As our former big name prima donas started to get their head's in other places, Katharina Liebherr and her board quietly reiterated the fact that they were committed to this club, now they have proved it.

As Pochettino packed his bags and made his interpreter redundant, Katharina Liebherr and her new board initially quietly reiterated that they were committed to Southampton Football Club, as we received and accepted the first of so far five over the top offers for our players, they confirmed that all monies would be reinvested in the team.

They then replaced Pochettino with as it stands now a better, more experienced and more tactically aware manager than the one that had left, he would not only have been expensive when compared with what other options that we had, but those Saints supporters screaming about lack of ambition failed to point out that we had now gone from a manager whose sole gameplan was to use a small squad with the sole aim of avoiding relegation to one that firstly had the experience of building a club up, but secondly had actually won a few things as a manager.

I think that KL and her board thought that a softly softly approach would dampen down the media speculation, this of course did not work, perhaps under normal circumstances it would have, but these were not normal circumstances, certain members of the media for some reason were determined to sling mud at Saints at every opportunity, on the surface they did not appear to have a reason to do this, they had no apparent axe to grind with Saints, indeed their only mutual connection seemed to be that at some point in the previous year they had actually been gushing about the club and its then Chairman.

As the players upped and left, some got jittery, social media was full of supporters in full panic mode convinced that Katharina Liebherr was doing nothing else than stockpiling the transfer fee's in a plan to asset strip the club and bale out with a wad of cash, for those waverers whatever the club said as it started to realise it did need to up its own PR campaign nor the £20 million the Club spent on Pelle and Tadic would convince them otherwise.

I will not deny I think mistakes have been made in the way we have approached our transfer dealings, but I did not have any doubt that Katharina Liebherr had the clubs best intentions at heart, Markus Liebherr was an honourable man why would he not bring up his family in the same way ?

Now as the start of the season approaches things look a lot more healthy, we have spent around £48 million so far and if we take up the options on the loan signings that will increase to £65 million, the good news is that we still have around £30 million left, Ronald Koeman can now decide to make another signing or two, or whether to keep some in reserve for January.

Those that screamed fire sale have now proved to be jumping the gun we have reinvested, ironicall in the same week we put to bed those rumours, Spurs are having their own fire sale, last summer they adopted a scatter gun approach to their £90 million war chest and now they have a top heavy squad and need to sell to rebuild their squad, it will be interesting to see if Pochettino has the same acumen as his successor at St Mary's

But back to Katharina Liebherr, we now know that her intentions towards this club are honourable, that means taking it forward in memory of her father and i suspect that means a lot to her, perhaps she will not be the owner for ever, no one can predict that, but again I suspect that if she were to sell she would want to make sure that whoever she sold it to had just as honourable intentions and was a fitting successor to her father's legacy.

Going forward now the club is now transparent, given that Katharina Liebherr has owned it for the past four years our ambitions have not changed one iota, some people struggle to come to terms with the difference between genuine ambition and idle boasting, over the years football has seen a lot of clubs taken over by owners pledging to make the club they have just bought the best in England, usually they have not had the money to do so and have failed miserably and once they lost interest the club in question found itself deep in financial trouble, we of course took a slightly different course in that the man telling us that he was going to take us to the Champions League did not have the backing of the actual owner to invest the vast sums of money to achieve that, he never ever explained just how we would achieve it. Given the multi millions that the seven clubs above us are spending this season, even if we had kept Pochettino and all of our players it is hard to see just how we would ahve improved the squad to such a degree we could have moved up even a place, let alone bridge the 23 point gap between us last season and Arsenal in 4th. With the re emergence of Liverpool last season there are now 5 big clubs wanting CL qualification one of them is going to miss out.

Now we have the club's ambition from the horse's mouth, we have people in place who are looking for achievable and measurable improvement, yes it doesn't sound as exciting as the Champions League ambitions that were spouted out in every Chairman and player interview last season, but the reality is that as good as 8th was it wasnt as exciting a season as say Hull City had with two Wembley appearances and now a Europa League Campaign.

This is the sort of progress we are now looking to make, to consolidate our place in the top ten of the Premier League, to look to perhaps win a cup and through that qualify for the Europa League, this is good progress and will enable us to sign better players, last year some Saints supporters sneered at the Europa League, they listened to the message coming from within the club back then and felt that a cup win and the Europa League would be distractions from the true goal of Champions League, the reality was far from what was being said, around the country people laughed behind our backs when we said we were going to qualify for the Champions League they did not see us as ambitious only as deluded.

Now we know where we are going and we know we can actually get there, the next logical step is to cement a few top ten finishes and actually play in Europe then we can start to talk of taking another leap forward, this we have a realistic chance of achieving, of course their will be some bumps along the way, it cannot be denied that the events of this summer have damaged us both from a stability point of view off the field as well as quality on it, but we are rebuilding in both areas, we can have every confidence that we can compete in this league to the same extent we did last year, what this summer should have taught us as supporters is to be patient, every drama is not a crisis and that a cool head is better in a tight situation than panicking.

