This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…
The Athletic’s well-respected David Ornstein has been at it again with his weekly Monday column, in which he outlines some of his inside knowledge on a number of football clubs.
As well as Arsenal, QPR and Wolves, Ornstein details an update on the happenings at Southampton under unpopular owner Gao Jisheng .
Ornstein outlines the difficulties that some people who were interested in succeeding Ross Wilson as Director of Football faced when attempting to apply for the role.
What did he say?
Ornstein wrote the following: ‘The Athletic knows of several people interested in the two vacant positions who could not find anybody to contact at the club and ended up going through the long-serving club secretary, Ros Wheeler. Sources say this is virtually unheard of at Premier League level for such high-profile enquiries.
‘Another potential candidate is understood to have been similarly perplexed about how to apply for Wilson’s old job. Southampton chief executive Martin Semmens’ background is in business development rather than football, so The Athletic has been told the prospective employee decided to get his CV translated into Mandarin so he could send it to Southampton’s Chinese owner Gao Jisheng directly.’
Another sign of the shambles under Gao
Since Gao Jisheng took the reins at St Mary’s, things really have been all over the place.
Aside from the Saints’ poor form out on the pitch, things have been amateurish behind the scenes with the club still yet to find suitable replacements for Les Reed and Ralph Krueger.
Additionally, The Independent revealed that Gao wants to sell his 80% share despite only purchasing it in late 2017, while The Telegraph also report that the Chinese tycoon has given Ralph Hasenhuttl ‘limited funds’ to work with in January despite the squad being in need of some additions, especially at full-back.
Furthermore, Gao’s silence towards the supporters has been deafening and extremely frustrating – these fans on Twitter made their thoughts clear towards their owner just last month.
So, to now see that people interested in vacant roles can’t even apply with relative ease – which is quite frankly a ludicrous situation for a Premier League club to be in – is a further sign of the shambles caused by Gao.
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