Saints are set for one of their biggest summer clearouts in recent times as they prepare for their second season in the Premier League.

Mauricio Pochettino and Nicola Cortese are meeting to thrash out exact details of the retained list, as well as who else is surplus to requirements.

Saints are currently carrying a first team squad of 36 players, but only half of those made more than five Premier League starts in the last campaign.

That underlines the amount of surplus as Saints free up space and wages for incoming signings to help their ambitious plans.

The first to go are likely to be those who are out of contract this summer.

Six players see their deals expire at the end of June and it is unlikely any of them will be offered new terms.

Danny Butterfield, Dan Seaborne, Tommy Forecast, Ryan Dickson, Frazer Richardson and Ben Reeves are those in the firing line.

Seaborne and Butterfield spent the end of the end of the season on loan at Bolton and Bournemouth respectively, while Forecast, who hasn’t made a single first team appearance in five years at the club, has been offered a contract by Gillingham.

Reeves enjoyed a brief but successful loan spell at Southend.

The out of contract players are the easiest to move on but Saints are also likely to want to shift more players.

With only a 25 man squad to be selected for next season, excluding youngsters, Pochettino will want as much genuine first team competition as he can get.

Saints have sent a host of senior players out on long term loans and the majority of those only have a year left on their contracts, meaning lower division clubs may be interested in signing them for what would be a relatively low fee.

Aaron Martin, Jonathan Forte, Lee Barnard, Dean Hammond and Tadanari Lee all fall into that category.

None of those players have made a single start in the Premier League for Saints over the last season and it is hard to imagine how they are going to get themselves back into the reckoning.

The same could also be said of Richard Chaplow, whose deal also expires next summer, and Steve De Ridder.

Hammond looked as though he would seal a permanent move to Brighton after a strong loan season with the Seagulls but that is now in jeopardy after Gus Poyet’s future was thrown into doubt.

Perhaps the biggest fee Saints could attract for a player not currently near the first team squad is Billy Sharp.

The highly regarded striker has been prolific in the Championship down the years and netted 11 times during a loan stint with Nottingham Forest this season.

Though Sharp was in and out of the side towards the end of the season new boss Billy Davies is believed to have told the striker he would like to try and get him back for next season.

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