Ronald Koeman has spoken of his disappointment of leaving St Mary's, but is he telling the whole truth ?
Ronald Koeman has spoken in the press as to why he is no longer Southampton manager claiming that it was because he was unhappy with their contract offer at the end of last season, but is this just a smokescreen.
What the now Everton manager is saying is slightly contradictory as to what he has said before and even in what he is saying now.
Koeman told the Premier League show
'The main reason was that we did not agree about my last year of contract. I mentioned to the club I would like to continue, and go into my last year then during the season we would have time to discuss about the future.
'There was no way for the club to do that, they came with the new offer and I was really disappointed about the offer to continue in Southampton.
'With Everton, you start to listen to the project, and I say ok, it’s a good time to move now, because it may be impossible to keep that level with Southampton.'
So given that Koeman was happy to continue at Saints into the final year of his new contract and wanted to negotiate new terms during the following season, why would he be unhappy at being offered a new deal for more money ?
Yes of course it might not have been as much as he would have hoped, but he knows more than most that contracts are negotiated and that both sides start from opposite ends and hopefully find common ground in the middle.
If every player and manager who was offered a contract by a football club walked out after the first offer figure then no one would ever sign a deal.
At the time Koeman was very public about the fact that he did not want to sign a new deal for three years, he wanted a rolling one year deal as he had had at Feyenoord, this of course left him easily able to leave for little compensation should his dream jobs at Barcelona or as Holland manager become available.
Understandably Saints wanted a little more stability, Koeman had signed a three year deal in 2014, they wanted a similar length of time now, Saints have a structure and they wanted to do as much as possible to make sure that the structure was stable.
The situation changed when Everton suddenly kept upping their offer, from derisory figures that Koeman felt able to turn down as it was little better than what he was on at Saints and indeed if sources close to Saints are believed then initially Saints more than matched Everton's intial offers.
When Koeman left St Mary's after the final game he fully expected to be returning as Saints manager after a short holiday, contract talks were ongoing and whilst Saints were not happy that Koeman had not agreed a deal the truth was the issues were concerning the length of the deal rather than monetary.
But then something changed !
That something was Koeman changed his agent !
Then the game changed, new agent Rob Jansen was rumoured to have close links with Everton shareholder Farhad Moshiri and it seemed from then on both Everton FC and Rob Jansen were determined to get their man at any cost.
It would be any cost, Koeman's contract at Everton was somewhere between £6 - 7 million depending on what report you believed, to put it in context he was now in the top 6 highest paid football managers in the World at more than double what Everton had originally offered and indeed the last figure that Saints had put on the table.
Saints offer was just short of the deal that Mauricio Pochettino had signed at Tottenham, that probably tells you that although we were not willing to pay what the likes of Manchester United, City or Chelsea where, we were serious competitors outside of that clique.
At the start of May Saints first offer was lower than perhaps Koeman had expected but it would still have put him in the top 7 highest paid managers in the Premier League this season and the improved offer would have made him 6th.
In context he is still sixth highest after the latest raft of changes, but he is on nearly double that of Pochettino in 7th.
The stumbling block for Koeman was always the length of the contract and not money, indeed as recently as March he had said he could not understand why managers took jobs merely for the pay packet.
Bu every man has his price and the fact is Koeman was offered far more than any other club was prepared to offer him, so his morals went out of the window.
Now perhaps he has time to think bout it you sense that he is not happy with the decision he has made, he will talk about the Everton project, but so far Moshiri the man who has lured him to Everton hasn't put the transfer kitty on the table, Everton have barely spent the £50 million received for John Stones, let alone the £100 million extra that Koeman was promised.
A decent start to the season is now seeing results tail off and only one win in the last 6 Premier League games aligned with 3 defeats sees Koeman at a crossroads, they have some winnable games in the next six as well as some toughies, by the end of the year Everton will know where they stand.
Opinion polls on Everton fan websites showed that only 65% were happy with him and 35% wanted him out, of course these polls are very knee jerk and came after a crushing defeat at Chelsea, but the Everton fans knew their team had played without passion, something that could rarely be levelled at him as manager of Saints.
So it seems that in speaking out Koeman is perhaps not wanting just to convince the footballing public that he loves his new job and does not regret leaving St Mary's, he is trying to convince himself.
Deep down he knows that he went back on everything he has stood for in football and I don't think he is completely comfortable with that.
I loved Ronald Koeman during his time at Saints and I cannot deny I was devastated by his departure, however everything moves on and I knew that certainly included footbal managers.
Now I think we may just have a better fit for the job than Koeman, Claude Puel is more in tandem with what we are trying to achieve and how we are gong to achieve it, we will build foundations and although it is a footballing fact that we cannot take on the big clubs in monetary terms, we can take them on on our own terms and that means developing talent and keeping doing so.
That is the reason behind three top ten finishes, we are not throwing money at problems year in year out like Manchester United, Liverpool or no supposedly Everton, we are building solidly and that is why we have competed against all three of these clubs and indeed finished above them in recent years.
Deep down I think Ronald Koeman wishes he was still at St Mary's building these foundations with a patient well structured club behind him, rather than where he is now with both a major shareholder and a fanbase demanding things that cannot be delivered in the current Premier League footballing structure.
An FA Cup semi final and a top 11 finish was not enough to keep Roberto Martinez in the job, but realistically can Koeman take Everton higher than 7th ?
When Ronald Koeman returns to Southampton next weekend he should be warmly welcomed, he did a superb job, sadly he was not the man we thought he was, but I think deep down the man who knows that fact the most is Ronald Koeman himself !