If vacating his office is anything like his speeches he will still be here for another couple of seasons
Not most - quite a few recognise that we aren't a big club. We'd like to be (so long as we don't become arrogant tossers like the Liverpool and Man Utd fans). We have ambitions. But right now - gate wise, salary wise, points wise and wealth wise - we are actually quite a small club.
He'll have made that several times over with the Under Armour deal alone. And yes, the Academy is still going strong http://www.soccerfieldacademy.com
BBC reporting that appintment of new Chairman likely to come from within the club. Seems sensible if we have developed a robust succession management plan.
Good luck Ralph, seems like a decent guy and I never got the impression he trod on anyone’s toes. It looks like he continued to expand on the academy programs. This is our USP(in Ralph talk) in the premier league and that reputation is hopefully going to be the foundation for us to remain a solid premier league outfit and continue to attract the best young talent
Cheers for that, nice to see its still going.....strange we never hear anything about it by the club.
Martin Semmens & Tim Greenwell both joined the club around the time of Mr. Gao taking over. Assume they’re his guys and the handover is complete
From memory, I think the idea was to set up a series of Satellite academies across North America under the umbrella of a Baltimore base. Not sure if that was another academy or just an admin base (with Under Armour possibly). There’s a lot of competition on soccer academies around Baltimore so we may not have the same profile there but there is still the Southampton Cup. https://www.elitetournaments.com/tournament/southampton-cup-baltimore-powered-under-armour
Couple more links for those interested... https://www.challengersports.com/southampton-challenger/ https://pumafc.org/southampton-pro-academy/ There’s also an academy in Kansas but won’t accept my IP address.
Why? He's under a long term contract which we gave him when he was on the top of his game. We owe him the loyalty. It would seem though that his chances of getting ahead of McCarhy and Gunn are slim though so giving him playing time with the U23s and helping to find another club where he can revive his career is the decent thing to do. The original point was well made though. £650k a year that was touted for Ralph seems a pretty high salary for most of us but is insignificant compared to the ridiculous money some footballers get. It could worse. You could supporting Everton and paying a lot more than we do for Fraser to see Walcott and Schneiderlin clogging up the changing room!
£650k a year for a CEO/Chair of a huge company really isn't too much. To put it into perspective the CEO of the company I work for (they are US based) took home $14 million last year. Similar turnover.
From what I recall, we very bizarrely gave him a contract extension (and pay rise?) after he had been performing poorly for several months at least. Not that that’s Frasers fault. Why wouldn’t he sign that contract! I also can’t blame him for just sitting out his contract, he’s made the decision he’d rather have the money than try and get back into football. I believe we have tried to help him (which is also helping us) move to other clubs, but it’s always been Fraser to turn it down. Again, that’s his prerogative. The fault lies with whoever decided it was a good idea to offer the extension in the first place considering he was already in a prolonged period of poor form AND his contract had several years left on it before it was extended anyway. People called it at the time as a bizarre and bad decision, they’ve been proved correct. I agree that Ralph’s salary isn’t/wasn’t an issue. Our massively bloated squad of average players on good money is the problem.
