June 28 – Southampton Football Club, relegated from the Premier League at the end of last season, after a disastrous year under new ownership that saw Serbian money and Scandinavian meddling destroy the fabric of the club, have appointed a new chief executive to clean up the mess.
Appropriately, new CEO Phil Parsons (pictured) comes from home appliances company Dyson, famous for its ‘vacuum’ cleaners. Parsons was president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
His much more geo-specific new role will be focussed on returning Southampton to the Premier League at the first time of asking. Though he will need all his skills at dealing with the owners’ different international cultures and demands on the sunny South coast that was turned very grey with the Sport Republic takeover.
When taking over the club, Sport Republic said that the core of its success – developing through its own academy and buying talent and turning it into Premier League quality – would not be touched.
The reality was that from the day they walked through the front door at St Marys they started meddling with the club’s core foundation – it’s performance structure.
Key staff were sidelined (head of development Matt Crocker is now Sporting Director for the US Soccer Federation and preparing teams for World Cups) and staff brought in with a different player development strategy.
The new ownership proved to be a disaster looking for somewhere to happen as senior players were sidelined for new and ultimately not so talented younger players bought at knockdown fees from the Premier league’s big clubs. Untested players at those clubs for a reason but players who Saints’ new owners believed would keep them in the Premier League and provide them with increased saleable assets in the transfer market.
The new owners rapidly found that staying in the Premier League was not straightforward, the players proved worth nowhere near their acquisition value, and they will find next season that getting back is likely to be more difficult.
The club has already had to reduce costs and Parsons will find that if he is looking to fans to support the club with their own cash he will find a huge amount of disaffection within what is generally a more accepting fanbase, in comparison to other and similar clubs that have spent long terms in the Premier League. Even Saints fans had had enough.
Southampton chairman, Henrik Kraft said: “I’m delighted that Phil has agreed to join the club as our new CEO. He brings with him a wealth of experience in senior business leadership roles for one of the most recognisable and innovative companies in the world and will bring new vision and a fresh approach to the day-to-day running of our business operations.”
Improving business operations is one thing but Saints were a well-run club before. The issue for Saints is not business operations but who they put on the field and who leads those decisions. The ownership have proved themselves incapable of making those decisions. That is a problem Parsons will not be able to clean up, however big a high tech ‘dyson’ he is given.
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