So far 42 Football Clubs have signed up the FA's Football Leadership Diversity Code, including 19 of the 20 Premier League clubs, but the missing name is that of Southampton FC, the club have issued a statement to explain why.
On Tuesday, the FA launched the 'Football Leadership Diversity Code' with the aim of ensuring more candidates from ethnic minorities can land top jobs.
So far, 42 clubs have signed up to the voluntary code from across the Premier League, English Football League, Women's Super League and Women's Championship, with Southampton the only top Premier League club in the men's game in England not to do so.
However Saints have taken the time to explain their decision and confirmed that although they remain fully committed to the objectives of a new diversity code, they have not yet had time to assess all of it's proposal's, but have said they will continue to work closely with the chairman of the FA's inclusion advisory board, Paul Elliott, on the topic.
The statement read.
"In 2020 Southampton FC achieved the Premier League’s Advanced Equality Standard at the first time of asking, the only club to have achieved this to date.
"This achievement was the culmination of a five year Equality and Diversity journey, which includes setting and monitoring recruitment targets amongst a number of other E&D initiatives forming our action plan.
"Southampton FC are wholly supportive of the Football Leadership Diversity code objectives. We are aware that the Premier League are revising their Equality Standard to bring the two closer together.
"At this time the club consider it most appropriate course of action to wait and understand how a revised Premier League Equality Standard and the Football Leadership Diversity Code will work together and complement each other before revising our recruitment targets and already established processes.
"We have had productive and encouraging discussions with Paul Elliott on this topic and will continue to work closely with him on this."
This is a perfectly reasonable response from the club, no one either an individual or organisation should give their backing to any initiative without having closely examined it first.
Likewise they should not be pressured to do so just because others already have, Saints were one of the first clubs in English football to have players of colour and of different nationality in their teams back in the 1970's, at a time when few English teams had any sort of diversity in their ranks.
We have also employed coaches from ethnic groups including Paul Williams who played 39 Premier League games for the club in 2001-2003 including being an unused sub in the 2003 FA Cup Final.
Williams worked in the Club's academy from 2009 - 2014 in various coaching roles.
Likewise Radhi Jaidi, who joined the club as a player in August 2009 at the start of the Markus Liebherr era, after retiring in 2012 from playing he worked in various roles within the club's academy and was Head Coach of the U23 side until last year when he joined American side Hartford Athletic as their coach in a deal that involved a development programme between the two clubs.
In this day and age there is pressure to tow the line to a worthy cause without looking at the full picture and it is pleasing that Saints do not just sign up to avoid hassle.
I am sure that in due time the club will put their name to the Diversity Code and back it, but there is clearly something that they need to be certain about in it first.