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BIG INTERVIEW: Ralph Krueger on Saints’ future
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Saints chairman Ralph Krueger offered a wide-ranging interview in the final week of the season with the aim of reassuring worried fans over the future ownership of the club and the prospect of selling Virgil van Dijk and other key players this summer.
The Daily Echo’s chief sports writer Adam Leitch sat down with Krueger in his St Mary’s office and here is what the chairman had to say…
Sat here in the final days of the season, what are your thoughts on the season and going forward?
The big topic in my role through most of the season has been potential investment and/or a change in the ownership structure.
I have to say right off the hop that I am not answering the question right away on where we’ve gone, but for the fans to be extremely confident to hear that we are strongly positioned no matter where this direction goes.
That has been debated and there are some pros and cons debated publically, but from my perspective, linked to ownership, if we stay with the status quo we will be working within the same parameters in the summer than if we take on new investment.
The long term will still be looking for investment no matter how this ends.
Either way we are in a healthy position.
On the season the highlight has been Wembley and to experience our fans in that quality of support and passion and that Saints blood flowing through them as it did that day is a beautiful thing and inspires our management team, not only the football side but the whole club had an unbelievable injection of adrenaline that day.
The European experience we would all liked to have gone longer, and the Premier League there are people arguing that we could have got a point more here or there, but overall finishing in the top half of the table, which is our opportunity this week, for the fourth season in a row is a sign of stability and us being a part of this Premier League in a solid fashion.
If we take it back to the first season when I was here we finished off into eighth place and everybody celebrated and it was a monstrous achievement in the eyes of everybody. Now we have people as we are pushing into eighth again pushing and querying because they want more.
That’s good. I like that our environment is hungry for more and pushing with us for Europe, and that’s how you start building a winning culture.
I feel our winning culture has taken another step forward this year even though it has been a very multi-dimensional season because Europe and the cup played a different role.
The last three years we had just been a Premier League team whereas this year we became part of Europe, part of a cup run, and the expectations in the Premier League grew and we didn’t always meet the expectations we even had.
Overall I feel another surge forward and it feels good.
What stage is the takeover at? And if there is to be continued search for investment if this doesn’t happen, does that hint that Katharina Liebherr wants to sell at least a stake in the club?
In January Katharina made a clear statement and from the ownership perspective we have a clear vision of moving the club forward, and we are looking for an investment that in the long term gives us another level of opportunity.
At the same time in the short term we are extremely strongly positioned either way.
I am sorry I cannot speak of the details because of the NDAs and the legal side of the process, but I can tell you that we are still in an ongoing process.
Should it go with an investment into the club I can confirm we are extremely well positioned, and should it not we are well positioned.
Heading into the end of the season and the start of the new season, to give everybody comfort we are not dependant on it happening otherwise we would continue to look at it.
You are saying then that Katharina’s motivation is a fresh injection of money into the club to take it further than is currently possible?
Katharina’s motivation has always been since I met her and we started this project four years ago to drive this club forward and do what it takes to get there.
We are quite confident that some form of investment if you look at the competition and the teams around us and they grow and develop and don’t sleep or rest on their laurels, it’s just a natural progression for a club like Southampton.
Her interest to stay in the game and be part of it is very high. She loves the club right up there with anything in her life, and has been really clear on only accepting a step that will culturally fit the club.
Krueger on the future of Claude Puel > >
What are you able to say about the reasons behind the departure of chief executive Gareth Rogers and the leadership of the club going forward?
I would say it is reorganising our management.
I think we have said what we need to say about Gareth, but what I can tell you is that in the reorganisation we will not have a CEO anymore and we are not looking to hire anybody.
We have an extremely strong, young, dynamic, very intelligent, well-educated group of operational managers.
We will have an interim managing director in Toby Steele, who will retain his CFO role.
At the strategic board level we now have a three person strategic board. That is myself as chairman, Les Reed will be elevated to vice-chairman of football, and Martin Semmens, who has been key in forming our strategy, in particular with commercial and the way our brand is developing, will take the vice-chairmanship of business.
We will be the strategic board of the club and Toby Steele will be the connection as the CFO/interim-MD to the operational management, which is very youthful and dynamic.
I think it will give people comfort to know we have that strategic board and the operational board, which is something we are developing the final steps in right now.
