The arrival of any new owner into the Premier League sparks a predictable wave of transfer market glee as supporters rush to spend somebody else’s money – Announce Mbappe-itis. But Southampton are not Newcastle United. There have been precious few composite XIs crowbarring faded superstars alongside Jan Bednarek and Che Adams who end up looking like old furniture in a renovated home.
Sport Republic, Southampton’s new owners, are an investment firm aiming to build a nexus of clubs across the world and have started on England’s south coast. They are backed by Serbian billionaire Dragan Solak, though the intention is not to spend freely but to build a long-term project with Southampton at the epicentre. Think Red Bull, without the bubbles.
The irony of Southampton aiming to write a new blueprint is that they have been here before. Between 2010 and 2016, they were the model for every English club who had fallen on self-inflicted hard times but still dreamt of competing with the financial elite. Southampton bought low to sell high, reinvested the proceeds sensibly, invested in a prodigious academy system and appointed managers who fitted the system rather than demanded that the system fitted them.
Southampton’s success was based on a ready acceptance of their place in football’s food chain. They bought players who they convinced to use the club as a stepping stone, a mutually beneficial relationship between club, player and agent. They sold Dejan Lovren, Adam Lallana and Luke Shaw to buy Sadio Mane and Dusan Tadic, sold Morgan Schneiderlin and Nathaniel Clyne to buy Virgil van Dijk, Cedric Soares and Oriol Romeu, sold Mane and Victor Wanyama to buy Manolo Gabbiadini, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Nathan Redmond.
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The slur was that Southampton were simply a feeder club for Liverpool; they transformed it into a compliment. Under Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman, Southampton finished eighth, then seventh, then sixth, each time earning more than 55 points. That consistency was astounding, given the turnover of players. The crowning glory was the sixth place in 2015-16, ahead of Liverpool and three points off the top four.
Somewhere along the way, Southampton got a little lost. You can point to a series of poor decisions. The appointments of Mauricio Pellegrino and Mark Hughes, the underinvestment of owner Gao Jisheng, particularly after it became clear that he wanted the club to “feed itself”, the missteps in the transfer market, a subconscious acceptance of declining standards.
But the truth is far more depressing. Southampton simply became submerged by reality. The shock is not that they have withered into lower mid-table, but that they bottled lightning for four years until other clubs caught up. Southampton no longer possess a remarkable crop of academy youngsters or the best scouting and recruitment system in the Premier League. Clubs of their size, and it applies across the board, simply cannot afford to repeat mistakes. More than anything else, wealth provides insurance against mismanagement.
The departure of Gao from Southampton will be met with celebration, not least because mediocrity can be debilitating and self-fulfilling and a change at the top is most likely to shift that mood. There is joy to be found in the unknown, even if it rarely comes with any guarantee. Gao had a dream of making Southampton sustainable, but that quickly warps into accusations of inattention when results slip.
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But he was not a villain. He did not run Southampton into the ground, he kept faith in Ralph Hasenhuttl after heavy defeats, he did not make wide scale redundancies to save money when the pandemic hit and he did not asset strip. He was an unashamedly low-key presence, but that is no moral crime. If Gao was guilty of anything, it was rotten timing. The first report in the English media of his desire to sell came on March 8, 2020, five days before a global pandemic caused the Premier League’s suspension. At that point, the asking price was reported to be £250m. Last week’s sale price was £150m less.
The Sports Republic takeover is all very “modern football”, of course, which will provoke cynicism in some quarters. The validity of those complaints will lie in the method and the madness. Red Bull’s network is ostensibly a marketing strategy from an energy giant. At the heart of the City Football Group, which now holds stakes in clubs in ten different countries, is the majority ownership by Abu Dhabi and the suspicion of geopolitical soft power. We do not yet know if Sport Republic will attempt a similar model – will the network of clubs be formally interconnected (e.g. open to talent transfer, as with Red Bull) or simply connected by the investment of their ultimate owner?
But at the centre of Sports Republic are Henrick Kraft and Rasmus Ankersen, the director of football at Brentford during their climb through the divisions. Ankersen does not have a hand-on role here – he is merely the owner of the investment vehicle – but we can presume that his principles of data analysis will be used. That term is thrown around too readily (including during the farcical takeover attempt of Bradford City by WAGMI United), but Ankersen has certainly made it work in practice before.
Again, that should cause reason for excitement and mitigated expectation. Brentford eventually spent handsomely on wages in the Championship, but theirs was a model of sustainability and transfer profit reinvestment, a proudly long-termist strategy in a world of short-termism.
How that fits in at Southampton will be fascinating, not least because it strikes as a more polished, data-driven version of their own modern glory years. Perhaps therein lies the possible beauty of that project. Southampton are attempting to go back to their own future, recapturing halcyon days through a cocktail of tangibles and intangibles. After several seasons of self-imposed suspension, Southampton at least pledge to be interesting again. Right now, supporters will cling onto that promise.
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