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Les Reed Departs
Thursday, 8th Nov 2018 10:39

Saints have issued a statement confirming that Les Reed has left his employment at Southampton Football Club.

This brief statement from the club has just been issued

Southampton Football Club can today confirm it has agreed to part company with its Vice Chairman (Football), Les Reed.

The club believes the time is right to take constructive action and make a change that will provide new drive and direction to our football operations team and enable them to get results back on track.

The search for the right replacement, along with a thorough review into the club’s football operations, has begun.

Chairman Ralph Krueger said: “I would like to go on record to thank Les for the eight years of hard work and dedication he has given Southampton Football Club. His time at the club will be remembered for the fine work he did in overseeing our progress through the divisions and establishing the club in the Premier League.

“The process of recruiting the right individual to head up our football operations is under way, and is a decision that needs to be given the necessary time and attention that reflects what an important position it is within our club.

"Now, more than ever, we are grateful for the continued support of our staff and fans as we work towards our joint aim of moving up the table.”

Photo: Action Images



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geezershoong1 added 10:40 - Nov 8
Nelly the axe!
0

sidsaint added 10:52 - Nov 8
Better late than never.
4

dirk_doone added 10:59 - Nov 8
The headline should read: Les Reed sacked!

Reed was never going to depart of his own accord, even though he applied for other jobs as he discovered no other club was stupid enough to offer him one.

Now, let's get back Paul Mitchell, the man who was really responsible for our successful recruitment.
14

A_Saint_in_Stoke added 11:05 - Nov 8
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why oh why did it take sooooooooooooooooooooo long - Do they have to wait until d - day B4 any ACTION COMES !!

Now we can look to onward and upwards! COY - SAINTS
2

SaintPaulVW added 11:20 - Nov 8
Finally someone held to account at board level.

An illustration of the perils of believing your own press. There is no magic system for recruiting talent and just doing the same thing because it worked last time is no guarantee of success.

Next!
13

aceofthebase added 11:24 - Nov 8
It all looked so good just a few years ago and tho' the last couple of years it's been dreadful we must thank Les Reed for those good years that we all enjoyed.
3

1970 added 11:39 - Nov 8
Any well run business would have people to promote when situations like this happen but these numpties at the top think they have a job for life, good bye les I'm sure there were some good days but overall too many poor comings and goings and not enough said when questioned,
If I was going to buy a business for 200 million I would definitely bring in my own people at the top so when are the rest of the numpties going to go , coyr lets start winning
6

SanMarco added 11:57 - Nov 8
This is good news. It should have happened at the end of last season or earlier than that even. Fingers crossed on a good replacement. People will talk about scapegoats but I do believe that Les was the man most responsible for our rapid decline.
10

saintjf added 12:14 - Nov 8
It will hopefully solve the root cause of the problem on the playing side. You cant carry on forever on what are perceived as past achievements. New people are needed to take Saints forward. I am pleased that finally meaningful changes are being made with time enough to recover the season.
4

aceofthebase added 12:15 - Nov 8
Martin Hunter has now left the club
0

bstokesaint added 12:26 - Nov 8
Credit where it’s due he was once part of a very successful recruitment team. Unless anyone on here is actually on the inside, I would suggest it is pure speculation on who can take the most of the plaudits. Others have left previously and not exactly set the world alight elsewhere. Maybe it was just a good team and all the right parts were in all of the right places.

For now though it’s totally the right decision. You can’t make as many bum player and manager signings without falling on your own sword. The last two seasons have been horrendous to witness. I’m just wondering if anyone else has been lined up and if Hughes will be following him out the door shortly..
7

the_saint added 12:35 - Nov 8
Are we allowed to sack any of the players and I find it amazing they if you get sacked at a football club you get compensation. I wonder if I could get compo if I got sacked .
2

SaintBrock added 12:48 - Nov 8
Well I did report to you all that something must be happening after the Newcastle match as Les Reed was relegated to the third row of the Director's Box. There is never smoke without fire.
8

NewburySaint added 13:08 - Nov 8
News akin to when Lowe departed.

In my opinion, and not hindsight either, he should've gone following us losing Poch (May 2014?) not least because only 1 month earlier he stated that he would still be with us the following season-it was from that moment onwards we gradually started to become a stepping stone club.

Too late for this season (January's transfer window won't help us) but lets hope we can finish 17th or above and have a drastic overhaul of the playing squad next summer.
3

SaintBrock added 14:10 - Nov 8
What happens usually in these situations is that the axe wielder does the dirty work and then gets axed themselves afterwards. This is the usual corporate method of lancing the boil of discontent that is bound to linger in organisations after a cull. We can expect that Ralph Kreuger will go eventually.

