Saints football director Les Reed this morning made a statement to the media at the club's Staplewood training ground. Here is what he had to say...

"As you know I am member of the board and director of the club and my responsibility is football.

Currently I am responsible for transfers, I’m responsible for contract negotiations and all of those board level football matters that the club is involved in.

I work very very closely with Mauricio, we speak every day and sometimes for several hours in the day and so we are very close and talk a lot about all the matters that go on here.

I think that there is a lot of misinformation out there at the moment that needs clearing up.

The first point I’d like to make is that with regard to Mauricio Pochettino’s contract negotiations that’s my role and we are very happy with the way we are approaching it at the moment.

Let’s clear that up because he’s asked the same question every week.

We talk every day and we are talking about the future - planning, pre-season, planning the transfer strategy. No player will be brought into or leave this club without Mauricio and I discussing it and his agreement. We talk about that on daily basis and we are planning for the future and the long term future.

We would like to focus on the remaining games of the season and Mauricio has repeatedly said that and therefore we will pick up the details of any contract talks in the summer when the season is over.

I would like to reemphasise that we are happy with that - both myself and Mauricio are happy with that – so we can focus on the details of pre-season, transfer market planning and so on. We are both comfortable with the situation.

The second point I’d like to clear up is speculation in the press about our players. That is my responsibility.

As we stand there have been no enquiries, we have had no bids and we have had no offers for any of our players. That’s accurate, that is the truth and that’s exactly where we are.

Reports that we are about to close deals on certain players are totally misinformed, misleading and are not true. No club has been given permission to talk to any of our players so reports that some of our players are in the process of negotiating stellar transfer fees or contracts are absolutely misinformed and inaccurate.

No club has been given permission to talk to any of our players and that will remain so.

As far as the policy in concerned we have had a great season, we want to build on that season, we want to improve the squad going forward, we want to retain the players we’ve got. They are all contracted, they all have existing contracts and we intend to honour those contracts.

Any enquiries we get will probably be met with a ‘no, not for sale.’ Our intention is to keep this very good team together and build on it by bringing in players to improve upon it.

Every transfer window, particularly the summer, is a difficult one because everybody is out there trying to attract players.

We have our targets, we want to improve the squad, these are things we are discussing on a daily basis and we intend to produce a squad that is capable of not just maintaining the position we are in at the moment but improving next season.

It’s a positive message we want to get out there.

Our fans deserve to understand there is not going to be a fire sale here and we have repeatedly said that.

We have had no offers for players, deals are not about to be concluded for any of our players, and we want to keep all of our best players here at the club and build on that for the future.

That is all I want to say and I don’t want to take any questions on it, I want to deliver the accurate picture of where we stand at the moment because of the speculation that is going on."