Saints would be keen to eventually look at an expansion of St Mary’s – but have said it could only happen with a significant run of sell-outs at the stadium.

Increasing the capacity of the 32,000-capacity ground is something that has long been mooted, and it is a debate that has gathered a bit of pace ever since the club returned to the Premier League in 2012.

Chairman Ralph Krueger confirmed Saints would indeed like to consider expansion at some point, if circumstances were right, but for now they are satisfied with the size of the stadium.

In the more immediate future, the club are forming plans to improve some of the facilities already contained within St Mary’s.

“Within the stadium structure, I think we’re happy,” he said.

“Once we have no seats empty for a multiple row of games we’d love to look at expansion, but we’re still fighting to make sure the seats are filled every game.

“We’re sure we have a product where that’s going to be happening on a regular basis, but within the building itself we’re looking at opportunities of developing stronger segments, also in the restaurants and the VIP sections and so on.”

When Krueger arrived at Saints in March, he described finishing the training ground as “priority one”, with improving the stadium “priority two”.

He reported there is still plenty of work to do at Staplewood, but that the facilities for Ronald Koeman’s squad are now complete.

“The first-team training part of the academy is done,” said Krueger, who was speaking while visiting the Sunseeker stand at this year’s PSP Southampton Boat Show.

“We still have plans to continue with classrooms and annex building that are still in the works, so it’s not finished.

“It’s going to be a project that goes on for a long time still – a domed 3G pitch and all those (things) – but we definitely want to focus on that more than anything and continue to finish that before we can look at the stadium.”

An expansion of St Mary’s is possible, with the stadium constructed in such a way that only the Itchen Stand cannot currently be extended upwards.

Even a modest increase in size would be costly, though.

When the issue was publicly discussed in 2003, on the back of the club’s appearance in the FA Cup final, then chairman Rupert Lowe estimated the cost of a 5,000 extension would be in the region of £3,000 to £3,500 per seat – or between £15m and £17.5m in total.

An even larger increase would bring enormous additional infrastructure costs so that not just the stadium, but also the surrounding area, could accommodate the extra fans.

Last season, Saints average home crowd in the Premier League was 30,211.

Despite the team’s fine performances and eighth placed finish, that crowd figure was actually down on the 30,212 average from the 2012/13 season.