Southamp­ton looked to have com­plet­ed an eye-catch­ing sign­ing on the final day of this summer’s trans­fer win­dow.

That came with the Saints com­plet­ing the sign­ing of strik­er Ross Stew­art from Cham­pi­onship rivals Sun­der­land.

The strik­er joined for a fee of £8million, fol­low­ing a pro­lif­ic peri­od at The Sta­di­um of Light.

How­ev­er, Stew­art had missed the sec­ond half of last sea­son for the Black Cats due to injury. Those fit­ness issues have so far fol­lowed him to Southamp­ton.

Hav­ing been made to wait until Novem­ber to make his debut for Rus­sell Martin’s side, the 27-year-old picked up anoth­er injury short­ly after.

It was then con­firmed in Jan­u­ary that Stew­art has been ruled out for the remain­der of the cam­paign.

That is some­thing that already looks as though it could prove rather cost­ly for Southamp­ton.

Ross Stewart wages assessed

Accord­ing to Salary Sport, Stew­art is cur­rent­ly earn­ing £28,000 per week at St Mary’s. That works out at £1.456million per year.

Mean­while, WhoScored states that the strik­er has played just 17 min­utes of foot­ball for Southamp­ton this sea­son, across two appear­ances.

As a result, since mak­ing the move to the Saints, Stew­art has earned a remark­able £728,000 for every appear­ance he has made this sea­son. Indeed, that also works out at £85,647 per minute that he has played dur­ing the cur­rent cam­paign.

Southampton will want Ross Stewart back soon

So far this sea­son, Martin’s side have coped rea­son­ably well with the absence of the likes of Stew­art.

That is thanks large­ly to the form of the likes of Adam Arm­strong, who is in con­tention for the Gold­en Boot this sea­son.

How­ev­er, Southamp­ton are still only 4th in the Cham­pi­onship table, at risk of being cut adrift from the race for auto­mat­ic pro­mo­tion.

Had Stew­art been fit and avail­able through­out the cam­paign, that could have been dif­fer­ent.

He showed dur­ing his time with Sun­der­land that he is more than capa­ble of get­ting goals at this lev­el. If the strik­er had done that for the Saints this sea­son, they may have been even clos­er to the top two spots.

As a result, get­ting him back will be a major boost for Southampton’s prospects on the pitch from next sea­son.

Beyond that, it will also give them an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get a return on their not insignif­i­cant invest­ment on Stew­art.

Indeed, with two more years remain­ing on Stewart’s con­tract with Southamp­ton, there is at least still time for that to hap­pen.

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