Southampton have held positive talks with Mark Hughes over a permanent new managerial contract, with an announcement now likely before the end of the week.

All sides are keen to prolong what was an initial 10-week partnership after Hughes oversaw Southampton’s survival in the Premier League with a dramatic away win at Swansea and, with the players and fans also keen for him to stay, the fine details are being discussed.

Southampton’s previous two managers - Claude Puel and Mauricio Pellegrino were replaced within a year – and, while the contract on offer to Hughes is again likely to be up to three years, it may be more performance-orientated or include some type of break clause.

The overriding sense among the Southampton hierarchy, though, is that Hughes and his staff, Mark Bowen and Eddie Niedzwiecki, have done an outstanding job and that the feel-good factor they have inspired can now be used as a springboard going into next season.

In an interview today with The Telegraph, Southampton chairman Ralph Krueger said that Hughes, Bowen and Niedzwiecki had been the “perfect” fit at a moment of crisis. “They did an amazing job,” he said. “We kind of had a promotion feeling at the end because we were five points adrift after the Chelsea game in April. That was scary – that was when I really felt the abyss. Relegation from the Premier League is the single biggest drop in professional sports anywhere in the world.

Hughes oversaw Southampton’s survival in the Premier League with a dramatic away win at Swansea credit: Getty Images

“Mark and his team came at the right time, with the right tone, into the right space with the right experience. The star were aligned. Within a week, it was like they had always been there. We felt a sense of discipline that was needed.

“I think they are just at a real good place in their careers for a club like Southampton. We get that huge experience with an aspiration that is very focused on team and not self.

“We are now in conversations. I feel this could be a project for them. The players believed in what they were doing and bought into it. Everyone was connected on the pitch.”

The club’s transfer strategy will almost certainly also form part of those talks and, after attempting to keep Virgil van Dijk last season before eventually selling him in the January, Krueger wants Southampton to again prioritise squad unity in their decisions this summer.

“We consolidated our squad last summer, we didn’t sell anyone we didn’t want to sell for the first time,” said Krueger. “Retrospectively we gave up our Southampton way of building a team. We stopped the pathway through to the big teams, did things out of character.

Krueger wants Southampton to again prioritise squad unity in their decisions this summer credit: Getty Images

“For a club like Southampton, everything begins with a group of players who really want to be here. Let’s get back to that. We should also have been quicker in our response to all the [early season] draws. I don’t think we felt the desperation enough.

“I take responsibility for how, as a board, we thought Southampton really needed to consolidate to go to the next level. It wasn’t. An overambitious club stumbled on its own ambitious and needed a regroup and a reboot.”

Krueger, then, is repeatedly adamant that it would be unfair to simply blame Pellegrino or indeed Puel for the slide but did feel that it became hard to identify any consistency in selection during almost two years between Ronald Koeman and Hughes.

There is no comparable situation to Van Dijk looming over the club this summer but their two full-backs, Ryan Bertrand and Cedric, have respectively attracted interest from Manchester City and Barcelona. Both still have two years remaining on their contracts and, should big offers come in, it is clear that Southampton will open their ears and not again want team spirit to be threatened.

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The future of executive director Les Reed is also likely to depend on talks with the club’s new majority owners, the Chinese Gao family, about his ongoing control over the football operations.

So far, the Gaos have had complete faith in the existing executive team to drive the club’s direction and transfer strategy. Krueger sits on both the football and ownership boards and is confident that they will emerge stronger for going so close to relegation.

“Les Reed and Ross Wilson [the recruitment chief] are excellent leaders in our football department,” he said. “We have to see the bigger picture – we don’t need a wholesale change here. We need to take a few percentage points, fix those and we can surge back up. That’s our reality.

“On average we were the best of the rest for four years. Where we would like to be is sat in that range and, once in a while, p*** off the big boys. We want to get back to that again.

“Our metal has been tested. Either we were going to break apart or we were going to come together and fight for the cause.

“The first feeling is relief but I’m very proud of how we came together in the final stretch and I mean everybody who cared about Southampton FC. You felt this unbelievable hunger to stay in the Premier League.”