If Saints want to keep Ronald Koeman beyond the current term of his contract then they need to show that they have the same ambition as the Dutchman.
With Ronald Koeman half way through his contract talk is all about whether the Saints manager will stay with the club beyond his current deal that is due to end in the summer of 2017.
Koeman himself is playing down speculation that has been stirred up in the past week in the Daily Echo.
When asked about his future and whether it would be about the club's ambition whether he would stay or not he replied.
"Of course. It’s all about ambition and we will speak about it.
"Still I think it’s too early for that.
"We have to focus on the football side but of course my future in the club is depending the future what the club can do and what the club likes to go forward.
"It’s all about ambition because I hate to stay in a situation there is no ambition.
"Until now, today, the club is showing that ambition and if it continues like that and the club continue like that, and the possibility is to grow and to spend, then of course it will have a big influence in my decision to stay or not to stay.”
But despite what some quarters would like to twist the story into, it is not just about money and spending it on big transfers that will help Koeman decide his future with the club, it is very easy to equate ambition with the amount of money spent on transfers, but it is far more complex than that.
Koeman himself knows the football industry more than most, he like any manager would like as much money to spend as he possibly can, but he is aware that there are many clubs who have suffered catastrophic financial problems due to spending beyond their means.
"What I mentioned the club is doing everything what we can,” he said.
"That’s about maybe for next season and to grow and to bring better players in and still more competition and to grow as a team. Also in different parts of the club the club is growing. "There is much more people in the club working and that needs time. It’s not for today and tomorrow.
"It needs time in five or six years, but of course they need to show that ambition and that’s what I mentioned before that will be a big influence on the decision.”
Koeman's words perhaps show that for him ambition is about having a strategy over a period of time and sticking to that strategy, money was spent in the summer in replacing the two key players who left, indeed Saints spent fractionally more than the £37 million they received for Schneiderlin & Clyne, although it would have been significantly more by the time agents fees etc were added.
Saints problem and it will be one that will never go away is that when they sell a player to a big club and replace him, they firstly will struggle to get a player to replace him of the same quality or at least the same quality immediately, logically it stands that if Saints sell say Schneiderlin for £25 million, firstly if they could find the same quality for the same price, then that player himself would be looking to sign for a club bigger than Saints and for money far in excess than Saints could afford, this is a sad fact of life in football.
So Saints have to follow a path that sees them finding talent that has the potential to become great, as they have done not only for the past 8 years or so, but indeed since the days of Ted Bates.
That talent will take time to blossom, some fans give stick to Jordy Clasie and Cedric Soares and it is true they are still coming to terms with the Premier League, but that is no different to the two players who departed in the summer.
Nathaniel Clyne was awful in his first months in the club and indeed in his second season as far from an automatic selection with the emerging Calum Chambers, Morgan Schneiderlin was usually a regular for Saints and was linked with the likes of Arsenal from his early days, but it was not till the summer of 2014 some six years after his arrival that Saints started receiving serious offers as well as ones from Tottenham Hotspur.
So this perhaps suggests that club's like Saints will always have an existence that will see good seasons punctuated with the odd poor season, the trick is to make the poor season a 10th place finish rather than 15th.
This is perhaps where Saints are at the moment they are in a little transition where new players are finding their feet, but the clue to where Saints lie is where we stand in the table at the moment, we are 12th and that is more down to individual error than the quality of the squad, as players like Clasie & Romeu get better so will results. Indeed Koeman himself said he was happy with the squad he had compiled at the start of the season, that squad like any squad in football can be improved though.
I said at the start of the season that 10 th represents progress and ambition and I still stand by that, as Ronald Koeman said it needs time to build a club and we have to recognise that and realise that the path will not always be smooth.
But in saying this it is time for the club to show their ambition, they are not keen in doing business in January transfer windows due to inflated prices, but moving forward they need to show Koeman that they have the strategy that he wants and that they are willing to invest in the squad.