Following our interview with Merlin from Vital Chelsea about Aston Villa’s new CEO Christian Purslow:
Just Who Is The New Villa CEO Christian Purslow? