SAINTS saved around £3m on their salary bill by releasing, selling or loaning out ten players in the summer of 2008.

The five released were Alex Ostlund, Darren Powell, Inigo Idiakez, Jermaine Wright and Mario Licka.

Veteran defenders Claus Lundekvam and Chris Makin retired and so were also released.

Jhon Viafara started preseason under Jan Poortvliet but soon had his contract cancelled.

Youssef Safri, who Saints were keen to keep, was sold to Qatar Sports Club for personal reasons while Andrew Davies was sold to Stoke for around £1.3m.

Those 10 players departing would easily have saved £2m plus a year in wages.

That’s only an average of £4,000 a week for each of them, which is a very conservative element.

It is known that Lundekvam was one of the higher wage earners in the squad and Davies was on around £10,000 a week.

In addition, Idiakez and Viafara would almost certainly have been on around £5,000 a week.

Grzegorz Rasiak and his fellow Polish international striker Marek Saganowski were loaned out before the season started while a third senior striker, Stern John, was loaned out in mid- October.

Nathan Dyer started the season in and around the first team squad but was loaned out to Sheffield United in October and later Swansea.

With Rasiak on around £10,000 a week at St Mary’s, Saints would have saved around £400,000 having him at Watford throughout 2008/09.

With £8,000 a week Saganowski at Danish club Aalborg for the first half of the term, that would have saved around £200,000.

The club would also have saved a similar amount having John, also on £8,000 a week, loaned out to Bristol City Dyer’s salary is unknown, but even if it was £2,000 a week that’s a £50,000 saving.

In all, Saints would have saved around £850,000 on those four players’ wages .

On all the salaries they have saved on, you can also add a saving of national insurance contributions.

All those savings on salaries equals around £3m – a fifth of the club’s total income for the financial year ending June 2008.