Eastern promise is key to Saints
MAURICIO Pellegrino hopes Southampton’s Far East takeover will finally put an end to their days as a selling club.
Chinese billionaire Jisheng Gao and daughter Nelly paid Katharina Liebherr £210million this week to become the new owners.
Their first task will be to stop Liverpool and Chelsea target Virgil van Dijk joining the now annual summer exodus from St Mary’s. In recent transfer windows Saints have lost a host of stars including Adam Lallana, Sadio Mane, Victor Wanyama and Luke Shaw.
Pellegrino, below, said: “I hope for the best for the club. Hopefully the new owners can achieve the same progress as the Liebherr family did in the past.
“In the last six years the progress was really good. In the first meeting I had with the board they told me they want to keep the best players. Hopefully the new owners have the same idea.
“At the beginning nothing will change, everything will continue the same way. Little by little I’d imagine the new owners will want to help us and be in contact.”
However much they may try to help, Slaven Bilic, manager of today’s opponents West Ham, feels no owner could be as efficient as rooted in the culture and traditions of their club. The Hammers have been owned by self-proclaimed East End boys David Sullivan and David Gold since 2010, and Bilic is convinced his club are better off.
Bilic, whose team crashed 4-0 at Manchester United last Sunday, has been backed by Sullivan and Gold this summer to the tune of £40m, with the club still in talks to buy Sporting Lisbon and Portugal midfielder William Carvalho for £36m before the deadline. “It is definitely not a disadvantage to have English owners,” he said. “It is better for a club to be run by someone who knows the history, the environment, and the business part of it.
“Some things you can’t buy. You can’t buy mentality, tradition. You can’t buy the time. I don’t care about the others but West Ham is going the right way, and everyone connected with West Ham knows the chairmen
are doing their best, within the budget. It’s hard to compete with these guys from the East.
“That can mean not going gung-ho in the transfer market. It is like in a game – it can work but it is very likely not to work if you do it every time. These clubs and chairmen should be praised because it is not easy to resist those kind of offers from the East, which are very good.
“The owners here are appreciated by the fans. They know those who are not only following West Ham but ‘living’ West Ham. Those fans, they know how well the chairmen are doing for the club, how much they invest. They have taken it a long way up already.” Today offers Saints a chance to put an end to an unwanted club record run of failing to score in their past six home games.
Pellegrino has put on extra finishing practice after wasting numerous chances during last Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Swansea. “We have to use this experience from the Swansea game and learn,” he said.
“We played 85 per cent of the game in the right way but doing it in the final third is the most difficult thing to achieve in modern football. We are on the right track and we have to keep going.”