Koeman: Grass not greener

Southampton boss Ronald Koeman believes leaving Southampton was a mistake for a number of players last summer.

The Saints face a Liverpool team at St Mary’s on Sunday that plundered Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Dejan Lovren from their ranks for a combined fee of just under £50m.

Luke Shaw also left for Manchester United, while Calum Chambers joined Arsenal and the raft of departures prompted football pundits up and down the country to predict a tough season for Southampton.

However that has been far from the case and the Saints enter the final 13 matches of the season in a scarcely-believable fifth place, with a game in hand on the four teams above them.

Money matters?
The players who left Southampton have enjoyed varying degrees of success and Koeman believes the decision to leave has been shown to be a mistake for some of them.

"A reason to move is not always for the player to do about football," Koeman said. "Maybe it's about money.

"We can't pay salaries like the big teams in the Premier League pay. It's always less here.

"If you stay, you stay for different reasons. You stay for the fact you are more sure that you play every weekend and it's not too early - it's about the age of the player and about the experience of the player.

"But I think it's normal that you will lose players if you don't play every season in the Champions League because it's the intention for every player to be part of that."

Develop here
Koeman was asked if Southampton appear to have purer footballing ideals with a great focus on development and he agreed, using Chambers to make his point.

"That's true, but, in my opinion, that's about players like Chambers," he said.

"I said to Chambers 'really, I don't think so that's a good moment to change and to go to Arsenal because I think you need to develop yourself much more than you are now'.

"Normally, you will play here much more than you will play at Arsenal, but finally it's always the decision of the player."

This summer may see more big-name departures from Southampton, Koeman has recently admitted as much, albeit not on the same scale as last year.

Morgan Schneiderlin, Nathaniel Clyne and Jay Rodriguez are those most strongly linked with a move to pastures new, yet Saints' qualification for Europe could well sway them to stay.

"I think this season it's a good possibility," Koeman said of Saints' chances reaching the Champions League.

"It was a good possibility for other teams as well, but what I said before these kind of teams are never struggling a whole season, they're always coming back.

"They have real quality in the team and numbers in the team to finish on a good position in the table."