Southampton is set to lose another man to Tottenham Hotspur.
Saints head of recruitment Paul Mitchell has reportedly handed in his two weeks notice at Southampton and will move to London, according to the BBC, joining Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino as former Southampton men at White Hart Lane.
Mitchell has been at Southampton since 2012, and helped bring in the current crop of Saints that sit second in the Premier League.
[ MORE: Cabaye back to the Premier League? ]
Saints were expected to be relegation scrappers this season after Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Dejan Lovren left for Liverpool, Calum Chambers for Arsenal and Luke Shaw for Manchester United (and, of course, Pochettino to Spurs).
Instead, Southampton smartly ‘replaced’ the bunch with Dusan Tadic, Graziano Pelle, Ryan Bertrand, Sadio Mane and Toby Alderweireld, also adding Celtic goalkeeper Fraser Forster while holding onto Morgan Schneiderlin, and new manager Ronald Koeman has the club roaring up the table.
[ MORE: The “Ghost of Gareth Bale” haunting Spurs ]
Will the loss of Mitchell hurt the Saints and benefit Spurs? Does this increase the chances that Morgan Schneiderlin skips St. Mary’s in January? That remains to be seen. There are many people behind the scenes at a club, and the club benefited from a boatload of money earned by selling off prized assets over the past few years.
But criticism at Tottenham has been for not spending wisely after selling off Gareth Bale to Real Madrid, and perhaps Mitchell is the man to make sure it doesn’t happen again.