Southampton

Ralph Krueger plays down Morgan Schneiderlin tweet

By Barney Corkhill, Editor | 05 August 2014

Southampton chairman Ralph Krueger insists that he will not "overreact" to Morgan Schneiderlin's comments that his time at the club has been "destroyed".

Southampton chairman Ralph Krueger has insisted that he will not "overreact" to Morgan Schneiderlin's suggestion that his time at the club has been "destroyed".

Schneiderlin took to Twitter last week to vent his frustration at having been told that he will not be allowed to leave St Mary's this summer.

Krueger has also refused to sanction the sale of Jay Rodriguez as he looks to take the club into a rebuilding phase following a summer full of change.

"We're not the kind of club that right off the bat is going to overreact. The fact of the matter is there is a strategy in place and that we clearly have Morgan and Jay in the centre, as a core players of building this squad going forwards. That is our strategy and we're going to stick with it," he told PA.

"We are now on a building and not in a reducing phase. Very clearly we don't communicate with our players in the public, so he was clearly informed of the fact we were not going to sell him. Immediately after that I communicated with the media about that and that is how we did it. Then he reacted.

"I think whoever reacts in certain ways, there is passion involved here and circumstances. He wasn't [punished for the tweet]. I think that there's situations that evolve where people can be emotional. You shouldn't, as a club, take everything personally and we didn't take that personally."

Southampton have already lost Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana, Luke Shaw, Dejan Lovren and Calum Chambers this summer, as well as manager Mauricio Pochettino.