Katharina Liebherr and her team will make mistakes, they are on a learning curve after being plunged into a situation that is almost unprecedented at any football club, they have come through it with decorum and they have come through it with their heads held high and stronger than before, this bodes well for the future, in the week that saw the fourth anniversary of Markus death, Im sure he is looking down with pride at how her daughter has coped in adversity.

Photo: Action Images

gartan added 09:33 - Aug 15 Great piece Nick ... Good positive reading Thanks to Kat and the gang we looking forward to the season ahead :)
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Hugh_Jarce added 09:47 - Aug 15 Agreed. There are some lessons to be learnt on the PR side and I'm not sure about the transparency bit; can any business really be transparent? But the sell off I feared a couple of months back seems to have been paranoia on my part. Thanks Leibherr family
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BITTERNEBOY added 09:54 - Aug 15 A Really Good Article which should get further coverage
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samspade10 added 10:09 - Aug 15 Excellent article.
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perazi added 10:18 - Aug 15 Top notch article which should (with permission) be reproduced in some of the UK papers which have slung so much rubbish Saints way since last seasons end. Well done to Katharina Liebherr for your quietly determined leadership.
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law101 added 10:32 - Aug 15 A good sense of realism. However for me, stability from Leibherr was never in doubt, what concerns me more is the way Les Reed is running the club. Money made available for transfers, but given the calibre of players we have lost, their replacements are unproven and carry a high degree of risk. I agree we have a good manager but history shows he has had little success outside of Holland. We are so quick to dismiss the quality of MP as a young manager, who is now at a club challenging for a champions league place whilst battles for Koeman for a mid table position. I have to agree that last year we did not give any of the cup competitions enough respect, lets face it our only chance of silverware, however we are all aware of the financial incentives that are linked to a clubs finishing position, so that is easily explained. We have found out already this summer, football is a business and our approach to cup competitions will reflect this. As for the smaller squad, yes it was limited but this was deliberate. A smaller squad allowed us to continue to promote our youth in both training and games, something that will be more difficult this year with more senior players. Our success this season will largely depend on our new players ability to adapt to the PL, will Pelle be another Jozy Altidore or a Wilfred Bony, Tadic a Dembele or a Bryan Ruiz etc. Looking forward to Sunday, after all whatever we say on here, come match day we will all get behind the team whatever our views.

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cconnor2 added 10:33 - Aug 15 Katherine sells our ALL OF OUR best players and gets rid of the best chairman we ever had, and one of the best up-and-coming managers we ever had. So much for the Champions league rubbish our season ticket holders have been fed for last 3/4 years. Finally we admit we are nothing but a selling club as we always have been. Great news huh? I will never buy another season ticket again, ever, im sure there are many like me also. Great article PS - Saints fans living in their own little dream worlds, still could be worse, could all be Pompey fans, which is the only positive I can take

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cconnor2 added 10:36 - Aug 15 Avoiding relegation? Your insane. We were top 4 for ages and had we invested and kept our top players (much to katherines dislike!!) we would be challenging for Europe, instead well be battling to stay up! Editors and fans living in their own little worlds. PS - you don't need to like my opinion but as a Saints fan of 30+ years im sure as hell entitled to one.
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Jesus_02 added 10:47 - Aug 15 Katerina has the best interests of the club at heart as do the rest of the board. Krueger has a track record in delivering a "good product" in a sports environment. Fans consensus might be that he doesn’t interview well but I don’t think that’s necessarily his job. He comes from a different culture so the words and phrases he uses can seem out of place in some respects. Les Read is simply out of his depth - sorry Les I know you care, but you either need to get help in or to move on. There is still a part of me that will miss the feeling of going into any game thinking that we can get a result. However my expectations are (mercifully) being worn down by Nick’s omnipotent understanding of the reality of our place in the “natural order of things”. I realise know that the last 4 years have been a terrible dream where we were abused by a villainous stepfather. We came perilously close to being out of our comfort zone. I can only hope for Nicks sake that our board don’t secretly harbour delusions of a top 6 finish. I am sure that we can successfully target mediocrity and battle relegation for the next 26 years. Either way Nick needs to be on the board as a fans representative. Up The Saints (or rather steady marked improvement The Saints) compugnans supra ponderis

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SaintNick added 11:05 - Aug 15 Cconnor im not sure if you are a Pompey fan on a wind up here, but i think you are a little short on reality here, im sure KL would have preferred to have kept our best players, but they chose to leave because they were offered about 3 times what they were on here plus immediate chance for honours, Pochettino left of his own accord and so did cortese because he was not willing to be accountable for someone elses money. If we had kept all our players we were still 23 points behind 4th place last season, given that ll the clubs ahead of us have invested substancially how do you think we would have been able to bridge that gap

