Sport Republic are well into their revamp of the club with a new Director of football in Jason Willcox and now comes news of more new arrivals in the shake up of the footballing backroom staff.
Jason Wilcox might have been working his notice at Manchester City, but he has also been busy at Southampton and he has been heavily involved in the revamp behind the scenes at Staplewood.
Latest to arrive are Mark Bitcon and Darren Mowbray.
Bitcon arrives from England Rugby where he has been head of athletic performance and innovation for the past two years, his official title at Saints will be Director of Performance
He is well known to Wilcox as prior to switching to the egg chasing game he had spent four years as director of performance services at Manchester City’s academy and prior to that held a similar role at Wigan Warriors Rugby League.
His will be a far reaching role as he will not only be working at Southampton but across all Sport Republic teams to oversee science, medicine, psychology and performance analysis.
Darren Mowbray arrives from Aberdeen as Head of Recruitment where he held the same position at Pittodrie for the last two years.
The name should sound familiar as his brother is current Sunderland manager Tony Mowbray, he has also held roles at Burnley, Leeds & Middlesbrough.
I have maintained throughout the season that the club has lacked leadership in all departments both on and off the pitch, Sport republic initially trusted the current set up when they bought the club in January 2022 and they fine tuned that with the arrival of Joe Shields as head of Recruitment, who initially made some good signing, but his finger was off our pulse before the transfer window was closed as he had been tapped up by Chelsea and was gone almost as soon as he had arrived.
But that didn't help us and that showed in the January window where without a Head of recruitment we floundered a little to say the least, despite spending big.
Now though Sport Republic have seemingly started to get things back on track and with the arrival of Jason Wilcox and the subsequent appointments of Bitcon & Mowbray, who will join full time after serving their notice periods till July 1st, we are showing that the the issues that in the main contributed to our downfall are being rectified.