On the plus side Gordon Strachan has spoken about his summer signings. Gordon said: "I believe I have a lot of players who can achieve a lot in the game, so I have to make the club as ambitious as possible and hope the good players want to stay.
"If you'd said to me when I took over that we'd have 41 points with four games to go, I'd have grabbed that. But about
six games ago, I got really greedy and told the lads to go for it.
"It hasn't materialised that way, but we've learned some lessons. And next season, we'll try and get as far as we can with the players we've got."
As for changes in personnel over the summer he said: "There's not too much for us to do. The squad has to get better,
so we'll try and get more good players in, to make the present players' jobs easier by taking the pressure off them to always be fit and playing at a high level.
"We've got one or two players in mind, but we don't yet know what we'll have to spend in the summer. I've already got a lot of good players to work with that are of a good age - not too old and not too young.
"I mean players like Rory Delap, James Beattie, Wayne Bridge, Matt Oakley, Anders Svensson and Marian Pahars."
Of course Saints may be actually able to build consistently with the same manager in place for a second consecutive season. We've done well this year but I still don't think that there's too much to choose between the bottom half of the table.
Of recent links I can see Le Tie coming in. Saints could do worse than forging links between themselves and the lucrative Chinese market. Le Tie is absolutely huge over there and would attract a lot of publicity to Southampton. Of course this would be the club's decision more than Gordon Strachan's who has already got Delgado and Chala due to the club wanting to have links with Ecuador.
Matthew Taylor's arrival from Luton must be far more likely with the recent departure of Ryan Ashford. It would be a little unfair to expect Brett Poate to move up quite so soon, which leaves only Bridge and Benali for that position. Benali may well last another couple of years but Strachan may want to give Bridge a real run for his money with a younger player.