According to the Daily Mirror Saints are about to present Ronald Koeman with a five year plan for the club to persuade him that St Mary's is where he should stay.

Ronald Koeman has had a superb two seasons in charge at St Mary's, after the turmoil of the summer of 2014 hopes amongst Saints supporters were not very high, but the Dutchman completely rebuilt the squad and led the team to its highest league finish in decades and the first qualification for Europe from a league position in three decades.

This season has had it's ups and down but the team is still in with a shout for the end of season European places and is moving forward.

The only cloud on the horizon is that Ronald Koeman only has a year left on his contract and his work at St Mary's has seen his stock rise in World football as a manager.

Now according to the Daily Mirror Saints are about to try and persuade Koeman that his long term future is at St Mary's and that they have the ambition to match his own.

They are allegedly about to present him with a five year blueprint that will outline just what the club is intending to achieve in that period including not only the direction of the club, but the transfer strategy and even how they plan to improve the academy etc, in short a detailed blueprint that will hopefully see the club take further steps forward to build on the last two years and part of that is hopefully having Koeman at the helm.

Saints supporters will hope that the document enthuses the Dutch manager and is a good basis in which to persuade him to tie his own future at the club.

Hopefully that will be the case and Ronald will see the foundations of what he has built and will want to stay on and finish the job, but even if he does not stay beyond his current deal ending in the summer of 2017, the fact that the club has such a vision of its future is good news as managers do come and go in football, we clearly know the type of manager we want, Ronald Koeman fits that bill ideally, but if his time here does come to an end then there is a good chance that we will again as in the past get the right man in to keep taking the club forward.

Photo: Action Images

steadyeddie added 23:48 - Mar 28 Interesting Times ahead.
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BoondockSaint added 23:50 - Mar 28 It helps Saints that all the glamour jobs in the Prem have been filled, or in the ManU/Jose situation, about to be filled. Saints have not charged up the table as maybe they should have, so you can rule out Real and Barca. Chelski usually don't shop in the Prem so the only worry is German or Dutch clubs. So this is still the best fit for him, as I have said before it's a dream job for a manager: Decent-sized club with room to grow, established in the richest, most competitive league in the whole, and most importantly, to a manager: an owner who is stable financially and mentally. Plus, Rafa beat him to the Newcastle job.............

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helpineedsomebody added 07:27 - Mar 29 can he afford to turn down a £40 million pound contract
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DPeps added 08:43 - Mar 29 Of course it'd be great if RK signed another contract but it doesn't need to be a disaster if he decides to move on. The club is bigger than one man, and the underlying structure of the club means that we should be able to move on. We've done alright since MoPo left! We'd be an attractive prospect to other young managers. The worst thing would be for next season to be a write-off due to endless speculation about the future of RK and the players he's brought in.

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SonicBoom added 09:15 - Mar 29 I can't say I believe this. Would the club really be developing a 5 year plan to "present" to Ron. If we are developing a five year plan the sensible thing to do would be to involve Ron in that planning. The more involved he is in the planning the more he would feel invested in it.
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sidsaint added 09:18 - Mar 29 Leicester's success may convince RK that the stranglehold of the big 4 can be broken and CL football is possible for the "unfashionable" clubs. He would need a lot of autonomy and be able to end the annual exit of our better players as well as being able to bring in players who would take us to the next level.
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halftimeorange added 11:14 - Mar 29 If Ron does do a runner I think we have a ready-made replacement in Manual Pellegrini who has intimated that he would be happy to continue in the EPL with an ambitious but not necessarily big six club. His success at both Villareal and Malaga plus his unassuming and courteous demeanour would seem to me to make him an ideal candidate for Saints. He always bemoaned not being given the opportunity to build a team in his short time at Real Madrid. Of course, I'd like RK to stay but, if not, and we have a five-year plan which the board is prepared to resource, it might not be the end of the world in terms of our footballing dreams.

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SaintNick added 11:42 - Mar 29 I would imagine and indeed hope that we have been speaking to Ronald in putting this blueprint together,however it is a blueprint not a tablet of stone so there is plenty of opportunity for him to add his input Im sure the club know what he wants etc going forward
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SaintPaulVW added 12:14 - Mar 29 If true, basically it's going to be 'Cortese-lite' isn't it. Seems like he was just slightly ahead of his time.
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SaintNick added 14:26 - Mar 29 If you want to be pedantic, the blueprint for the academy and training ground, directors of football, dieticians, statistics etc was drawn up by Rupert Lowe who was laughed out of the house when he wanted to bring in Clive Woodward to oversee it all . Harry Redknapp lead the ridicule quoting about how England won the world cup discussing tactics in a cafe in west ham

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SaintBrock added 14:29 - Mar 29 This story is hardly newsworthy is it? Common sense alone tells us that the subject of Koeman's future must be a main topic of conversation at the club at board level. Koeman knows very well that there is much speculation about him in the press that he could quite easily put to bed but he chooses not to. That's what should be of concern to fans. He'll do his obligatory three years and be off. An important question then will be how many of his coaching team will go with him? Sammy & Dave are no doubt Les's men (FA and all that) and will stay but Erwin and the Dutch contingent most likely will walk with him.

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IWOZTHERE added 14:59 - Mar 29 Big summer coming up. A very important one with our close rivals invested with the increased TV money. If Ron doesn't sign an extension is the club going to have the confidence to give him the funds to strengthen the squad?
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SonicBoom added 15:45 - Mar 29 Exactly. Who will join a club knowing the coach is in his last year. Player like the stability of knowing who the coach is going to be.
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helpineedsomebody added 16:34 - Mar 29 its like the chicken or the egg what comes 1st there are no top 4 jobs available here & none in europe & where in europe can a team pay the money that the epl can offer my only concern is if the england job comes up nobody turns down england
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saintsnutcase added 16:53 - Mar 29 I don't think Koeman is going anywhere this summer. My concern is that the Arsenal board seem to want him to succeed Wenger in summer 2017. That's a hard job to turn down.
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saintsnutcase added 16:53 - Mar 29 I don't think Koeman is going anywhere this summer. My concern is that the Arsenal board seem to want him to succeed Wenger in summer 2017. That's a hard job to turn down.
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SanMarco added 22:45 - Mar 29 I think Barca or the Holland job or maybe Spurs when MoPo deserts them. And of course the scenario that saintsnutcase so eloquently makes, so good it was worth saying twice!! It is true the Arsenal job will have to become vacant soon, but then I have thought that for years... I believe Ron will see out his three years with us though.
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aceofthebase added 08:57 - Mar 30 My concern is that no-one will remember what is a blue-print!
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SaintBrock added 14:30 - Mar 30 Funny old term indeed, aceofthebase, 'Blueprint' hasn't been in use since the end of the second world war so even older fans would struggle to tell you what it is! Hardly a good advert for modernity. CAD projection or Spreadsheet might have been more convincing or there's probably an i Phone 6S app for it.
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