We have built a foundation as a business, and like on the pitch we never want to let our guard down, we always want to look at ways to improve and to get stronger, and that’s what we are doing at the moment here internally.
No matter the ownership position moving forward, this is the group driving the club forward, and this management team will stay intact.
That will be a pre-requisite to investment from any source?
It’s important for Katharina but also for any investor to understand what we have built here around our people.
We have an 80 per cent growth here in our staff over the last three years and I think a lot of that is via a really diligent hiring process where people come into the club and take on clearly defined roles and we empower people and will continue to empower them through this management reorganisation where we expect people will get even more responsibility in their specialised areas of the club.
I said in my very first interviews find good people and let them do their jobs.
I underline that again and we have a lot of good people, retaining the culture we rebuilt in the early months of 2014.
I can only say we have only just begun here. This is the foundation and management is always your foundation and it is strong and solid and we want to build on that.
In that case Les Reed still has your support?
100 per cent. As the director of football he will remain and moves into a split role with a lot of strategic conversations going on with myself and Martin connecting that little group to ownership however it looks.
Les has been absolutely fundamental to the fact that when I came here I was honest about the fact that my football knowledge was not the reason I was in my role.
What I found was that football was healthy and we had strong people.
Adding Ross Wilson to the operational lead of football together with Les Reed we have a dynamic duo who together bring everything to the table you need and they have the full backing and confidence of the ownership.
I came here to make sure I can always grow the club and I can grow personally.
I continue to do that and as long as that stays in tact I am happy to be here and certainly make hard decisions in the best interests of the club but, holy mackerel, I get growth here every day and there is not a week where it unfolds as planned which I find difficult and exciting at times but challenging which I like.
I love the fan base and the size of our club and the challenges we have ahead to push back into Europe against so many powerful clubs around us but also that are now at the top of the table.
Personally in the evolution of my leadership life this is the perfect position.
Are the club in a position financially where you can resist offers for star players this summer?
That’s a very good question because in the evolution of the club if you go back to my first season the football side of the club told me we had 14-15 real Premier League players on our roster.
We needed to nett in players every transfer window, which meant selling to buy, selling to buy, selling to buy, because we wanted to live within our means, which we have in a very disciplined way.
If you look at the first summer of five out and eight in, then six and nine the next year and last summer it was a nett in, and I think the fans need to understand that was part of getting to where we are today.
We are now doubled up in every position, we have a 25+ man Premier League roster in Southampton Football Club, which is an amazing accomplishment which goes a little bit unrecognised for me in the local environment.
We have increased the base, we have increased the depth, we can weather the storm of injuries much better than we have the last few years and that was part of building to where we are today.
The other thing that happened simultaneously is the strength of our contracts.
We had only a handful of players on multi-year contracts in the season 13-14, and when I look at us today we have 18 players with three year or more contracts, 12 have four or more year contracts. It is amazingly strong position.
What does that tell you? It tells you that we decide how this transfer window unfolds, we have the control and we decide what we want in and what we want out.
It will always be in the best interests of the development of the football we want to play, to take another push at Europe next year, to grow and to be stronger.
It’s a very high quality squad, it has youth, it has diversity, we have such an eclectic group of players that can do different things.
We have all the components and we would like to strengthen in some way, shape or form, but the fans need to know the strength of contracts is huge in Southampton at the moment.
Think about it. We didn’t even have 15 Premier League players in 13-14 and now I’m telling you we have 18 contracts of more than three years with above average Premier League players. It’s an exciting position we are in.
It’s two matches to go and it’s not for me to speak about football specifics, or for me to judge any type or performances or how we play, but strategically I know what was uncomfortable when I began and I know what is comfortable.
When I go to bed at night and we have all these long-term contracts it gives you a feeling of controlling your fate.
We don’t need to nett in players this summer for the first time so it changes our whole positioning.
The fans need to know that was part of a business model we needed to have to build this foundation and now let’s work with what we have and we make the decisions.
In effect your message is ‘we don’t need to sell, and if we do it’s only because we think it’s the right thing to do?’
That’s 100 per cent correct. We do not need to sell any players.
Whether the ownership changes or not it is not going to change our strategic position.
We have the backing of Katharina and/or any potential change which we as a management team feel extremely comfortable with.
We have a strategy which is being fine-tuned but the base is in place.
We are pre-positioned for the transfer window and we do not have to sell any player. That will be our decision and whether it is in the best interests of the club or not.
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