Given their reputation as a "selling club", not to mention their rise, decline and rise again through the years, it should not be surprising that Southampton have a more rapid turnover of staff than most clubs. While their successful youth academy produces a conveyor belt of young talent often snapped up after barely a year in the Saints first team, the club have often turned to experimenting with trialists, short term loans or rolling contracts to plug the gap. In particular, a number of once great and now passed their prime players have been signed in the hope that they've still got a little of what made them great (and then rapidly dumped when it turned out they hadn't). Just look at Dennis Wise, the perfect example of both the quick-to-depart promising youngster and the has-been former great signed in desperation. A product of the Southampton youth system, it took him twenty years to make his debut after he left at 18 to enjoy years of success with Wimbledon, Chelsea and Millwall, the clubs with which he is most associated, before returning to Saints at the age of 38. He played 11 games, managed the team for three and then left in a strop after not being given the job permanently. At least because he played for the club in two separate eras and managed them too, people can remember Wise as a Saints player for all that he is better known for his time at other clubs. The same can not be said, however, for the following ten players, all of whom once pulled on the red and white stripes, but made so little impact that even Saints fans have forgotten that they were ever one their own.
