Ralph Krueger has said Southampton should pack in football and organise rock concerts at St Mary’s if they are not motivated by the challenge of next season’s Europa League campaign. The chairman brimmed with excitement as he considered the months ahead, taking in the position of strength that the club have built with regard to the summer transfer window.
Twelve months ago, Krueger and the executive director, Les Reed, were fighting to put out fires, as a glut of key personnel pushed for moves. It is a different story now, although there is uncertainty over the future of the full-back Nathaniel Clyne and the midfielder Morgan Schneiderlin. It is also unclear whether the club will be able to re-sign the defender Toby Alderweireld, who excelled last season when on loan from Atlético Madrid.
Krueger talked about how Southampton would enjoy greater continuity this summer and he described their first foray into Europe since the brief dalliance with the 2003-04 Uefa Cup as “absolutely monstrous” in terms of the possibilities.
Ronald Koeman’s team will enter the Europa League at the third qualifying round – the first leg is scheduled for 30 July – and they would then have to get through a two-leg play-off to reach the group phase, which features six ties, the last of which is on 10 December. The additional workload that has resulted from a seventh-placed Premier League finish stands to be intense but Krueger poured scorn on the notion that it could be a hindrance.
“What’s our business?” Krueger said. “Football games. Come on! How can anybody complain? More football games? What are we doing everything else for? That’s why these guys are running on treadmills, swimming, lifting weights. It’s not because that’s fun. It’s because the games are fun. If you are in the sports business and you ever complain about having a game, then you should change businesses. Let’s have rock concerts here instead. Let’s get out of football.
“The Europa League is fantastic to be in and anybody that says anything different doesn’t understand the value of international competition. We don’t care about the income, even if it’s a wash. It’s the intangible growth. We’ll be better in the Premier League over time because of it.”
Krueger gave little away over Clyne, Schneiderlin and Alderweireld. “We have a clear communication philosophy of either telling the truth or not speaking if it’s not in the best interests of the club and right now, it’s not in the best interests of the club,” Krueger said. “We don’t play games and anything I would say now would be a game, it would be positioning and we just don’t do that.”
Clyne, who has one year to run on his contract, has been the subject of a £10m bid from Liverpool, which was rejected, and Schneiderlin, who has two years to run and was denied a move last summer, has suggested that he wants to leave this time. He has his sights set on a Champions League club; Arsenal and Manchester United have shown an interest. Alderweireld’s situation is open and it is not in Southampton’s hands.
Krueger and Reed, though, see a bigger picture, which is one of progress, particularly when compared with the early weeks of last summer’s window, when the then manager, Mauricio Pochettino, moved to Tottenham Hotspur and a handful of star players departed. Many more were pursued by rival clubs.
“The fact that you can only mention three names [as possible departures] – last year, there were 13,” Krueger said. “And with Toby, it’s very transparent what is going on there. There is interest. Let’s see what happens. It’s out of our control.
“Look, we went through some staff poaching, we went through player poaching but people are dealing with us a lot differently now. At this point last year, there were a lot of people thinking they were just going to get whatever they wanted from Southampton and at whatever price they wanted. But there is a lot more respect now, just in the whole communication with other clubs.”
Reed said: “I think that last year, people smelt blood. There was a lot of stuff going around that the place was going to implode. It was almost like every player needed an escape route. The fans didn’t appreciate the way that some of it was managed outside of the club. It was the predatory nature – like I said, almost smelling blood.
“A lot of it was conducted in the media and it didn’t need to be. We are quite reasonable people to negotiate with. It was like a feeding frenzy and I think some of the bigger clubs felt they needed to provoke things to happen. That is certainly not happening now. It is certainly a lot more dignified.
“We will always be vulnerable to our very best players being attractive to the top clubs, who can afford to pay salaries that we just can’t get near. You almost have to accept, at some point, that is going to happen. What you hope is that you’ve brought them through to a point where it ends up being dignified – they have given you good service and there is a point in their careers where they need to move on. We’re not far off that point. Then, as long as we’ve got the ability to keep replacing them, we can still achieve our ambitions.”
Krueger is convinced that, just as last year, the squad will be stronger when the summer transfer window closes. Unlike last time, he said, there would not be a high churn of players and there will be benefits related to the continuity. Moreover, young players will take steps forward and the return from long-term injury of the striker Jay Rodriguez will feel like a “new signing”.
“Jay signed a new four-year deal on 12 May, which went under the radar,” Krueger said. “That was a big step for us. He signed before the transfer window opened, so he didn’t even go out fishing. Here is a guy who everybody thought we would lose last summer but he has said: ‘I’m in.’ Symbolically, that was monstrous.”
