Normal service continues at Southampton. Not much of an opening line, eh? But the lack of apparent disruption at St Mary’s so far this season is pretty remarkable, bearing in mind that just a month ago many prophets of doom were decrying the club’s disintegration and imminent relegation.

The sales of five of the club’s best players – Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw and Calum Chambers – provoked allegations that the owner, Katharina Liebherr, had little interest in the team she inherited from her father, Markus, and merely wanted to cash in on key assets, possibly before flogging the club. The departure of the manager Mauricio Pochettino to Tottenham Hotspur, coming six months after Nicola Cortese resigned as chairman because he “could not see a way forward” with Liebherr, heightened fears that the club had fallen into the clutches of someone who did not plan to build on the shrewd progress achieved during the previous four seasons, when Saints rose from the third tier to the top half of the Premier League.

Over the summer bookmakers cut the odds on Southampton being relegated from 40-1 to 7-2. Such pessimism seemed to be shared by the club’s remaining top players, with Morgan Schneiderlin, irate at not being allowed to join the exodus, memorably tweeting: “6 years of an amazing journey #saintsfc DESTROYED in 1 hour !!!”

And yet here Southampton are now, sailing serenely up to fourth in the table. It would be dumb to draw any conclusions after just four league matches, but it is far to say that all the pre-season panic also looks to have been premature.

The initial signs suggest that Southampton did smart business in the summer. The players they lost are very good but Southampton received maximum fees for them – amounting to £92m – and bought cheaper replacements who look highly promising and seem to be integrating well under a calm, methodical new manager, Ronald Koeman.

One of the chief concerns was that Southampton would struggle to score, with the losses of Lambert and Lallana and the injury to Jay Rodriguez depriving them of the sources of the majority of last season’s goals. But so far they are averaging two goals per game. Again we must be cautious about extrapolating too much from early results, especially as one of them came against a ridiculous Newcastle side, but it cannot be a bad thing that the new striker Graziano Pellè has already found the net three times in the Premier League (and once in the Capital One Cup) and looks a far better fit for the team than the record signing Dani Osvaldo did last term.

Dusan Tadic has not yet scored but the winger has exuded creativity and looks at home in the Premier League. Shane Long has not scored either and probably will never be prolific but, as a sort of Irish Emile Heskey, he is already proving a pain for defenders and a handy addition. Sadio Mané has yet to play since his £12m arrival from Red Bull Salzburg on deadline day but the 22-year-old brings enormous potential: 45 goals from 87 matches is a staggering haul for a midfielder even in the Austrian league and his performances for Senegal have led one of the country’s former managers, Claude Le Roy, to trumpet Mané as a future Ballon d’Or winner. There is no guarantee he will fulfil that prediction, but watching him try will be fascinating and buying him can hardly be construed as the act of a club shorn of its ambition.

With exciting talents going forward, Saints appear to have added solidity at the back. Fraser Forster should prove a more reliable goalkeeper than any the club has had since its return to the top flight, Ryan Bertrand is unlikely to let anyone down and Toby Alderweireld has the pedigree to make the loss of Dejan Lovren unnoticeable in central defence.

The biggest tribute that can be paid to Southampton’s recruitment and Koeman’s management is that the newly-assembled team does not look newly assembled. The recent signings have so far blended with the stalwarts – Schneiderlin, Jack Cork and Nathaniel Clyne have all been excellent so far this season – to create a unit that seems slick and dangerous. They may have lost to Liverpool on the opening day but they were unlucky in that match and have generally enjoyed a more seamless transition than Brendan Rodgers’ team, who will be thrilled if they outplay West Ham at Upton Park this weekend in the way that Southampton did three weeks ago.

While there has been a high turnover in personnel, Saints’ style has been modified carefully. The most noticeable difference between the way they have played so far this term compared to last season under Pochettino is that they do not press quite as high as they did under the Argentinian, preferring to win the ball back a little deeper, when there is even more space to exploit. And they do win the ball back, even more, in fact, than they did under Pochettino, who was praised for the dynamism that he fostered: the average number of tackles Southampton make per match has soared since last season (from 21.2 to 27.5), a much bigger increase than Pochettino has presided over at Tottenham so far (where the average tackle rate has gone from 19.8 to 22.5). Southampton have also been making slightly more interceptions this term (the average rate increasing from 13.9 to 15).

Perhaps everything will still unravel at Southampton and we will shortly return to condemning the hastiness of those who criticised the hastiness of others in the summer, but so far the evidence suggests that Southampton will be worth following for their thrilling play rather than any spin-off drama. Not unlike the club they will play this weekend: Swansea and Southampton meet with both clubs still heading in the right direction despite claims they had lost their way.