Southampton chairman Ralph Krueger says talks over the futures of Morgan Schneiderlin and Nathaniel Clyne are healthy and respectful

Eight new signings were made for the first-team during an incredible window 12 months ago, with a number of high-profile stars also exiting St Mary’s.

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Once again, the futures of some of Saints’ top players – specifically Nathaniel Clyne, who has already been the subject of a failed £10m bid from Liverpool, Morgan Schneiderlin and Toby Alderweireld – are clouded by uncertainty.

Krueger refused to drawn on specifics on those matters, other than to say “healthy and respectful conversations” were taking place with Clyne and Schneiderlin, while the club are continuing their attempts to bring on-loan Atletico Madrid defender Alderweireld back next season.

However, he explained it is natural players will sometimes want to move on – yet insisted the club believe they can keep the current level of the squad together.

“Maintaining the squad strength we have right now would already be a huge step for Southampton Football Club, because the continuity in the group will create synergies within the team that will already make you a better squad,” he said.

“So anything we add to this group would already be a huge step, because keeping the group together itself, or this level, is the minimum goal that we have and we believe we can fulfil that.”

Saints chairman Ralph Krueger

Krueger, who said Saints will continue their policy of maintaining public and private silence on transfer matters even if others do not, added: “Do we believe that all players will always stay in Southampton and will never change their team? No.

“It’s a natural thing, it’s a natural progression of a club that players leave and players come.

“You’d like to keep the numbers at a healthy level, because what happens is, if the numbers are too high, the risk becomes much larger, because you can miss and people don’t fit and there’s no synergy.

“Overall there were eight new players that played serious minutes, plus four or five players from our youth team – so we almost had 13 players new that ended up playing in the squad last year, and it worked.

“Now, you can’t expect that to happen every year, so you do not want that kind of transition. We want to get those numbers way down.”

Krueger said he is confident if Saints do lose anyone that their recruiting staff, led by Les Reed, will be able to replace them adequately.

He also added that, while a growing revenue means an increased budget, the club will not spend frivolously.

“All we can promise is we will, again, within our means, build the strongest possible squad like we did last year,” he said.

“We would love to have more depth, we would love to have a deeper squad, but a lot will depend on how everything evolves and, just like last summer, we’re going to take it one transaction at a time.”