The early part of the summer was a painful time to be a Saints fan with many screaming that Katharina Liebherr was interested only in asset stripping the club, now we know the truth.
As Mauricio Pochettino departed St Mary's and a host of players demanded to follow him out of the door, many Saints supporters vented their fury at Katharina Liebherr and her board, at best they were accusing them of incompetence, at worst that they were asset stripping.
All they could really do was let the supporters rant and quietly get on with the job of rebuilding, indeed in an interview Ralph Krueger said
"That’s our goal, by September 1st, that you can look me in the eyes and say ‘When I look at everything, and I take all the emotions out, this is actually a stronger squad, a deeper squad than we had last year.’”
Some did not want to believe him, they had bought into claims that the club had been about to challenge the big clubs for the Champions league places, they thought this was now gone.
Somewhere around 12 months ago many were filled with false hope, they wanted to believe that the Champions League was only a mere matter of signing a couple of players and doing things the "Southampton Way" they failed to notice that there were a lot of clubs with better foundations and spending more money who also had those ambitions, jumping from 14th to 4th would not be easy, Everton & Spurs struggled to jump from 6th to 4th, but some people did not seem to consider this.
The 8th place finish was great, but history doesnt show teams who finish in that position jumping forward, it usually shows them dropping back, mainly because they lose a player or two who got them there, Ok for Saints to lose so many was a rareity, but beating 8th place this coming season was going to be very hard without big investment, after all look how much Manchester United who finished one place ahead of us have spent.
Perhaps Mauricio Pochettino knew this and that is why he got out whilst his stock was high, he knew that if Saints were to get any higher than 8th then the squad needed significant investment and that was not going to be forthcoming.
Indeed would it have been any improvement, the core of the squad was there in place since the days of Alan Pardew, in fact before him in some cases, in both of the Premier League seasons, big money had been spent, but spent badly in the main, of the five players who left for big money, three had been at the club since before Cortese arrived and one had been signed by Alan Pardew leaving only Dejan Lovren as a recent arrival.
Any football club goes through periods of transition and now it was Saints turn, it did not need to be as traumatic as it was, it cannot be denied mistakes have been made in the boardroom, but now we stand on the day Ralph Krueger asked us to judge them on and it has to be said that Katharina Liebherr and her board have not lied to us nor let us down, they have kept good their promise to reinvest the money that has come in from transfers and we now have a squad that is bigger and stronger than before.
In my opinion we have a better manager, he has to be given a lot of credit for the signings made, yes Les Reed and his team have spent many months identifying these signings, but appointing Koeman was crucial, he had the reputation to convince these players to come to Saints and that we were not the sinking ship some would have you believe.
Saints now have the foundations to build on what we have achieved over the past few years, that is not just about the playing squad, it is also about building a commercial structure to bring in income to the club, this is vital, over the past two seasons are commercial income has been around £6 million, that sounds a lot until you realise that even the likes of Fulham or Stoke were earning £14 million and upwards and someone like Spurs a club we professed to be about to usurp were bringing in £70 million plus, if we couldnt compete with Stoke off the pitch how did we expect to compete with Spurs.
So the changes at St Mary's are more than just about the playing side its about building a structure that can stand up by itself, that has always been the Liebherr way, when Markus took over he did not promise us Champions League football, he talked of a five year plan to get us back in the Premier League and make us self sufficient, we were never going to be something he would put in the multi millions that say Roman Abramovich is at Chelsea.
So Katharina and Ralph have delivered what they promised, she has shown that Saints means more to her than the chance to asset strip and put money in the bank, those who accused her of doing that owe her a big apology and perhaps Markus one too.