Back in the summer it looked likely that Kyle Walker Peters would leave Southampton for Tottenham Hotspur, but that deal fizzled out after Spurs played their usual transfer game of offering a derisory fee for a player worth much more, but that now creates problems for Saints.
Southampton have been putting up with Tottenham Hotspur's tactics of making low offers and trying to push deals through by using the players desire to play for them for over 32 years now, meaning that we have to take the low offer with a disgruntled player on our hands.
This started in 1992 when after Spurs having sold Ruddock back to Millwall, Saints subsequently paid £200,000 for the 20 year old with only a dozen League appearances to his name, 3 years later Spurs refused to pay the going rate for a player who had now played 107 Top flight appearances to his name to take him back to White Hart Lane, offering only £250,000 and took the transfer to a tribunal, eventually it being settled at £750,000 a figure that was ludicrously low, Ruddock left after a year to join Liverpool for £2.5 million.
Fast forward 9 years and the North London club employed similar tactics to sign Dean Richards, eventually Saints caved in with the player seemingly refusing to play, despite only having signed a new deal with Southampton only a few months earlier.
Famously Rupert Lowe stated that he would not cave in to a "load of North London Yobbos" he pushed the fee up to £8.1 million, much much more than Spurs had been offering.
Now it seems history is again repeating itself with Kyle Walker Peters, with no one willing to match the fee wanted by Saints and now in the last year of his contract, reports are stating that discussions have broken down, spursweb being one of the Tottenham websites making this claim.
They say that he is not willing to sign a new deal with the suggestion being that Tottenham will come a calling again in January when Southampton will be unable to turn down even a derisory offer for a player whom as a 23 year old had played just 2 games in the Premier League for Spurs and now has 140 League games for Southampton plus a couple of England caps to his name.
So the dilemma for Russell Martin is does he play KWP or not, on Saturday it seems he opted for not, Yuri Sugawara played right back and Charlie Taylor was preferred at left back to Walker Peters.
Most would agree that KWP is the better player than both in either position, but clearly there is something that is going on behind the scenes and it seems that Russell Martin, as he has done before, puts a high price on loyalty, even at the expense of playing the best player for the job.
Whether that is right, depends on what we can't see going on and what his agents are doing, in truth I would say whatever the situation, KWP has never given less than 100% for the club even last season when he surely must have been disappointed not to have been one of those who left to go back to the Premier League.
Players leave clubs all the time, in fact the only thing certain about a player at a football club, is that one day he will play his final game, personally as long as KWP is showing good form and I would say that prior to the Ipswich game, he was better than most around him, we need to play him.
Photo: Action Images
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