10:30am Wednesday 11th June 2008
By Adam Leitch
Saints are not planning to release their retained list until next week at the earliest.
The club had to submit to the Football League a list of those out-of-contract players they were planning to keep or release by May 16, just after Rupert Lowe and Michael Wilde returned to power at St Mary's.
That deadline was met but the list has not been made public.
That is set to remain the case until next week or possibly even the week after as Saints remain in negotiations with some of their out-of-contract players over potential new deals to keep them at the club.
There are nine players out of contract this summer.
Claus Lundekvam and Chris Makin have retired, leaving question marks over seven others.
They are Mario Licka, Darren Powell, Nathan Dyer, Alexander Ostlund, Simon Gillett, Inigo Idiakez and Jermaine Wright.
June is a notoriously difficult month to get things done as most of the football world is either at major championships or on holiday.
All the contracts of the players concerned run until the end of this month and, while all players with contracts due to expire are able to sign pre-contract agreements elsewhere from January, none of the Saints players have.
Lowe and Wilde made the decision to keep the list under wraps because they didn't want to publicly alert other clubs to negotiations ongoing or to the availability of players they may wish to retain.
The decisions were all put on hold while they sorted out the managerial situation.
Nigel Pearson had his own ideas on what should be done but that is now up to Jan Poortvliet and his team. Poortvliet will not have seen much of any of the players on the list and so will be relying on the advice of coaches Stewart Henderson and David Hockaday to guide him.
There are some positions where there are options and it will be up to the new management team to decide whether they have sufficient cover to manage or need to retain the services of an out-of-contract player as cover.
Saints will try wherever possible to push through their young players into the first team.
However, they have also stated they realise the need for some experience as well and, while the young players are a cheaper option and part of the ultimate masterplan at St Mary's, they need to be ready for first team action before they can be thrown in.
Henderson and Hockaday's knowledge of these youngsters will therefore be vital in the decision-making process, which is expected to wind up in an announcement next week or the week after before the deals expire at the end of the month.
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