Saints have officially announced the departure of Chairman Nicola Cortese with a short statement on the club website.

The club have broken the news with this.

Southampton FC: Appointment of Chairman

Southampton FC today announces that club owner Katharina Liebherr has taken on the role of non-executive Chairman.

This follows the resignation of Nicola Cortese.

A search has begun for a Chief Executive Officer who will take over Mr Cortese's executive duties.

Katharina Liebherr said:

"With great regret we have accepted the resignation of Mr Cortese. He has done a wonderful job at the club and we very much wanted him to stay. A search has now begun for a successor. In the meantime, it is business as usual and we will ensure that the manager, the team and all the staff at the club have all the help and support they need."

So short and sweet from the Liebherr family, in the short term it appears that Katharina Liebherr will hold the fort but in the long term a successor will follow in Cortese's footsteps.

This will actually be better in terms of Corporate Governance, Cortese like Rupert Lowe in the past was in the position of being both Chairman and Chief Executive, this meant that effectively he was responsible to himself in terms of making decisions both day to day and of a larger variety.

In corporate terms this is not seen as good practice, a Chief Executive should always report to a non executive Chairman whose job is to ensure that the CEO being a paid employee of a club is doing the job in line with the wishes of the shareholders/owners.

Clearly Katharina Liebherr wasnt happy with the set up as was apparent during the unrest last May between the pair, an uneasy truce was reached but clearly both parties were not happy, Mr Cortese did not like being answerable for his business decisions to someone and Ms Liebherr didnt seem to like the idea that the then Saints Chairman/CEO could effectively do whatever he wanted.

We will see now what the Liebherr's intentions for the club are now, its pertinent to note that all the rumblings about selling the club and players being unhappy have not been from the Liebherr's and by their actions today it is clear that whatever their intentions they intend to to the right thing for Southampton Football Club.

It will be a period of uncertainty that is for sure and how the changes are accepted by the fans will be dependant on results, ironically a year ago this week Nigel Adkins was sacked to uproar, at that point he was being feted as the best manager the club had ever had, within a couple of months many fans had changed their views and thought that he was tactically inept an unable to make the jump to the Premier, the irony is that the thoughts expressed about Cortese leaving are very similar to those when Adkins left, results drive these thoughts, Saints win the next three games and it will soon be last weeks news, Saints lose them and the Liebherrs will be under pressure.

I take no satisfaction from what has happened, I have only sadness, sadness for what could have been at Saints, it might still be, but the path at this club is never easy and those at the head have a strange habit of shooting themselves in the foot just as they appear to be at the top.

Photo: Action Images

aspensaint added 20:12 - Jan 15 good post nick. just when we looked like we were heading into a golden period we have shot ourselves in the foot. but let's stick together and see what the next few days bring. we are -thank god-on 30 points so if the worst happens and MoPo goes , we will still be ok this season. but I really hope we can carry on, business as usual as in the statement.
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GeordieSaint added 20:17 - Jan 15 WOW, whilst clearly a ruthless megalomaniac he undoubtedly knew his stuff. Good luck and thanks for everything.
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slynch added 20:32 - Jan 15 Oh dear!
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abingdonsaint added 20:54 - Jan 15 Such a pity! For all his faults, I firmly believe that without him we would still be in the Championship at best, and if Poch goes as well, as I fully expect, that will have massive repurcussions. NC was the one with the drive and ambition, and a plan to go with it. I really hope I am wrong, but we may now only have a Malky Mackay (with respect to him!) type manager, with 'Chris Baird's' instead of 'Dejan Lovren's from now on. At least those of you who think we should know our place in the pecking order will have some good old relegation battles to look forward to! Still a Saint forever, but we may have shot ourselves in the foot here...sad!

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mattlegod added 20:55 - Jan 15 It's the "project" that I am worried about; cortese had a vision which he sold to Marcus and one which clearly had foundations but I assume that vision will go with him. Concerning that the selling lambert talks have started again amongst all this; is this linked to what has happened today?
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SaintNick added 21:01 - Jan 15 The vision of Champions League football was not sold to the Liebherrs, the five year plan was to get in the Premier league and stabilise, Cortese then started to have the vision which the Liebherrs clearly did not agree with, at least not in the way he wanted to implement it
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mattlegod added 21:07 - Jan 15 I am talking about the infrastructure and not just the first team, staplewood etc etc
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Ddobsy added 21:16 - Jan 15 If the family don't sell the club, why should things change in the short term? Appoint the new CEO and off we go. Financially we don't need to sell, unless this was the reason Cortese resigned, but that wouldn't be over Lambert, it would be over the Ypunger players he has assembled with his team. This could be a small bump in the road.... We had a good academy before Cortese arrived.

