Saints chairman Ralph Krueger launched Saints’ seven year partnership with US sportswear giant Under Armour with a fanfare at St Mary’s.

Krueger and Under Armour representative Peter Murray gave a detailed presentation setting their joint vision, with the chairman later sitting down with journalists in the first team changing room for a wide ranging discussion on the state of the club.

The Daily’s Echo’s chief sports writer, Adam Leitch, was in on the conversation and brings you the highlights of what Krueger had to say.

Krueger on the size of the Under Armour deal…

We are not going to mention the exact numbers but it’s certainly the biggest commercial deal in our history.

The longevity of it is truly the uniqueness.

I don’t know what they did in 1885 but there were no seven year deals here ever before. A brand of that size, coming in with that commitment.

It wouldn’t even be worth saying the numbers because there’s so much growth here that you can’t put a number on, things we are going to do together that are just priceless, different initiatives. We don’t even know where this relationship is going to go yet, which is what excites us all.

We don’t know where we are going to be in two years together so we are going to continue to look for new avenues.

I think the numbers would almost take away from the depth of this relationship.

Krueger on Koeman’s contract…

Ronald Koeman’s conversations with us are excellent.

We are continually philosophically exchanging and Les Reed and the recruitment department are very close on a regular basis with the board.

We are speaking and we are in a good place, a really good place, right now. Let’s just let that evolve.

He still has more than a year on his contract right now so it’s not a point of pressure that we feel is unhealthy, and we don’t want anybody here who doesn’t believe they can grow in the role that they have, and that begins with our leaders on the first team, and that’s Ronald.

If it’s right for him and for us and everybody finds the right way then that’s the best for Southampton Football Club.

On the changing mind set of player sales at Saints under Koeman…

I think turnover in professional sports clubs is the nature of the business and that will always happen.

We aren’t unrealistic to think that we will have exactly the same squad in September. There is a certain healthy turnover. We had an unhealthy turnover. We don’t want to have to rebuild the squad every year. We want continuity and a stronger core but those are things you have to earn as a club.

Southampton came into the Premier League in 2012 and what’s happened in 13, 14, 15 is all part of the natural progression.

Ronald is an excellent leader, I agree, but the way the sport of football works when players have long term contracts the respect for that to the club has changed compared to a few years ago and Ronald helps in that respect.

He is very clear on his message, we as a club are very clear on what we are expecting when a player signs a contract too.

Krueger on telling players to stay at Saints…

We did that with Morgan two summers ago but at that point it was necessity. We had to stop the bleeding and Morgan understood and was professional and helped us.

Last summer we maybe had a few of those conversations but we would like those to end.

We don’t ever want to be that kind of club, but there is a need in your growth sometimes to be that kind of club.

If a superstar at one of the big clubs decides to make a move to another country and another team then he is also able to do that. That is the nature of football, if the contract runs out they can go where they want.

If the contracts run out of years you run into trouble where the player might have to go or not have to go and we are fine with that. It’s part of this business.

We want it to be a crazy decision to leave here, but we have to earn that.

Krueger on Champions League ambitions…

I think that whole language that was in and around our club for two summers, I didn’t really get that.

For me the number one thing for an individual player is to be able to grow as a player, and if we can’t give that to him here then he can tell us where.

We believe that every player that comes here can find his potential, get onto his national team, play at the highest level and then the club is going to continually fight, every day, to get into Europe.

That means first of all getting into the Europa League and enjoy that and be proud of that.

With continual growth and the opening up of the league and the parity of the league everybody has a shot at the Champions League.

It can’t be our expectation yet. That would be arrogant and unjustified –we don’t have a history yet to justify that kind of demand, but that we are striving for that over time is logical.

There are many different paths there, from winning the Europa League to finishing in the top four in the English Premier League, which is an amazingly difficult achievement for everybody now.

Krueger on US expansion via the Under Armour deal…

We didn’t go out searching, a few years ago we were just looking for partners and it evolved this way.

It worked perfectly because our teaching football programme that we launched in the US in January was being planned, and was developing, irrelevant of whether the Under Armour deal happened.

Now this happening at the same time is going to really empower us to expand in the US, and around the world. We can take this into China, India, and other places eventually.

They (Under Armour) are very excited about it and over and above our club deal is the growth in the US and the development centres and the academies in the US who have knocked on our door and shown interest in partnering with us.

They are going to help us, of course.

Did we do the deal because of it? No, but it’s a huge bonus in our global development.

There was an analysis in the media a few weeks ago that because NBC has been so vocal in the Premier League the last few years, a lot of people think we have always been here. They don’t know the difference between Southampton, Tottenham, West Ham and Liverpool.

The American public has a short knowledge base so for us to come in with Under Armour now is going to empower us because their fan base if you look at their internet platform have 150m people following them. It’s a huge opportunity for us to grow.

Krueger on taking the first team to the US for a tour…

We are definitely in conversations and in the next few weeks, right after the season, we will be saying our plans, and we are looking into those kind of options right now.

For us it’s really important that we are going to do, number one, what’s best for the team to be ready in the middle of August. All these discussions are going on in combination with Ronald and the staff.

We won’t go from zero to 100. It’s a not a thing where suddenly we are going to be a commercial brand and go around the world and we lose our first four games.

The good thing about my sport background and me being a Ronald from another sport for 25 years is that I totally get that, so we are doing this in combination with him.

That’s why we are being really careful in what we do. We don’t want to suddenly become this commercial property going around, and our players aren’t ready for that either.

There will be some steps taken this summer of growth and then we can evolve to be able to do some tours and things.

When we put the programme together everybody is involved and to win the first game on August 13 is the main goal. You won’t look at us a week before and say ‘my goodness we are so tired.’

Krueger on whether Katharina Liebherr’s backing…

We are living within our means here completely. Since we did our ‘Southampton Way’ definition it has been a sensible and responsible business model we have been running here and Katharina is very pleased with that.

We live within our means, we didn’t tap into next year’s TV money this season.

We are have very good business minds in the club to manage that and she is happy with that.

Krueger on the making of the Under Armour deal…

We actually go back to the summer of 2014 and the first conversations where we tried to scope out opportunities.

The Under Armour conversation started in the summer of 2014, and Pancreas station was actually the first serious meeting with Pete (Murray).

We had breakfast in the hotel, and I of course had my laptop with me and was showing videos of us.

It’s been really natural since then.

It has always been a unique relationship in that it just had a natural growth to it through all of our plans which grew out of that.

Peter Murray was the driving connection for me to make this happen at Under Armour.