An contender has emerged as an early outside bet to replace Mauricio Pochettino as manager of Southampton Football Club.

Murat Yakin would be an unknown name to most Saints supporters but he is emerging as a contender for the vacant position at St Mary's.

Born in Switzerland of Turkish descent, Yakin won 49 caps for Switzerland as a player whilst plying his trade not only with Grasshoppers and Basel in his home country but in spells in Germany and Turkey.

When his playing career finished he branched into coaching, his first big job came at Thun before joining Luzern as manager in 2011, he stayed for a year before moving to Basel where he stayed for two seasons, winning the Swiss super league in both of them and with the highlight being beaing Chelsea both home and away in the group stages of the Champions League in 2012.

On 17th May 2014 it was announced that Yakin had left Basel prompting speculation that Southampton realising that they were going to lose Pochettino have been pro active in appointing his replacement.

Yakin would obviously be an unknown quantity, but then again so was Pochettino when he joined Saints and in that respect Yakin has similar qualities to the ex Saints and Espanyol boss and it should not be forgotten that those responsible for sourcing Pochettino are still at the club.

The bookmakers are taking Yakin seriously and he is second favourite in the early betting at 6/1 with only Ronald Koeman at 5/1 ahead of him

Photo: Action Images

slynch added 21:37 - May 27 11/4 at William Hill
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stmichael added 22:12 - May 27 yeah that would placate us... the boardhave done NOTHING since January to give me 1 iota of faith that they will get this right.. Utterly shambolic and the worse is yet to come.. All in secrecy treating us like cooonts.. Still we are friends with Franny and we talk to the echo again. Thats all that matters.
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cheltenhamsaint added 23:42 - May 27 An unknown to me before today but a Champions League double over Chelsea this season plus two latter stage exits in the Europa League with an unfashionable and non cash rich club make him an interesting suggestion to explore further
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SaintDownUnder added 02:38 - May 28 Im not surprised by MoPo's exit, but all the irrate comments seem to assume that the board actually wanted to keep him but failed to do so, I'm not so sure thats the case. Its not unusual for corporate business's to manage all members of a managment team out if they are trying to create regime change, why do we assume its different with a football club? MoPo was NC's man, its not unthinkable that the new board would want to get rid of him and bring in their own guy to ensure stablity, unity and draw a line under the previous administration of the club. Stmichael - in terms of what the board has/hasnt done - we have resigned all our young talent on long term contracts but didnt didnt do the same to the manager prior to the end of season, which lets face it, if he'd featured in your long term plans you would have. For the record I was a massive NC and MoPo fan and would point to the progress made on and off the field under their leadership as the reason why. However MoPo isnt the only talented manager available so if this now allows for the board to bring in their own guy and he does a great job plus we have harmony at the top of the club then that can only bode well. Lets be honest we knew sweet FA about MoPo before he arrived and we all morned the loss of NA............we'll learn to love whoever manages this club whether it Yakin or somebody else we know very little about.

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BaselSaint added 09:21 - May 28 This guy would be excellent. Very respected here. Completely outshone `the special needs one` tactically. Can handle the big stage.
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pintsizedsaint added 09:27 - May 28 I'm a big fan of MP, but I'm really excited about the next steps for saints. Agree with posts here that it was perhaps inevitable MP would go so the board could break cleanly from NC. If we got Yakin that would be a good sign of intent; another highly regarded young manager - although this time a manager who has actually won things and got experience of the top European competitions. We all know that bookies are very rarely wide of the mark. What is impressive is that we are being strongly linked with two very respectable, European managers in Yakin and Koeman. Surely a sign that Saints are establishing themselves. If we can keep most of our top players (I'm resigned to seem Ads go) then a top 6 finish is not wholly off the cards.

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scientistmel added 10:20 - May 28 I lived in Basel a few years, so asked an FCB for his thought on Yakin, here's the feedback, hard to know how this would work - successful but quite different to Poch: "He had two good seasons here, winning two championships, reaching far in the europa league and beating chelsea a couple of times in the cl. Despite of that, he was basically sacked by the fcb management after winning the championship again last week. The reason for that is mainly that - though very succesful - the football he played was very destructive. Many defenders, many central defensive midfielders, no real concept while in possession. He also was not very much liked by our senior players (streller, diaz, frei, stocker) So i am not that disappointed that he was forced to go. Still, he has a good reputation and was also quite succesful with minor swiss teams."

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Kiwifiedpom1 added 01:17 - May 30 The manner in MoPo arrived it doesn't surprise in the way he left. He was a Cortese man. Lets hope we an Arsen Wenger type of manager, I can't take all this excitement. Good though.
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