Ronald Koeman believes the fact that Tottenham Hotspur are now resorting to trying to poach Saints staff as well as players is a sign of the relative strength of the two clubs.
The poaching of Saints Head Of Recruitment Paul Mitchell from St Mary's by Spurs is expected to be confirmed in the next few weeks after Mitchell recently resigned his post, however this isn't something that bothers Ronald Koeman who whilst acknowledging Mitchell's contribution, feels that he isn't indispensable.
Speaking to the Daily Echo..
" What Southampton is doing the last four or five years is working from a very good structure in the club with a strong academy, with good young players, with a technical director, Les Reed, in the club for the long term,” said Koeman.
"That’s one of the qualities of the club because it’s seriously a good structure and it’s a pleasure to work in that.
"It’s a compliment for us that for example Tottenham is not trying to buy football players but trying to buy scouting people.
"That’s a compliment for us because that means maybe we have a better structure than they have.”
Speaking of Mitchell he added: "We like to keep everybody in the club because Mitch did a great job in the club but we understand on one side his decision because it’s football, it’s always changing people in the club.
"Southampton is not depending on one person and we will bring in a good one to continue with our philosophy and good luck to Paul in Tottenham.
"He was important in that (last summer when Saints signed the likes of Graziano Pelle and Dusan Tadic) because they had already a good scouting list and we had to change a lot in our team. "
But the foundations that Saints have go beyond the last four or five years, Saints have a fine history dating back 60 years of producing good local players, starting back in the mid 50's when Ted Bates started finding local talent like Terry Paine and John Sydenham.
Those foundations have been built on over the years and the likes of Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers although blossoming in the past couple of years have actually been part of our academy set up going back the best part of a decade,
But all of the factors combined have all lead to where we are now as a club and when we compare ourselves with Tottenham Hotspur who lurch from manager to manager, a method that has meant that each successive incumbent of the Spurs hot seat has not only brought in his own players but his own staff as well, the continuity at White Hart Lane is not there, meaning that each year they are taking bricks out of the wall rather than putting them in place.
Of course they have the resources to buy in players that have ultimately enabled them to stay somewhere between 5th & 8th every season, but now perhaps they have decimated their foundations to such a point that they find themselves in terms of structure far behind little Southampton and they don't like that.
Now they are trying to reverse a decade of mismanagement at boardroom level where they have concentrated on throwing money at problems and firing and hiring by finally realising that this is not a long term strategy.
The problem is that you cannot replicate what Saints have done overnight, Spurs fans have to realise that it takes time, perhaps a decade to get the infrastructure in place and working, it cannot be built overnight especially the academy side of things.
It is a blow to lose Paul Mitchell, but he is part of a system, rather than the pivotal part and we will replace him and keep moving forward.
The only real problem is in the short term where Mitchell will be able to tell Spurs just who our targets are likely to be and perhaps they will be trying to snatch them from under our noses.