Southampton finished eighth in the Premier League last season and faced a summer in which they lost five starters and their manager.

But Saints kept its top striker, best defender and their captain while having a payroll estimated to be roughly a third of the front-runners.

The club is currently second in the Premier League.

“This summer was as uncomfortable as I’ve ever been as a leader,” said Ralph Krueger, the club’s chairman. “There is not a person inside this club that will honestly tell you they didn’t have a day, or a lot of days, where they weren’t afraid or that it wasn’t difficult. It was. It absolutely was. But we stuck with our plan. And it is working.”

The Southampton Way, as it is known, revolves around “breaking mythologies,” Reed said. The top priority for the club remains developing talent, something its academy had done historically — Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain all came out of Southampton’s youth teams — but with a greater focus and purpose.

The on-field tactics of manager Ronald Koeman match Southampton's larger off-field model.

“We keep the way of playing the same, whether we play away or at home, whether against Liverpool or Manchester City,” Koeman said. “It doesn’t matter. We are who we are.”