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IanRC added 21:28 - Jan 15 So who is taking decisions on player transfers ? And how long can we expect MoPo to stay ? Hope whoever it is the first thing they do is tell WHU to sling their hook and leave Rickie alone. Also hope that we strengthen our centre back cover for Dejan and Jose, same with a goalkeeper. If that means moves out so be it but we desperately need Rickie, more than ever now.
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no7saint added 21:33 - Jan 15 "This will actually be better in terms of Corporate Governance" - that's alright then, I was getting worried about the corporate governance :) Seriously though, with all the talk of losing Luuuke, SRL and Adam this is worse than any player leaving. Cortese has been the instigator in building the "Southampton Way" to the point where we are now held up as an example of how a club should be run. Of course we could not have done this without the support of the Liebherr family, and I'm sure Katharina knows what she's doing but obviously the fears are of MoPo/player exodus and/or a club sale to the next Vincent Tan/Venkys/anyone who owned Pompey after Mandaric. You know the good times are short-lived when you're a Saints fan...

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ExiledSupporter added 21:35 - Jan 15 My own take on this, like everyone else with no evidence to support it, is that Marcus' daughter made it clear to Cortese at the end of last season that she had no interest in the club or football for that matter, beyond protecting or realising the value of her asset. ie that she was intending to sell at the 'right' moment to maximise corporate returns on their venture. What was an exciting project for her father was essentially of no interest to her. Cortese had major objections to this short termism and the dispute has simply festered since then. One correspondent above suggests that it may have been prompted by the possibility of selling Lambert, I think it is more likely that an alleged offer of £30m from Man City for Shaw has proved too tempting and no doubt very considerably more than the player's balance sheet value...so get a high price offer for an asset that from an accounting perspective is worth considerably less would make no sense for an owner to ignore. Expect Shaw to go soonish and the club to be sold to the highest bidder irrespective of their provenance by an owner who simply isn't interested in football.

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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 21:38 - Jan 15 Putting things into perspective: most of the hard work has already been done. We are an established Premiership side with a superb academy, training facilities, stadium etc. We have a good squad of ambitious young players. Cortese has done an absolutely amazing job but the only things left to do is to make St Mary's bigger, finish the staplewood project and spend money improving the squad to climb the table. Whoever comes in would only have to focus on these things. The biggest doubt now is is Katharina Leibherr looking to sell. If she is then Poche will probably go, as there is no long term vision for the club under the current owners. This would obviously be a massive, massive blow, and suddenly we would be back in the pot luck lottery of getting a new owner. We could get another Leibherr type, or we could get a Vincent Tan type or a Hull City Tigers abomination. That's a scary thought. Hopefully Katharina will keep the club and follow her father's wishes and keep the long term vision, but if she does sell then we've got to hope that she will only sell to an appropriate buyer. If we keep Poche then we'll be ok and continue on the right path. But losing him is almost unthinkable. It'll set us back massively. We would no longer be a top half team.

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REEDYREEDOREEDZ added 21:48 - Jan 15 £30m for Shaw, an injury prone 18 year old left back, is great money from a business point of view. It would be a world record highest ever transfer fee paid for a left back. If Katharina is looking to sell the club, then an offer like this would be hard to turn down. So to put it simply: if offers are accepted for the likes of Shaw and Lambert then its guarenteed she is looking to sell, and then Poche will be off too. We'll know in the next couple of weeks exactly what Katharina's intentions are.

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SaintNick50 added 21:49 - Jan 15 Foreigners! I am afraid this is what you get when a club is in foreign ownership, Markus bought the vision of Cortese, Katharina doesn't and what allegiance should she have to Southampton FC - none. Is she is looking at a huge profit on a sale? If sold who will be the next owners and will they want to sell our assets, frightening! Why didn't Cortese stay and find a suitable new owner for us? I think there is more to it, maybe he has received an offer he couldn't refuse from Milan? Perhaps we should do a Portsmouth and buy the club ourselves, a mad and totally unpractical idea?

