With Ralph Hasenhuttl looking set to be named new Saints manager in the next 24 hours it looks like Saints are returning to their original blueprint in appointing the Austrian.
Initially the appointment of Ralph Hasenhuttl does not look an exciting one for Saints fans, indeed very few would have heard of him prior to the weekend, however on a closer examination his managerial record is a lot better than you would think and comparisons could be drawn with Mauricio Pochettino another name whom few had heard of when he was appointed Saints boss in January 2013.
What it shows though is Saints are getting back to the blueprint drawn up by Les Reed when he joined the club in 2010 and built upon since, Reed has had a bad press of late and his sacking was no surprise and although he was not perfect and had his faults you have to acknowledge that from a footballing perspective he was the man calling the shots, after all if a Canadian Ice Hockey coach would have no idea about the footballing side of things then it is fair to say that a Swiss banker would be in no better position.
Reed had to go his last two managerial appointments were not good and his failure to address the issues in central defence following the departure of Jose Fonte were massive faux pas and the biggest factor in losing the 2017 EFL Cup final and our subsequent problems, Reed panicked and did not stick to his guns and once you do that in football then you are lost.
Ralph Hasenhuttl however is a return to the blueprint an up and coming coach with a good enough grounding to take the club forward, the intriguing question is how much does this appointment owe to former Saints head of player recruitment Paul Mitchell, up till the end of last season Hasenhuttl worked with Mitchell at RB Leipzig and indeed Mitchell was recently linked with a return to St Mary's.
But who is Ralph Hasenhuttl ? his surname literally translates to Rabbit Hut but all joking aside he had a fairly average career as a centre forward playing mainly in Austria and Belgium as well as Germany at the end of his career.
He then turned to coaching in 2004 after retiring from playing, starting at SpVgg Unterhaching a team in Germany who play mostly in the third tier, he worked his way up to manager in 2007 before joining another German 3rd tier team VfR Aalen with whome he gained promotion to the Bundesliga 2.
Next up was FC Ingolstadt 04 in October 2013 and it was here that his managerial career started to take off with promotion to the Bundesliga in 2014/15 for the first time in the club's history and subsequently 11th place the following season, but he then chose not to renew his contract and left.
He wasn't unemployed long and soon joined RB Leipzig then newly promoted to the Bundesliga, in his first season he took them to 2nd place and then followed that up with sixth last season before leaving the club in May 2018.
So Hasenhuttl although spending the first ten years of his coaching career in the lower leagues, has really taken off in the last few seasons and rumours persist that Bayern Munich are watching him with interest and Saints had to move fast in case the move was hijacked.
But the most intriguing part of this story is how Saints have identified Hasenhuttl, was this the work of Les Reed ? is our relationship with Paul Mitchell still strong and indeed could he return to replace Les Reed ? or is Ralph Krueger more astute than we have thought, perhaps all will be revealed soon.