Saints have a masterplan to win the league which includes custom-made beds, birthday cards for WAGs and saliva tests.... it sounds bonkers but it's working!



In the centre of a practice pitch at Southampton’s Marchwood training centre, Mauricio Pochettino is demanding that little bit extra from his players.

‘Come on, come on, come on,’ he shouts with increasing cadence as Gaston Ramirez volleys into the net a cross from the improving left foot of Nathaniel Clyne during this high-tempo shooting exercise.

It’s an absorbing session to watch as James Ward-Prowse, a thoroughly charming individual, listens intently to the Southampton manager’s instructions. Pochettino speaks to him in perfect English.

Oh what fun: Mauricio Pochettino is part of a plan to get Southampton challenging for the Premier League Plans: Next season Southampton will train at a new £30million training ground at the edge of the New Forest

All smiles: Saints boss Mauricio Pochettino shares a joke with youngster Luke Shaw

The Saints are preparing for tomorrow’s clash at Chelsea and anticipation is filling the air. Defeat at Arsenal last weekend hurt this upwardly mobile team.

They had begun at the Emirates with six English players: Clyne, Luke Shaw, captain Adam Lallana, Jay Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert and Ward-Prowse. Chairman Nicola Cortese harbours an ambition to field 11.

This club has become the envy of English football, a beacon for promoting bright young talent and everyone wants to know the secrets of Southampton’s success.

On the sidelines a delegation from the Polish FA is watching Saints keeper Artur Boruc flinging himself across his goal to claw away crisp strikes from Lambert and Dani Osvaldo. There are no Cruyff-turns today.

Some of Southampton’s Under-21 development squad sneak around the corner like naughty schoolboys for a peak at the first team session.

Harrison Reed, a substitute at the Emirates last Saturday, is one of them. On January 1, a midfielder who has drawn comparisons to Paul Scholes will be promoted to the first team for good.

Pack of lions: Southampton chairman Nicola Cortese (right) would like to field a team of 11 English players



Furthest from his spying eyes, a few yards behind the goal of Kelvin Davis, an enormous Caterpillar digger is piling earth into an enormous heap. Soon enough this training hub will be transformed into a £30million football factory for the best young players in the country.

There will be 12 practice pitches of varying composition because Barclays Premier League clubs use different types of turf.

Arsenal, for example, use Desso GrassMaster, a hybrid system that has 20 million artificial grass fibres woven into the surface.

When Southampton play at the Emirates next season, they will switch training pitches in the build-up to the game and practise on their own Desso surface.

By then the temporary huts that overwhelm you with the reek of stale sweat, mud on boots and Louis Vuitton shower gel when you walk down the corridors will be gone.

One to watch: Harrison Reed, who has been compared to Paul Scholes, was on the bench against Arsenal

They are to be replaced by a fabulous new structure at the edge of the New Forest that will be finished in time for the start of next season.

Inside there is the ‘Black Box’, a room where every game, every team and every player from the seven best leagues in Europe will be analysed by Southampton’s team of 26 technical staff. In time they will have the capacity to monitor leagues all over the world.

The refinement means they will never sign a player in a panic on transfer deadline day or splurge unnecessary cash to shore up their defence. Southampton’s searches are prolonged.

One of this season’s finds is Croatian central defender Dejan Lovren, a £7m steal from French club Lyon in the summer. After being alerted to Lovren’s potential, Southampton’s head of recruitment Paul Mitchell ran one of the most sophisticated background checks in the club’s history.

Lovren is already worth three times his fee, but Southampton are not a selling club.

The players love being at St Mary’s, a place where every member of staff and every WAG receives a birthday card signed by Cortese.

Big impact: Southampton signed Dejan Lovren (left) from Lyon after a sophisticated background check

In the corridors of power they still laugh about the baby boom among the playing staff that followed the firework party at St Mary’s when they won promotion from the Championship in 2012.

Cortese is behind the club’s transformation and this smart, sharp Italian is responsible for a culture that he has branded ‘The Southampton Way’.

He is not the tyrannical monster so often portrayed. In the refurbished offices at St Mary’s, which could easily be mistaken for a business class lounge at an airport or boutique hotel, Cortese plans for the future.

A video presentation, not surprisingly titled The Southampton Way, offers a fascinating insight into the aspirational culture of the club. There are videos of Barcelona pressing the opposition, sucking the life out of teams when they are without the ball and forcing them to make errors.

There are cutaways of Southampton’s Championship team playing a very different game, with players chasing after the ball like rabid dogs. The evolution of the team, from League One to the Premier League, is astonishing.



At the end of the film, a message runs across the foot of the screen asking not ‘if’ Southampton can win the Premier League, but ‘how’.

This is Cortese’s vision. To work at St Mary’s it’s immediately obvious that everyone must match his ambition and drive if they are to succeed in this environment.

Big call: Chairman Nicola Cortese (left) sacked Nigel Adkins and replaced him with Mauricio Pochettino (right)



The attention to detail is frightening. At Cortese’s insistence, every club car has just been fitted with winter tyres in anticipation of the chilly spell.

There is a modern-day corporate culture, with staff encouraged to mix in a break-out area and share a mid-morning coffee rather than sit at their desks and spill it all over their Macs.

On each desktop screen the club’s forthcoming fixtures are displayed, a reminder that every member of staff shares the same vision. Southampton’s players are thriving here.

Back in the main car park at the training ground, which will soon be dug up and turned into a goalkeepers’ practice area, a white van is being loaded with tailored mattresses to be taken to the team hotel in Kensington, London.

The players need a good night’s sleep and this neat idea, borrowed from the world of cycling, is a home comfort for Pochettino’s squad when they are travelling.

Barca style: Southampton play a pressing game high up the pitch in the image of Spanish giants Barcelona

Yesterday afternoon a team of outfitters pulled out each hotel bed and used a high-powered hoover to swallow up every particle of dust in the players’ hotel rooms.

At the start of winter, when radiators are turned on for the first time in months, the air is thick with dust particles carrying germs and all manner of unhealthy bugs.

These small, but impressive, touches are appreciated by the players and they understand the benefits.



Each morning they are required to be at the training ground by 9.15am for a saliva and well-being test before training.

Each first team player answers a Q&A on an iPad relating to how they feel, how well they slept and whether they are fit and fresh.

Within 15 minutes the results of the tests are scanned, analysed and downloaded to Pochettino’s desktop computer. If they are dehydrated, or they try to beat the system, they don’t train.

Muscle in the middle: Victor Wanyama's arrival from Celtic during the summer added some power in midfield

Next season, the junior teams at Southampton’s academy will be presented with mini-iPads with a specially-designed Saints App to monitor their training progress.

It will measure their performance, fitness, skills, with notes from their coaches, as they progress through the Saints system.

On another level former Reading captain Graeme Murty is training with a group of young academy recruits. All of Southampton’s young players are looked after and even travel to the Under-21 development matches in the first team’s Starliner coach.

For a bus, it is beautiful. When the first team arrived at Old Trafford earlier in the season they pulled up alongside United’s team coach and Southampton’s players realised they had travelled in something more luxurious.

They responded with a performance that glistened, drawing 1-1 on a chilly October afternoon against the champions.