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.