Three Championship clubs and Celtic are all after Dan Gore, which tells you Southampton are not going to stroll into this one. The story broke through OnTheMinute and was picked up by Saints Marching at dawn on Wednesday, with Sheffield United and Swansea City named alongside Tonda Eckert's side.
So why would he pick Southampton?
Why this could fall apart on Southampton
Celtic can dangle European nights and a title race. Swansea can promise a young midfielder the keys to the middle of the park straight away. Southampton can offer a promotion push from the bottom of the table, minus four points, a Spygate cloud still hanging around and a head coach whose own situation keeps making headlines.
Nor is it clear what sort of deal is on the table. The report leaves loan or permanent open, and hints that a clean break from Old Trafford might suit the player better than another temporary stint.
Two weeks remain before the window shuts on the 1st September, Saints still have a Shea Charles hole to fill in central midfield, and a four-way scrap for a Manchester United academy graduate is exactly the sort of thing that drags on until deadline day and ends somewhere else.
What Saints would be getting for their trouble
Saints will not be signing him for goals. He got one at Rotherham across two loan spells, four assists to go with it, and at Port Vale he played once before somebody decided that was enough.
Duels are where the interest comes from. Gore won 5.3 a game in South Yorkshire last season, a serious return for a midfielder in a side that spent the year defending, and he had 17 goal contributions across United's under-18s and under-21s before any of that.
Coaches call a lot of teenagers leaders, so Mark Dempsey using the word about Gore in the United youth setup only counts for so much. England have capped him four times at under-20 level though, and Middlesbrough were asking about him earlier this month.
Plenty wrote Cameron Bragg off after a scratchy loan at Crawley Town. Then he started at Vicarage Road on Sunday, teed up Cyle Larin's goal, and made the lot of them look a little daft.
Eckert has a habit of squeezing something out of young players other coaches gave up on, which is the strongest argument for this deal by a distance. Saints Marching reckons the answer may already be inside the building. Nobody will settle that argument before Stoke turn up on Saturday.
Verdict: Worth a punt at the right price, and nowhere near enough on its own. If Gore is the headline midfield signing of this window, Southampton have not replaced Shea Charles. They have just filled a squad number.
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