Former World Cup winning England rugby union coach Sir Clive Woodward has said that he expects a long and fruitful reign from George Burley at Southampton to force him to look elsewhere to fulfil his ambitions as a football manager.

Woodward was instrumental in his role of director of football at St. Mary’s in bringing the experienced Burley into the club and says he harbours no secret wishes to oust the Scotsman from his job despite feeling restricted with his own job as administrator.

Woodward said: “I’m confident George is going to be here for a long time, and the club needs that sort of stability.

“I do want to manage a football club, but if George is successful that means I won’t get the chance here.”

The current power struggle in Saints boardroom doesn’t help Woodward’s long term plans as major new shareholder Leon Crouch has vowed to remove the director of football from his post if he gains control of the board.

Woodward’s high profile arrival at St. Mary’s hasn’t exactly went to plan so far with the club being relegated under his and Harry Redknapp’s control and then Redknapp jumping ship to return to hated rivals Portsmouth. This season in the Championship hasn’t borne much fruit either and with the sale of teenage prodigy Theo Walcott, Southampton are doing a good job of stripping their own assets and making the difficult return to the top flight a currently impossible dream.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2006 at 8:18 am and is filed under Southampton. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.