https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2023-05-22/southampton-football-club-statement-22nd-may-2023 Semmens out and SR taking a more hands on role, essentially. I'm not convinced, personally.
To be fair it does say Wilcox will oversee and review the football side of the club. Also Semmens will now be able to spend time with his wife and children rather than spend time watching Saints play.
Happy that Dragan seems to be saying "sod this, I'm coming in", so hopefully that will put some constraints on Danish Jesus.
Changes coming at all levels (hopefully on the pitch too), i'm optimistic that it marks the start of more positive era for the club.
At least it is a recognition that they gt things wrong in 2022 /23 - something they did not appear to accept when the board members met a selection of Saints fans back in February. This year's Saints' fans forum will be interesting and I wonder what the response will be with ticketing for this event?
Totally predictable and have thought for sometime that the end of this horrific season would see a pretty brutal recognition of errors made. There's more to come, this is just the start.
Big announcement. Sports Republic are taking over control of the club with immediate effect. That's a relief as the last people running the club were utter ****e and we've now been relegated. Oh wait a minute that was you too. Hang on a minute this is nonsense. You're both sports Republic. I'm not stupid.
Got this from a saints group on FB Should we be worried ? Keith Burrow in my opinion Keith they wish to control EVERY aspect including appointing the coach who is in experienced at coaching ( Jones/Selles/Martin are examples ), and use the club as a cash cow, which will be easier in the Championship than the larger and wealthy clubs in the Premier League. Clearly buying all the youngsters in the summer was a strong indication as those youngsters would never keep us up, but an experienced goal scorer and goal keeper would have given us a chance to stay in the Premier League. Neither were bought. Strange that?. Moreover the same outcome in the first season has happened to us as the Turkish club that Sports Pathetic bought. They bought youngsters, went down in the first season , and sold some youngsters on making a profit on them who wanted to play in the league above that they had got relegated from. Sounds abit familiar? How much do we now get as a parachute payment? This in my opinion goes such a long to explain why coaches like Big Sam, Potter, Rodgers, Dyche would never have been even approached. They would not have been happy to be manipulated.
This was always coming. Tanking someone’s investment usually tends to focus minds and Dragan embedding himself in things more doesn’t surprise me. The clock had been ticking on Martin Semmens for a while. I’m not leaping for joy that he’s gone - and think he deserves a lot of praise for steadying the ship and not flapping in the Gao years - but this is probably the right move at this moment in time. Interested to see who the incoming CEO is.
Fair enough, there has obviously been some jumbled up thinking over the last year between respecting the “achievements” of Semmens/Ralph/Crocker for keeping the lights on and SR wanting to do whatever it is their computer tells them. the broom has swept clean, let’s see what happens
I’ve got a lot of respect for the Semmelweis and team that kept us in the EPL thru the Gao years. They delivered some fantastic signings and results with a veritable shoestring budget. SR have ****ed it all up. There’s no other way to describe it, mostly awful signings and the less said about football and results the better. So this news that isnt really news is def not good and SR have got a hell of a lot of work to do simply to get the club back to where it was when they acquired it. So, Thanks Martin Semmens and team, I’m sure this season has hurt you guys more than most.
As someone who has been previously involved in take overs. , the only surprise is that the clear out didn’t happen much earlier than now.
Should we be worried that there are Saints groups on Facebook spouting utter ****e? Nah, don’t think so. It’s what social media was created for.
