Les Reed on whether the club would invest heavily in January if the team is pushing for the top four again…

“If we’re fourth in the Premier League in January there can’t be an awful lot wrong with the squad or the team that it would need any major surgery. I would say we would do what is right for the team at that time, but definitely not take a punt, because that’s just gambling with the future of the club and we won’t do that.”

Ralph Krueger on whether there are any plans to develop the stadium…

“Until the stadium would be full for multiple years it wouldn’t really be a topic of discussion, because we need to have the stadium full regularly. You (the supporters) have been amazing, we are getting there, but until that’s seen we need to concentrate on building the club in other ways.”

Les Reed on the lengths and sizes of contracts that players are signed to…

“It’s a complicated situation and what you can’t do is you can’t gamble your future finances over five or six years. There is an issue under financial control laws in that we can’t raise our salaries as much as the top four or five clubs can, because the rules only allow you to increase it by a certain amount every year. That ceiling for us is a lot lower than those clubs who are already paying significantly higher wages, because it’s done on a percentage of the previous year’s budget, so we have to do it little by little, gradually building and making sure we keep an eye on the long-term future of the club.”

Les Reed on improving players…

“We are widely recognised for player development with regard to young players, but we actually have quite a good track record of improving more senior players as well. José [Fonte] has been a prime example of that. I think we should be very proud that not only have they improved as players, but for players like José and Graziano [Pellè] they’re getting international recognition since coming to this club.”

Ronald Koeman on the importance of captain José Fonte after he arrived at the club last summer…

“He was important. What we did with José, also with Kelvin [Davis] and Steven Davis was inform the players about the strategy of the club, about the way how we like to play, to say we will keep quality, we will bring in good, new players. These important players showed that ambition to the rest of the squad and that was important. Little by little, we did well, had good results, the new signings showed their qualities and everybody was happy.”

Les Reed on the club’s future strategy...

"There is a five-year plan, and it's a whole-club plan. It started over last summer, when we got all of the staff together. We consulted all of them and asked: what do you want to achieve and what can we achieve as a club if we want to move forward? We have to increase our revenues and improve a whole load of stuff off the field, so how are we going to go about it? After a couple of months of a lot of people in the club doing a lot of hard work, we came up with a marketing plan, a financial plan and a football plan that will take us through the next five years."

Ronald Koeman on what would convince him to stay beyond the end of his contract...

"Be happy as I am now, and that means to work with a great club, to work with good people, to develop the team and to still have the belief between the technical staff and the players that we can go on. That's the key to whether to continue or not. It's my second season, so we have time to think about it. It's too early to take decisions about that. The ambition is to continue and to even make it better in the way how we play and how we get results to try to achieve what we did last year. The ambition [is] to win a title – but it's very difficult, we know. If Aston Villa can play in the FA Cup final, why not Southampton? That would be great, and we will fight for that."

Ralph Krueger on loyalty schemes...

"When everybody came in August to the two European cup games or if you come to Aston Villa, we are pricing those games as an example so that we can get new spectators in here. We're going to have a full house next Wednesday because of the pricing scheme we have. You need to know that we care about our fans. We love your loyalty and the warmth we have here at St Mary's. It's the greatest thing to walk out with Les on a matchday to get in the middle of all of you and watch the game so trust me: we respect your loyalty. We're trying to help you on the road by subsidising road trips. We will never make everybody happy all of the time, we know that, but we are trying every day."

Ronald Koeman on this season's improved set-piece record...

"We don't do more time to practice set-pieces than we did last year. I think we have a very good record against us – I think it was the best in the Premier League, with only two times they scored out of a corner kick against us. Every week, on one or two days, we do sessions with attention to set-pieces. I hope we will continue what we did in the last two games from set-pieces because it's an important part of football and it wins games because you can lose if you're not good at set-pieces. We try to play at the back, but it's not always possible – it depends on the pressing of the opponent. With Pellè, we have a very good heading striker so we need crosses."

Les Reed on the prospect of an FA Women’s Super League team…

“Essentially, where we’ve started is we’ve taken over, in collaboration with Hampshire County FA, the Girls’ Centre of Excellence. At the moment, that’s still Hampshire County FA Girls’ Centre of Excellence. Next season it will become Southampton Ladies, and we will develop it in the same way we have developed the academy here. We would love to get to the Women’s Super League, but we will do it step by step by growing from the grassroots of ladies’ football through an elite programme for the girls. Our ambition at the end of the day will be to have a Women’s Super League team playing for Southampton.”

Les Reed on the difficulty of keeping players from wanting to leave for Champions League football…

“It’s difficult, but we are getting better and better at being able to keep them a little bit longer and we need to buy time to give Ronald a team that’s capable of competing at the top, because the longer we can do that then we can get more revenues in and gradually we can build to that point.”

Ralph Krueger on the prospect of limited prices for away tickets…

“The ticket prices are something we discuss all the time. Gareth Rogers, our CEO, and his entire team is continually looking at what we can give back. We still are running here a business where we don’t want to lose money, so that you have a good football team over a long period of time, so we need to be responsible, but we will consider your comments here. We are really grateful every time you come in the stadium. We understand that it’s an investment for you and we’re trying to do all we can.”



