With Southamp­ton antic­i­pat­ing a busy sum­mer ahead, it is clear that Rus­sell Mar­tin will be lucky to keep one of his star play­ers.

Southamp­ton are enter­ing a piv­otal peri­od of their Cham­pi­onship cam­paign. Rus­sell Martin‘s men are nine points adrift of first place Leeds Unit­ed and need to win their two games in hand to stand any chance of fin­ish­ing in the top two.

The club are uncer­tain about the divi­sion they will be play­ing in next sea­son, and the same goes for the future of sev­er­al play­ers.

Whilst the Saints are pri­ori­tis­ing a per­ma­nent deal for West Ham loa­nee Fly­nn Downes in the sum­mer, strik­er Che Adams is almost cer­tain to leave on a free trans­fer with Wolves lead­ing the race for his sig­na­ture.

Adams isn’t the only play­er who could be on his way out as more inter­est in right-back Kyle Walk­er-Peters is antic­i­pat­ed.

Southampton will be lucky to keep Kyle Walker-Peters

After a stun­ning sea­son at St Mary’s, Walk­er-Peters will attract a whole host of atten­tion in the sum­mer hav­ing seen sev­er­al clubs tar­get him in Jan­u­ary.

As report­ed by David Orn­stein pre­vi­ous­ly, the 26-year-old’s for­mer club, Tot­ten­ham are believed to have insert­ed a £30 mil­lion buy­back clause in his con­tract while Arse­nal and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed have also tak­en a look at the defend­er.

Despite play­ing in the Cham­pi­onship, it is clear to see why some of the Pre­mier League’s big hit­ters want to poach him from Southamp­ton.

The Eng­lish­man has been the best attack­ing full-back in the divi­sion this term, top­ping his posi­tion­al peers in the sec­ond tier for most suc­cess­ful drib­bles per game (2.2) while rank­ing in the top 1% for pro­gres­sive pass­es (7.26), pro­gres­sive car­ries (5.85) and the top 3% for touch­es in the box (3.38).

As high­light­ed by the above FBref sta­tis­tics, Walk­er-Peters is the dri­ving force for Southamp­ton down the right and the posi­tions he takes up deep into the oppos­ing half are cru­cial to their threat in the final third.

Walk­er-Peters has missed the last two games through injury and although the Saints have won both while scor­ing four in each, Mar­tin has missed the bal­ance he pro­vides down the right flank.

For­tu­nate­ly, he is set to return for Friday’s home clash against Mid­dles­brough.

Kyle Walker-Peters is likely to depart in the summer

With his con­tract expir­ing in June 2025, Southampton’s only way of keep­ing the fleet-foot­ed Eng­lish­man is by offer­ing him a lucra­tive con­tract.

How­ev­er, giv­en some of the Pre­mier League’s biggest clubs are cir­cling, they may be forced into sell­ing the right-back, espe­cial­ly with FFP reg­u­la­tions hang­ing over them.

The Saints can ill afford to let their “super” tal­ent depart on a free trans­fer in 2025 and may have to cash in on the defend­er they signed for £12 mil­lion from Spurs in August 2020.

Of course, it would be a bit­ter pill to swal­low for every­one asso­ci­at­ed with the club, how­ev­er, if the right offer does come in, no one can blame Walk­er-Peters for jump­ing ship fol­low­ing a fan­tas­tic sea­son in the Cham­pi­onship.

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