Zenga Not In The Running ! Monday, 20th Jun 2016 11:32 Yesterday The Sun claimed that Saints had approached Walter Zenga with a view to him being manager of the club, today this turns out to be wide of the mark. The Sun does not have a good reputation amongst football fans, it's sensalionalist reporting over the years was not impressive culminating in the absolute bile they printed about Hillsborough in 1989 and for years afterwards. Put bluntly few believe what they read in it. So eyebrows were raised when the Sun said Zenga was up for consideration, something that the club have been quick to refute, perhaps worried that this might cause unrest in the fan base. So the question is why they chose to throw Walter Zenga's name in the hat when clearly this man was perhaps the last qualified to take over at St Mary's than any other manager mentioned, at a time when the club were wanting stability and looking for a candidate who could offer that rather than using the club as a stepping stone, Zenga was a man who has barely spent more than a season at a club in 17 years of being a manager, also his experience in Europe is limited, in fact just about everything about him did not suggest he was the type of candidate Saints were looking for. So why did the Sun claim the club had approached him ? The answer can perhaps be answered in two words Neil Ashton, this is the man who was at the Daily Mail three years ago and was Nicola Cortese's chosen journalist to peddle the myth that the entire success of the club was down to our then CEO. When Cortese left the club, Ashton was quick to start talk of meltdown and again at the end of the season when Mauricio Pochettino departed Ashton was up to his tricks again insinuating that every player was unhappy. Last summer he has little material to work with given that Saints had finished 7th and where in Europe, but he was quick off the mark in August to stir up rumours of the likes of Mane and Wanyama going. Now Ashton is at the Sun and although he did not put his name to the piece, as cief football writer on the paper, it has all of his trademark anti Saints rhetoric about it. Indeed Ashton himself has been quick to peddle the story that Ronald Koeman was forced out in an attempt to create unrest around Southampton Football Club once more. What he has against Saints no one knows, but he has certainly remained loyal to Cortese and continues to try and keep the myth going about how the resurgence of Saints was down to one man and one man alone. The Zenga piece was pure fiction, it was comedy gold from a paper which seems to take a perverse pride in trying to come up with bizarre rumours and present them as fact. This one never really got going, it was nipped in the bud quickly and it was so strange that no one actually could believe that it had a grain of truth in it, Zenga was everything that Saints did not want, from that viewpoint the Sun could not have found a more unfitting candidate. But this is modern football, social media can get a rumour out in no time at all and before you know it it has been repeated so many times it starts to feel like the truth. We Sants supporters, as in the past summers need to keep our calm and trust in the people running the club to get it right, they will of course make mistakes, but overall they have got more right than wrong in the past two years, they have earned the right for the supporters to stay off their backs in trying times such as these. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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