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Saints are in an historic week as fans take stock of the news that 80 per cent of the club has been sold to Chinese businessman Jisheng Gao for £210m.
Chairman Ralph Krueger has moved to allay any concerns over the deal.
While admitting he was not yet in a position to reveal the investment strategy of the new owners, he did discuss the future of the club in detail with the Daily Echo’s chief sports writer Adam Leitch.
Here is the best of what he had to say…
What are your hopes and expectations now the move has gone through?
This partnership gives us an opportunity to move differently into the global arena first of all.
It solidifies what we have at home base. It solidifies our position and strengthens our outlook.
On the business side we will be laying out our plans of investment and all of that, but let the paint dry for now. That will be for after the transfer window and into September.
I have already had a few longer phone calls but I have known them for 16 months already so it’s been a long process.
I would say initially two things for sure. There is the stability of the club as it is, and its ability to compete in the Premier League which is getting more and more difficult every day.
Let’s be honest the competition’s not sleeping, teams coming up are investing heavily and teams in the Championship are hungry to get up here, so we know there’s a lot of competition.
We are excited for the knowhow they bring with intelligence and experience clearly in the Asian market too and the opportunity that grows out of this.
Our present sponsors like Virgin Media and Under Armour are very excited about this too. Although it’s a partner from Asia they see synergies that will help us in America and so on.
My immediate answer is on both fronts a strengthening of our club and a continuing growth which is what we need to have to be competitive.
You explained the growth, so in what way is it strengthening the club?
When you have a partnership like this where Katharina is still on board and you add a very intelligent, warm businessman like Mr Gao and his family and Nelly into the equation you just get more depth right away.
For Katharina she had a feeling this was as far as she wanted to or could take the club alone and so the search for a partnership where she could stay on board, where the culture would stay intact and the way we operate stay intact. It’s not a huge leap we are looking for here.
We want this to continue the way it is, a sustainable model in the long term and where exactly that investment will come I am not in a position to list to you.
We are open and transparent and until we have had some time with their management team, our management team, all I know is there will be growth here and investment and this is the emotional change and the factual business comments will come over time. Just give us time to evolve these properly.
You must have an idea whether we are talking some incredible investment from a very wealthy benefactor or a more stable evolution?
There is no question. We don’t want to go any other way than the way we are going now.
Let’s take an example of transfer markets.
We had three summers of turbulent, volatile, high change transfer markets.
Altogether it was 19 players in and 13 players out over a few summers.
This is my fourth summer going into fifth season. First summer was six out seven in, the next was three out seven in, then five out and five in. Now we have one out and two in.
That didn’t happen because of that change of this partnership but because we had need to increase our depth charts so we had to make the transactions we did over those years to get a deeper squad which we now have.
We have a strength of contracts which I spoke about months ago, and that has allowed us to change our plan and say now we need to focus on synergies and we want to build on continuity.
Great football teams are not built by permanent change. They are built by holding groups together, by building on it.
This partnership as it was evolving to the point it was going to happen gave us the strength and the confidence to go through this window the way we have and continue forward.
I am not trying to deflect the question but first we had to be sure we found a partner who embraced the ‘Southampton Way’ and we needed a partner who wants to continue to let it evolve.
Part of the ‘Southampton Way’ is improving incrementally in all areas, whether it’s the academy, recruiting a higher level of players, a higher level of coaches, or sports science, marketing, finance department, IT. That we all continue to improve is what we do here. We don’t do the big splash. That’s not who we are. It wouldn’t fit with us.
You are asking me a cultural question. Did we look for that kind of investment? No.
I believe this is the way a club like Southampton in the position we are in needs to evolve.
I am really excited that it is on track.
I swear business yesterday and today has continued exactly as the day before the change of partnership, which is something very few clubs can say.
A lot of fans will say Katharina has now made a large profit on this football club. Most won’t begrudge her it, but fans will turn around and ask ‘what’s in it for us and the club?’
First of all we believe the fans in general have been pleased we have finished in the top eight for the last few seasons.
For Southampton Football Club looking at the decades before this has been an amazing era, a strong era of stability on and off the pitch.
We have been able to stay stable in our numbers, our performances, our expectations are growing with that stability and that’s the price you get. If you fight for relegation four years in a row you are happy to finish 13th.
We put ourselves in that position and we are not afraid of that bar we have set.
The fans have been very understanding of our process. It is not for me to judge the way the partnership has been formed, but I am certain it’s a win-win. Not only for the Gao family and Katharina but for our fans number one.
We understand why we are doing all of this and why Southampton Football Club exists.
They have trusted us in the last years. I can sense that through the communications they have with us. They trust our process at the present time and they need to continue to trust us and in the next few months we will be able to communicate where the business side of it will kick in and where the opportunity will come but they will see it happen.
What do you say to people who will ask if this investment means the club will be looking to the next level, to the top eight or top six?
We were in Europe two years in a row which nobody would have expected.
We have slipped out of that field and we want to get back into that.
We respect how hard that is. Somebody above us needs to slip and/or we need to, from the outside perspective, over perform and truly hit potential the whole way through the season.
We all know how tough it is to get back into Europe but we believe we can get back there so that is what we are striving for on a humble basis. We are not going ‘we can’ but we believe it is possible and we are going to go for that.
You know, boy oh boy, how much investment is going on ahead of us. The Premier League is really a tough league and we needed to take this step with the Gao family to take that competitive step from the position we are in right now.
I can’t sit here and give you a big list of where it’s going to go but we are already looking at opportunities to strengthen our position and compete in the future.
We are ambitious to move up, but the big splash is first of all with Financial Fair Play and the regulations not the same as it used to be ten or 15 years ago. It’s a different environment and we play within the rules.
We believe this is the better way to run a business and it’s a lot of fun.
Our board is having a lot of fun and we have a lot of continuity within the management team which is important.
Everybody is staying where they are which after most partnership changes of this magnitude you would have a seismic shift of leadership of the club.
I personally have committed to this transaction over a year ago.
This isn’t about me but I had hockey opportunities last year but this is really exciting.
I don’t want to be euphoric on a partnership and promise people the world but I have been part of the process and it’s exciting me. My chairman phase one was with Katharina alone. Phase two I just feel I am so ambitious and love to win football games above all else that I am excited. That’s a personal statement here and I have seen a lot more than anybody else has.
They are warm, they are humble, they are intelligent, and they are ambitious.
What do they actually want out of this? Fun, a hobby, an investment?
First of all as a good businessman it’s a statement of belief in the Premier League being the global leader in sports.
There is no question there is an interest to maximise and utilise the intellectual capital we have here.
For me, to tell you the truth what I like the most is I feel he is extremely competitive. He wants to have fun with this. It’s not fun as in disrespectful to the fans. For me fun is hard work, reaching your potential, go in where people don’t expect you to win. That’s fun. It’s not smiley, happy fun. It’s fun inside you doing that.
I truly feel that spirit and he love sports, he loves the game of football and he really likes this area.
He has been coming here for a few years now before this partnership. His first time in Hampshire I think was over five years ago.
I know that he loves this area of England too so there is more affinities there that will come out over time.
I feel a sportsman, and Nelly is a sportswoman, she likes sports too.
To be a fan is probably the main reason, and now to put it into play.
He has taken a lot of risks to invest and these are responsibilities that you take on so good on him he thinks this is worth doing.
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