Questions continue to be raised over Chinese ownership of Southampton as Premier League probes takeover
- China’s Gao Jisheng’s ownership in question
- Club currently sits 17th in the Premier League standings
A decade ago this month, Southampton FC nearly sunk. Saddled with £27.5 million (US$35.9 million) of debt, the club was relegated into League One and also placed into administration. As punishment for chronic financial mismanagement, the football authorities fired a ten-point penalty deduction torpedo into the boardroom. The Saints were going the same way of King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose warship, which capsized in the nearby Solent in 1545.
April 2009 was without doubt the 125-year-old club’s mense horribilis. Yet from the depths of despair, the Saints rose rapidly phoenix-like – rebounding with successive promotions back into the EPL in 2012.
Back in the big time, the minnows claimed top six scalps, nurtured and sold top players, reached a cup final and played European football. High-profile managers came and went but the Saints marched on regardless. The club’s saviour, Swiss businessman Markus Liebherr – a rare benign specimen among rapacious foreign owners – suddenly died in 2010, a year after buying and saving the club from oblivion, and ownership was handed to his daughter, Katharina, who abided by his wish to keep the Saints in EPL heaven.
A whirlwind decade later, the club is once more tottering on the brink of relegation, murky business-dealing question marks again hang over the stadium, and from the East has blown a nebula of obfuscation and secrecy that has choked the Saints’ signature ambitious navigation.