Some of those still there will have been out and out Reed people but either too low in the organisation or too remote from his decision making to be in any way culpable to face the chop themselves. Nevertheless they can and will grumble that Kreuger got off scot free when he was just as culpable as Reed.

So here he will be for a while but it is highly unlikely he'll have any say in the choice of new DoF. Anyway he's Liebherr's pet poodle so she'll place him elsewhere rather than let Ralph face the ignominy of being fired.
0

BoondockSaint added 14:25 - Nov 8


Congratulations SaintBrock on a brilliant piece of deduction!
3

KriSaint added 14:54 - Nov 8
I also wonder why this took so long.
Led did well participating in taking us from league 1 to the PM + hiring Maurizio Poch and Koeman but to many crap decisions the last 2 seasons. Let´s get Paul Mitchell back.
Le Tissier should be interviewed for the vacant position. He deserves that.
2

saintmark1976 added 15:53 - Nov 8
I'm genuinely surprised that it did not happen sooner given he was director of football at a club that has only won eight out of the last fifty one Premiership matches.Having said that he deserves credit for the years of success during our climb back to the top flight. Purely as an aside I wonder how many other teams have a sixty five year old man in a similar position of responsibility, and before anybody cries "ageism" I'm older than he is.
9

DPeps added 18:02 - Nov 8
As Reed had responsibility for the football side of the club then it's fair that he should be removed for the catastrophic previous 2 years. However, I hope most of us can also recognise that Reed must have played some important role in our rise from our nadir (league one).

The head of recruitment and Hughes must be sweating...
8

halftimeorange added 18:55 - Nov 8
I very much doubt that this will make the squad perform any better as, apart from having his picture taken with new signings, Les probably had little interaction with the players. More heads are bound to roll of those more involved in day to day matters - such as motivation, fitness and team spirit - or lack of. Some money also needs to be spent at the first opportunity on an old-fashioned centre forward and a hard EPL-seasoned centre back.
4

underweststand added 21:49 - Nov 8
Clearly a lot of people are pleased at the news and even the most supportive Reed acolyte would have to admit that Les was a bit past his sell-by date and the last couple of seasons were really the start of the slide.

However, it should be remembered that coming in as he did, when Cortese was ruling the roost, he was skating on thin ice a lot of the time until Cortese departed. The real high point must be hiring the Koeman Brothers, and pushing through all the signings that they wanted. At that point in time, it seemed that he could do nothing wrong.

Since when things have gone pear-shaped. Would the Koemans have stayed if Saints had offered him £6 million a year ? - we'll never know, and although many people were pleased to see the back of Claude Puel, maybe he wasn't SO bad - judging by his form with Leicester ... Pellegrino's signing was a shot in the dark, but then again we don't know the quality of the other candidates, maybe MP was best of a bad bunch.
The signings of Boufal and Carrillo are probably black marks on Les' record, but who knows what they'll be like when they eventually return from loan?

I was reminded of Shakespeare's text about the dead Caesar..."the evil that men do lives on after them....the good is often interred with their bones."
For all his faults Les made a lot of good decisions, too.

But it's all history now ...so now Saints are looking for a top class DOF....and maybe they already have names in mind, as this was hardly a surprise decision.

4

SanMarco added 22:10 - Nov 8
Good god - Les Reed's fall as Shakesperian tragedy, whatever next.

At least he will get a decent pension from Liverpool for services rendered.
4

BoondockSaint added 23:57 - Nov 8
Wow, SanMarco! Wouldn't it be something if he got hired by the Scouse?
4

davidargyll added 07:24 - Nov 9
Woohoo! Best news of the week. And of course MH is on the way too. But highly unlikely they will do that until they get in Reed’s successor. You can lop a few managerial heads off but sparky will be left for the moment as you can’t fire everybody at the same time or the entire place will fall apart. But how likely is the new man/men likely to look at Sparky and say he’s the man for us? No way.
Thank goodness this has happened at this stage of the season so we have time to regroup.
I’ve said it before we don’t have that bad a team but we need a manager who can motivate.
And I would be staggered if Kruger wasn’t aware of this, saw the mess ups that Reed had been making but had to go along with him in the interim. He saw he had no alternative but to agree with him to take a punt on MH to get us out of a hole but has been planning this for a while.
He is no slouch despite what a long of people think and I would be amazed if he hadn’t lined something up. So a new VC and TD will be with us soon. And of course they would already have had a good hard look at Hughes - they all read the newspapers! - and when they arrive I’d lay a monkey to a mousetrap his feet will not touch the floor.
-1

benalisbroom added 08:32 - Nov 9
Wer-hoo!! I wanna' Break Dance - and i'm 46 years old and have a bad back.
0


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