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halftimeorange added 11:16 - Aug 15 Over the summer there has been an awful lot of tripe written by subscribers to this site. Much doom and gloom, the lack of any forward thinking, clueless board, the inept Les Reed and general panic yet, here we are, two days away from kick-off, with potentially a better squad than we had at this time last year. Katherina Liebherr has, to the best of my knowledge, only issued one long statement and that, some month's ago, was that she would continue with her father's dream. I don't think her board has made many mistakes other than failing to constantly reassure our doubting fans that our departed greedy first teamers from last season would be replaced and publicly defending the exodus rather more vehemently than they did. I even know fans who have written to the club weeks ago and asked for their season ticket money back and, guess what, they received polite replies asking them to be patient. I personally doubt we'll hit the grass running, it will possibly be a difficult first half of the season whilst the new faces bed in, but all will be well come the Spring. I can't help feeling we'll never see Morgan in a Saints shirt again and, possibly not Jay. Now, if he wants out as soon as the club has got him fit we will definitely know that UEFA and the Premier league have created a monster race of avaricious footballers with no sense of obligation. In the meantime I will continue to go and cheer on the current squad of players because they represent the club I support. No negatives from me.

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slynch added 11:29 - Aug 15 compugnans supra ponderis/// Punching above one's weight?? or What have the Liebherrs ever done for us?
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SanMarco added 11:30 - Aug 15 Great article which has of course already attracted sarcasm and will get more when the NC brigade get going. Realism and common sense are what we need now. It is a good thing to dream of winning the league and we all do - but probably best not to BELIEVE it, that leads to the kind of anger, recriminations and rewriting of history that we see from the NC mob (NC was sacked I read repeatedly - No he wasn't, it wont become a fact just because you repeat it ad nauseum). You can shout the words Champions League and Ambition a thousand times very loudly and you can get friendly journalists to repeat it but it DOESNT make it true. We musn't let the distortion of the debate (by the relatively few) NC Cult members lead us to not be critical of the club when they deserve it - and they do after a mishandled summer. So let us move forward with our critical facilities both sharp and REALISTIC. I hope we win the league, I would love us to win the league - but I know that we wont...

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IanRC added 12:14 - Aug 15 A good article. I do however hope we manage to hang onto Jack Cork and Morgan.
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law101 added 12:25 - Aug 15 I believe a balanced view recognising the strides we made under Pochettino, an exciting, ambitious young manager but also looking to the future and accepting Koeman as a strong figure to move us forward. Nick often writes as If he is trying to convince himself Pochettino was a poor manager and we are better off now, equally that Koeman is 'better' despite his struggles abroad. While the club has reined in its ambition this season, with unavoidable player sales and relatively risky replacements we still have a strong core. The media have blown our summer completely out of proportion, I would still take our squad over the likes of Hull, Palace, Newcastle, West Ham to name a few, particularly given our style of play.

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abingdonsaint added 14:08 - Aug 15 Decent piece, but there are just a couple of points I will make (yet again!) For all his little 'foibles', I am still absolutely convinced that we would never have progressed to where we are now so rapidly without Cortese at the helm. It's a bit like Hitler's Germany. Not everyone's cup of tea, but the trains sure ran on time! I am also aware that you are not a Poch fan, but I believe you seriously underestimate him. I do not consider witnessing some of the finest football I have seen at Southampton (and that is from 1968 to now!) as simply 'avoiding relegation'. I hope I am wrong actually, but I think he will do very, very well at Spurs. I also think you are back in the old assumption game with Koeman. I think he is a good appointment, but I will reserve judgement about how much of an improvement he is on Poch until I see the evidence of my own eyes. If the standard of a manager was purely based on trophies won, then surely Neil Lennon was the obvious choice! Finally, whilst Champions League was always a tall order, as I have said many times before, the 'project' was based on developing the academy and adding selectively, not spending huge amounts of cash to compete, which obviously we could never do. However, assuming you cannot compete because you haven't spent £100M is slightly ironic given the summers happenings. Our squad was apparently already worth £100M. It just didn't cost us that, which was the whole point! Anyway, that's all in the past now.....onwards and upwards (hopefully!)

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aceofthebase added 14:40 - Aug 15 It seems that KL comes with a clean sheet and a bed of roses and i totally agree. However there is still the knock Les Reed camp out there and with little justification. I think we have a better squad, manager management and owner and it's about time we started cheering for the team. Where is monte? by the way?
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SanMarco added 15:24 - Aug 15 I think you've put our dilemma in a nutshell there Abingdon Saint. We were doing things right but we weren't able to 'stay under the radar'. Several products of the 'project' couldn't get out quickly enough as soon as the bigger boys came tapping. I think that a lot of negative comment on MoPo is actually more from an understandable resentment at the way he behaved and his role in recent events rather than from any doubting of his promise as a manager. Whether he fulfillls that promise may well be down to the patience of that nice Mr Levy.

