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Sir Jim Ratcliffe has clearly not been messing about since his minority take over in terms of building a structure above the manager ten Hag.
INEOS has already poached top executives including chief executive Omar Berrada from rivals Manchester City and Dan Ashworth from Newcastle.
As The Telegraph would have it, the British billionaire now has his sights set on Southampton’s sporting director Jason Wilcox.
Sir Jim and INEOS are looking to make the highly-rated executive the new technical director and performance director.
According to the report, it is still unclear whether Jason would be open to the approach, although the team Sir Jim has already put together would be impossible to say no to.
Omar Berrada and Dan Ashworth have sparkling reputations and CVs – it would be nigh on impossible for Jason Wilcox to say no to the prospect of working with them.
The 52-year-old Wilcox has previously worked at Man City, with Omar Berrada I should add.
He was an academy director at City, overseeing the development of numerous City superstars, most notably Phil Foden, Oscar Bobb, Rico Lewis and Chelsea’s Cole Palmer.
He was appointed sporting director for Southampton in January last year, and he oversaw a massive summer in terms of rebuild and profits for the Saints.
Southampton were relegated and naturally, other clubs were after their stars. The go-to move for a club in such a position is to maximize on the exodus and raise profits for a rebuild.
He oversaw the departures of big names like skipper James Ward-Prowse, Roméo Lavia and Tino Livramento – with all of them returning to the Premier League.
A lot of income was generated from these sales, and some was injected back into the first team for a rebuild.
All in all, the job at hand will not be easy for the incoming executives on account of the mess created by the Glazers. The project will be a tough gig for whoever is sitting on the board when all is said and done.
