Southampton flew to Germany on Friday for a week of pre season work.
One striker the head coach still admires was not on the plane.
Ross Stewart left the club this summer as a free agent, after Southampton missed the deadline to trigger a further year on his deal. That mess traced back to the play off expulsion in May rather than any falling out.
Tonda Eckert has kept the door open. He told reporters that Stewart remains an option and that Southampton "definitely" need a second forward before the season starts.
"There's no striker with a better goal ratio than him," Eckert told reporters. Cyle Larin stays first choice up front, so the club is hunting a partner rather than a new talisman.
What the fans want to happen
Supporters have set out their feelings on a Southampton forum. The mood leans toward a reunion with the 'Lochness Drogba', though nobody is asking for one at any cost.
One fan said Stewart would be welcome back "as long as the deal is done very very soon". The same supporter wanted him on the plane to Germany.
That flight has now left without him.
Another supporter set a condition on a thread beneath Eckert's comments. Unless terms were agreed quickly, the club should forget him and move on.
A third put it from Stewart's side. He reckoned the striker would be foolish to turn down the security and medical care on offer at Southampton.
Read together, the mood is conditional support. The patience behind it is thin.
Why a quick reunion looks risky
There is a reason to pause before rushing this through. Stewart is 30 now, and his last season was broken up by fitness problems.
His FotMob player profile fills in the detail. Across the whole campaign, he made just 11 league starts and played 980 Championship minutes.
In that limited time he scored 8 goals and added 2 assists. FotMob rated his form at 6.87 on average.
The goals arrived at a healthy rate, though he was too rarely fit enough to feature. Local coverage has landed in the same place.
One piece weighing the fan mood against his fitness record concluded that the smarter kind of urgency would be signing a fitter striker rather than waiting on Stewart. That same coverage called Stewart injury prone and treated his exit as an opening.
A separate article made the case for a homegrown alternative up top. It pointed to Nick Oyekunle, a nineteen-year-old who has scored freely for the academy and struck again in the friendly at Eastleigh. Damion Downs is also looking hungrier for a proper tilt at the first team.
The fans who back a return only on the condition of a fast deal sit closer to the sensible path than they may think. Southampton would be wiser to chase a fitter, more durable striker than to lean again on a forward whose body let him down last term.
The urgency is right, but the target should be someone new.
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