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ChristchurchSaint added 17:30 - Aug 15 Nice article Nick ( which I totally agree with and your reply to CConner!!). I think we will all agree that after last season, we all hoped that this year would finally get us into CL. Sadly a few players spoilt our dreams and thought only of their own. Double wages and the chance of CL and trophies made a blinkered approach for some of them ( RL excluded here!). If that is what they want to achieve, then fine, so be it. I still feel that we were targetted by press/media/celebrity football experts who felt affronted by the fact that a "small" club was challenging to play with the big boys. I also feel that, sadly, our ex-players had their heads turned by listening to all of this tripe. RoKo has quietly, but effectively, put our squad almost back together, and although we have not attracted any big names ( who also wanted big salaries, CL and immediate trophies), I feel that our squad is now almost as good as last years ( certainly, a bigger squad) and once settled, has a good chance of a mid table position at least, if not higher.

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ChristchurchSaint added 17:37 - Aug 15 Sorry- one extra I forgot! I'm sure that most supporters would rather have KL as our owner rather than Steve Parish at C Palace. Even before the season starts and Tony Pulis is looking for a new job!!
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pintsizedsaint added 17:45 - Aug 15 One piece of news that is off our radars and shouldn't be is the announcement today that we've just signed a sponsor agreement with Garmin. It might not seem sexy or interesting - but Garmin is a very big global brand that is locally based. I suspect this is just the start of the "real" project: to get bigger corporate income alongside expanding our brand across Europe and beyond. It's the only real way you can tackle FFP. This is what Krueger was brought in for. We had nothing under NC. Small steps but vital ones. Just look at the money Man Utd banked from their shirt sponsors. Now of course you only get that kind of level by being consistently successful, so on field needs to remain successful too!

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legineloc added 21:00 - Aug 15 While the big 5 can pay 100-250k per week & get 50/75k crowds then breaking into cl is near impossible. Lets hope for europa either by cup run or league place & increase our ground that is the way forward. i feel RK will be in his job longer than MP & what about townsend/lennon in our wide position both have prem experience
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bstokesaint added 21:57 - Aug 15 Pintsized, I couldn't agree more, although I did find this article a little concerning. It seems our beloved red and white stripes come at a cost http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11354724/kit-deal-more-important-ever
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jlj added 03:26 - Aug 16 I really want to be positive. I'm not sure I'm entirely negative but really, if we are considering selling jack cork for 3mio it really is the final straw. I'll always love the saints but that's just not smart business. Is he really that inferior to the frenchie we are trying so hard to keep. I'll keep the faith but chambers going tested me greatly and cork would really push me to still believe we were headed the right way.

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montecristo added 13:56 - Aug 18 Ive read some nonsense in my time but this article takes the biscuit in my view. It starts with the maths, this idea that Saints could only spend what had been generated by sales is central to my disagreement with those who insist on supporting whoever is in charge of the club regardless of policies. The fact is the club s owner has taken one hell of a risk by selling our best players and bringing in players who for the most part have no experience of the Premier League and expecting them to perform. Not all will unless we are lucky. Its brinkmanship to say the least. No mention either of Saints improved financial position through the huge increase in tv money or for finishing eighth which I suspect would finance current acquisitions on their own, transfers are paid for in stages more often than not. I am equally dismayed by the farcical rumors that somehow , Cortese, an experienced banker, would have allowed the training ground to go above estimate. its nonsense, building projects are always governed by contracts which have penalty clauses for late delivery and so on. Far too many fans spout rubbish that they have picked up on the internet without having any knowledge of what they are talking about themselves or any evidence to support. For the record the club have never once said the training facilities were over budget, and yet it has been put about that these are 30 million over budget. Absolute crap. I remain convinced we have not been told the full story, or given the true reason for Cortese and Pochettino leaving. That it has to do with money I have no doubt, but do not try and convince me that player acquisitions have been financed by player sales because they havent. And then there is the small matter of Christian Purslow having been appointed to find a buyer for Southampton football club, something that the club has conveniently failed to deny. And before you go off on a tangent Nick explain why Liebherr failed to sanction even a repeat of the previous two years expenditure on players which would have allowed our squad to have been retained, Im sorry but Im with Lambert on this one, what the club did makes no sense other than to confirm a lack of willingness to invest even the increase in tv revenue into new players. Liebherr inherited her billions she didnt make them. With it came responsibility, in my view she was honor bound to respect her father s project and comittment to Southampton. Her interpretation of what is involved is something I violently disagree with, End of.

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