Five years ago, Mo Gimpel was reusing discarded bits of tape from the dressing room floor, because the club couldn’t afford to buy any of it.

Now, he is in charge of one of the most cutting-edge sports medicine and science departments in the country.

At their state-of-the-art base inside Saints’ revamped Staplewood training ground, Gimpel and his team of doctors, physios, masseurs and other staff are in charge of keeping the club’s players free of injury – and for those who do suffer it, getting them back on the pitch as soon as possible.

It is an area that has come some way since the days of administration in 2009.

Gimpel, the sports medicine and science manager, puts that progress down to the vision of late owner Markus Liebherr.

He explained: “He [Liebherr] said ‘I want the department to be the best in the country within three years’.

“The previous weekend I’m picking up bits of tape from the away dressing room that I can reuse, because we couldn’t afford to buy any.

“That took me about a year to get my head around, that this guy is actually serious and I’ve really got to think about how I’m going to achieve this.”

Gimpel and his staff set about looking at what had worked elsewhere, visiting organisations and clubs around the world, such as the Australian Institute of Sport and the Sky cycling team.

It clearly worked.

In fact, there isn’t an aspect of player care that doesn’t seem to have been thought about, with the attention to detail going as far as researching what lighting and smells to use in the Staplewood treatment rooms to aid recovery.

Even previous manager Mauricio Pochettino’s famously intense style of training and playing wasn’t too much for them.

“For those last two years, we had the lowest soft tissue injury rates in the Premier League, while at the same time we had the highest physical output,” said Gimpel.

“Football players, if they are trained right and managed right, shouldn’t get injured, although, obviously, there’s trauma (injuries), and trauma’s something that you just have to deal with.”

Gimpel explained it was during the League One days when he realised they really needed to change.

He said: “If we didn’t play with Adam Lallana, our chances of winning the game significantly reduced, so we realised then we had to change the way we worked as a department and, in those days, find the key players who needed to stay on the pitch and put our resources to there – Barcelona did the same thing a few years ago with their key six players.”

Gimpel acknowledges clubs like Barcelona and Chelsea have more games to deal with, though.

“Should we get in the Champions League, that’s a whole different kettle of fish,” he said.

“We tend to have a bigger rest period between our games, because we’re not in those competitions.”

But when do Saints start planning for such eventualities?

“We already have,” said Gimpel.