. But Saints, they must have prepared for it in advance?
Well, their manager just rubbished this belief. In his own words, Derby chief John Eustace was quoted by the BBC Sport Derby: "It's the first I've heard of it. So, that's interesting, but we certainly don't want to lose him."
Put Still and Southampton in place of Eustace and Derby, and St. Mary's would instead be crippled with a mid-campaign blow.
All the sweat Still poured into building a decent midfield base may have gone purposeless, and more midfielders would have been eyed to deal with the promotion business.