HE has not kicked a competitive ball in anger since picking up a horror knee liagament injury over seven months ago.

No date has yet been publicly set for when he will return.

But injured Saints star Jay Rodriguez is still being linked with potential moves in the January transfer window – even though he might not even be playing by then.

Rodriguez’s former Saints boss, Mauricio Pochettino, remains regularly linked with a 2015 move for the England international.

And yesterday a national newspaper reported Manchester City as lining up a possible £20m deal for the 25-year-old who was in the form of his life when he suffered his nightmare arterior knee ligament injury against City at The Etihad Stadium last April.

At the time there was talk the player might be back by this month, but that is highly unlikely.

Previous players who have suffered the injury have taken almost a year to return to action.

Michael Owen suffered a similar injury to Rodriguez playing in the 2006 World Cup.

Injured in June of that year, Owen did not play a competitive game for Newcastle until the last day of April 2007.

Are clubs like Tottenham and Manchester City so desperate they would pay £20m plus for a player just recovering from an injury which has ended some careers?

That is some gamble, to say the least.

Would you want Saints to splash huge money on someone who hasn’t played for the length of time Rodriguez will have been out?

There is no guarantee, of course, that Pochettino will even still be Tottenham boss when the next transfer window opens!

As reported elsewhere in today’s Daily Echo, Saints will be without wideman Sadio Mane for a handful of games in January due to the African Cup of Nations.

At present, Rodriguez – providing he is fit – is the obvious man in the Saints squad to come in for Mane.

So it is highly unlikely Ronald Koeman would want to lose the player without bringing in any new blood.

Perhaps that new blood might be Norwich’s Nathan Redmond, who was yesterday linked with Saints once more.

The club were interested in the England Under-21 international last summer.

Rodriguez is currently contracted to Saints until the summer of 2016.

As we found out last summer, though, that means very little, if anything.

Adam Lallana and Luke Shaw were both on far longer contracts, and yet they still couldn’t wait to follow Pochettino out of St Mary’s.

Who knows if Rodriguez would want to follow them – if Saints wanted to sell and the player was fit enough.