Back in 2016, Southampton completed the £12.8m signing of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg from Bayern Munich.

It may have felt like a fair amount of money for a 20-year-old, but this was still an accomplished player for his age.

Hojbjerg had won the Champions League, Club World Cup, two DFB-Pokal cups and two Bundesliga titles during his time with the Bavarians, and arrived at St Mary's as a full Denmark international.

Despite that, of course it was still a risk from Les Reed to bring such a young player to the Premier League for that amount of money, but the now 24-year-old has blossomed into a fine player on the south coast, so much so that Tottenham are eyeing his signature in the summer.

Hojbjerg has made 129 appearances in total for Southampton, and also proudly wears the armband under Ralph Hasenhuttl.

In addition to his £12.8m transfer fee, the 33-cap Denmark international has earned £50k-a-week for the 118 weeks he has been at St Mary's since his arrival on Monday 11th July - across that time period, he has earned £9.4m in wages.

All things considered, that means he has cost Southampton a total outlay of £22.2m, which makes him a modern-day bargain gives his excellent service to the club and his rise to become captain in just four years.

Also, if you were to take that figure into account with his 129 appearances, you would discover that he has cost the Saints just £172k per game since swapping the Allianz Arena for St Mary's - it has been a shrewd investment given his continued availability, lack of injuries and obvious leadership qualities.

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Reed was the man who secured Hojbjerg's signature back in 2016, and it's safe to say that the Executive Director of Football - who has since departed - worked a fine bit of wizardry to pull this deal off.

In other news, this Southampton flop has been draining Gao Jisheng's bank account for 88 weeks...