Southamp­ton remain in the Championship’s incred­i­ble auto­mat­ic pro­mo­tion race head­ing into the busi­ness end of the sea­son.

The South Coast­ers reside in fourth nine points adrift of Leeds Unit­ed at the sum­mit with two games in hand.

Behind the scenes, dis­cus­sions will already be under­way regard­ing the sum­mer trans­fer win­dow and poten­tial incom­ings.

Indeed, a lot will depend on what divi­sion Southamp­ton end up in as that will dic­tate their bud­get.

Southamp­ton F.C. News exclu­sive­ly sat down with HITC jour­nal­ist Graeme Bai­ley and dis­cussed the club’s report­ed inter­est in Matias Soule.

Southampton’s pursuit of Matias Soule may affect Carlos Alcaraz

News emerged last week of Saints’ inter­est in Juven­tus winger Soule, who is cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing a pro­duc­tive sea­son-long loan at fel­low Serie A out­fit Frosi­none.

Bai­ley issued an update on Southampton’s inter­est: “It’s an inter­est­ing one with Matias Soule, we saw that link with Southamp­ton.

“He’s play­ing real­ly real­ly well at Frosi­none. Juven­tus I do know are try­ing to look at him com­ing back, they won’t make a deci­sion on him until the sum­mer.

“Him going back might impact on Alcaraz (Southamp­ton future).”

Inter­est­ing­ly, it looks like a domi­no effect could occur if the South Coaters are to move for the high­ly-rat­ed Soule.

Southampton target Matias Soule will be in high demand

A look at Soule’s sta­tis­tics and it’s easy to see why Juven­tus val­ue him at £34m.

The 20-year-old wide play­er, who has been capped at youth lev­el by Argenti­na, has net­ted 10 times in the league this term whilst lay­ing on two assists.

Soule is in the top nine per cent of play­ers across Europe for suc­cess­ful take-on and in the top 15 per cent for shot-cre­at­ing actions, as per FBREF.

Sau­di Pro League side Al-Itti­had saw their £21m bid for the left-foot­ed play­mak­er reject­ed in Jan­u­ary, so it’s clear Juve have plans to keep a hold of their star­let unless a siz­able offer arrives.

Evi­dent­ly, for Southamp­ton to stand any chance of land­ing Soule they’ll need to secure pro­mo­tion to the top-flight, as he’ll be tar­get­ted by a num­ber of lead­ing clubs on the con­ti­nent and beyond.

Per­haps the South Coast out­fit could look at propos­ing a swap deal with Alcaraz includ­ed, as he doesn’t appear to have con­vinced Rus­sell Mar­tin.

Saints were hap­py to include a £40m buy option in his Juven­tus con­tract, which indi­cates they’d be will­ing to sanc­tion a per­ma­nent move for the right fee.

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