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thegeneral added 22:28 - Jan 15 With the benefit of a first class education, a life of luxury and the trappings of being handed a multi billion pound business empire, one would think she owed it to her father to do the right thing. Who do we want?, the man who ML entrusted to govern 'the plan?', or a woman who has shown zero interest in the club? Clearly the two do not see eye to eye and it is likely her views are more negative towards the club and us than NC. I agree that she only see's numbers and values instead of progression, Cortese knows the value of our youth in taking the club forward, i mentioned it the other day that we can't transfer big names in and that holding onto the likes of Luke Shaw is essential in climbing the league, i think this will have been a big stumbling block in the relationship between the two. Obviously she is only temporarily in charge now until she can offload the club, why would she want to run a football club when she can be off skiing in Aspen and topping up her tan in the south of France? I would like to see Cortese come back with a syndicate but if that was his intention and he handed his resignation in in the autumn, that syndicate would be ready to put an offer in over the next few days i would think. Maybe MP will stick around to see what happens, but if any of our best players are sold this month he won't be far behind Cortese. There are some proper idiots running football clubs at the moment so chances are he'll walk anyway.

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SaintNick added 22:57 - Jan 15 Katharina Liebherr doesnt have any intention of running the club long term, she is appointing a CEO to do that, her job will be to oversee him as non executive chairman, that will probably involve one trip over here a month. Will she care about results on the field, probably not but she will care that the club is succesful off it and is profitable and the new ceo will know that success on the field will generate those profits

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montecristo added 23:28 - Jan 15 the best solution is for the Liebherrs to go on running the club under a corporate structure. We somehow all took Cortese to our hearts fans payers staff , or at least that was the public image. but life goes on. The next 10 days will tell us what kind of a person this woman is, does she have ANY comercial experience, the club is her plaything to build up or destroy as she pleases. Let there be NO antagonism, at least not till she makes her intentions clear. If players start leaving, that will be the time to make our feelings known. What she needs to know is that WE bought into the Cortese vision the fact that she may not have done so will leave her seriously isolated. I just wonder what the atmosphere is like now at St Marys as she prepares to occupy Corteses desk. Must be fun... not

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BlackRod added 00:05 - Jan 16 If all this has been on the cards for months the identity of the new chief exec should be announced pretty quickly. Katherina needs to show her authority straight away. Nick is spot on about corporate governance. Cortese was a dictator, albeit a benevolent one for some of the time. He's got his come-upance. Give it another couple of weeks and we'll all be singing 'Walking in a winter wonderland, there's only one Katherina Liebherr, one Katherina Liebherr etc....'

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Sango123 added 03:35 - Jan 16 I hope this is not the start to instability that has been plaguing the club before the Liebherr era. We shall see how MP reacts to this.
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BoondockSaint added 04:00 - Jan 16 Hurricane Katherina probably just got fed up with Little Nicci and his antics. He wanted to run the club as if he owned it, but with her money. If he took the same attitude with her as he did with everyone else, no surprise she gave him the boot! Maybe he was looking to get sacked because he has something lined up. I used to think his plan was to try to buy he club himself, but I can't see them selling to him now. Don't see MP leaving-he's under contract and they'll probably give him more money to stay. Who knows? Maybe he'll be promoted to Chairman! Now that he's out from under the dictator's thumb, I bet he starts speaking English to the press!

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bendybob added 07:53 - Jan 16 Well put Nick, and nicely summarised. A huge disappointment that it has come to this, but its something I`m sure the club will recover from. With regards to MoPo leaving, then that must be a huge cause for concern as the last twelve months have seen vast improvements not only on the field but within the spirit of the squad. Time to rally round, and given our previous battles, give our fantastic club and owners the support it deserves.

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LondonSaint added 09:52 - Jan 16 I going to give Katherina and the Liebherr's the benefit of the doubt - the only "facts" I've seen are from the media which already have wildly contradicting versions of events. I don't see what benefit there is in a fanbase castigating Katherina personally (not targeting this site, but wary of the wider reaction) until a bit more has come out. Starting with the press conference this afternoon. Exciting times to be a Saints fan, eh?!

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Whatsforpud added 10:31 - Jan 16 Normally when high profile people resign, they would make a parting statement as to why they resigned, and to leave a message of goodwill for the future of the organisation. Cortese has never been a good communicator here, and we might never know the true facts. To my knowledge, Katharina Liebherr has never been to SMS. I assume she will now, albeit temporarily to sort out the mess. I can't imagine owning a football club, with all its infrastructure, without wanting to see it, whether or not you have an interest in the game or not.

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ItchenNorth added 11:36 - Jan 16 On the plus side I hear that Katharina is a very good number 9 and could therefore be used as cover for Lambert if he goes to West Ham. Villa might have Grant Holt but we’d have Katharina ! You gotta love football, COYRS !
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