Southampton Football Club has just announced that Eric Black has resigned from his position as first team coach at St Mary's.
Saints have just issued a statement regarding Eric Black.
Southampton Football Club can today confirm that Eric Black has resigned from his position as Senior First Team Coach for personal reasons.
Eric has been suffering the effects of previous back injuries sustained during his playing career, and has decided to address these issues now. Given this could mean a spell out of action, Eric feels the time is right to take a break from the game.
Les Reed, Vice Chairman (Football), said: "Eric Black is a fine coach and a true professional who is popular with the players and staff and always gave 100 per cent to his job. Fortunately, his situation is not serious and we hope he will be back in a tracksuit at some point in the future.
"Everyone at Southampton wishes him a speedy recovery. I would also personally like to thank him for his diligent work during his time with the club.”
There has been speculation on Saints related message boards for several days about the future of Eric Black, it had been noted that he had not been sighted on the bench at recent games and that had lead to rumours spreading.
Certainly Black was maligned by a section of Saints support on social media over the past 15 months, some supporters blamed his influence on the style of football being played under both Claude Puel and Mauricio Pellegrino.
Recently there was a lot of comments about how he had ruined Aston Villa during his time there and was responsible for their awful relegation season in 2015/16.
That was rumour mongering on a totally innacurate scale give that before he joined Villa had been relegation candidates for a couple of seasons and the previous year had only stayed up in the final week of the season.
In their relegation year he only joined the club in the January at a time when they were already rock bottom and well adrift with only 8 points on the board with over half the season gone.
Black was initially first team coach and then caretaker manager, when he joned Villa had little chance of staying up and he did no worse in the second half of the season.
But this was the type of whispering campaign against Black during his time at Saints, in truth most supporters have never met Black or actually know a lot about what is going on behind the scenes.
Having said all this his departure is a little strange, yes perhaps his back is that bad that he needs to get it sorted straight away, but that seems unlikely and surely he could have waited for the summer break to deal with it and take time off.
I know no more than anyone else whether Eric Black was part of the problem at Saints or if he was part of the solution, but I do find it strange that he should go at this moment in time.
Perhaps the board feel his influence in the dressing room is not what they want ? perhaps th is a half way house rather than sacking the manager etc, but certainly it is not an announcement that indicates that all is well behind the scenes and will now provoke a raft of conspiracy theories.
Already this week Ronald Koeman has been spotted at a petrol station in West End and Thomas Tuchel is said to be speaking to a Premier league club about a job, is change in the air at St Mary's beyond the departure of Eric Black.