ROSS Wilson’s deadline day went to extra time but thankfully no penalties were involved. Southampton required an additional couple of hours’ special dispensation beyond Thursday’s 5pm transfer deadline before they were able to secure the loan signing of one of their former schoolboy players, Danny Ings, from Liverpool. The last gasp action took the South Coast club’s summer spend to £51m on five new faces - Jannik Vestergaard, Mohamed Elyounoussi, Angus Gunn, Ings and Celtic’s Stuart Armstrong. In case you were wondering, this was only good enough for tenth, a comfortable mid-table finish among the big spenders of the Barclays Premier League.

It will take a while for long-term conclusions to be drawn about England’s new transfer deadline but for now Wilson, the former Falkirk whizz kid who is now Southampton’s director of football operations, sees it as a positive development. Barring any last-minute offers from anywhere else in Europe, at least his manager Mark Hughes knows who he is working with for the first part of the campaign.

In years to come, this summer might go down as the one when the sums involved in the English game finally stretched the barriers of credulity. While Everton were prepared to stump up Southampton’s entire budget for Richarlison, Manchester United decided £70m for Harry Maguire (a player who moved for a tenth of that one year previously) was over the odds. Most of the big clubs refused to deal with each other and Tottenham Hotspur - shock horror - didn’t buy a single player.

While Celtic broke their transfer record on Odsonne Edouard, their refusal to push the boat out sufficiently to make sure John McGinn spent his next few seasons in Scotland was a decision which caused ripples between the club’s boardroom and dressing room. Some Celtic fans might think getting £7m for Stuart Armstrong represents a steal. By English standards, Southampton feel they have got the bargain.

“If you get caught up in the amount of money that is being spent in the Premier League in the jobs you do you would end up not spending anything,” Wilson told Herald Sport. “You would be questioning the value of everything. Quite clearly the valuation of transfer fees for players has gone to a different level, that is clear for everyone to see. It is more about understanding the value of the market.

“Everybody creates such drama around the transfer window now,” he added. “Tottenham not signing a player becomes such a big, big thing. It almost becomes like a scandal that they haven’t signed somebody, when there really should be so much positivity around that club right now.

“Whether you are the director of football operations, the chairman or a fan, the value of players is always going to be a topic of conversation, whether it is in a pub over a pint, on the terraces or in a boardroom. In our jobs you just have to try to keep a clear head. Every club has got different parameters within which you can work in.

“If you only see the values that are paid in one country then £7m seems like a big sum, no doubt about it. But if you are looking across the whole European market - and we have a scouting team in every country and know where the opportunities lie - this is a player who has done ever so well for Celtic, and ever so well for the Scotland national team. He has settled in ever so well for us at Southampton. Not only has he settled in on the pitch, he has settled in off the pitch, and these things are very, very important to us. It is not just about the player, it is about the personality. In our club he ticks all the boxes. He is someone we think can come in and get better still here, just as he did at Celtic and Dundee United.”

Wilson has rebuffed approaches to return to Scotland – most famously from Rangers prior to the appointment of Mark Allen as director of football – but he is not one of those executives south of the border who look disparagingly at our game. He purrs about the performances of Aberdeen against Burnley in the Europa League, and feels there will always a reservoir of players capable of cutting it down in England from up here. The managerial personalities involve in our domestic game have created a genuine excitement.

“There is a danger that we talk down our game too much at times,” says Wilson. “It is a tough league up there, I watched the Aberdeen-Burnley match and it was a tough, tough game. You have got to earn everything you get up there.

“There is certainly a lot of excitement about Scottish football now,” he added. “And from a player perspective, will always be players in Scotland who can make the move. We have obviously taken the likes of Victor Wanyama, Fraser Forster and Steven Davis. Now we have young Kieran Freeman in our academy and young Billy Gilmour at Chelsea looks like a huge talent. John McGinn is another who is doing well and there are plenty of others who I have missed out.

“There are always young players getting opportunities there, some really good managers plying their trade up there. Steven Gerrard in his first job going up against Brendan Rodgers, Steve Clarke – everyone knows the calibre of him, what a job he has done at Kilmarnock. Derek McInnes, up at Aberdeen, so it is a really exciting time.”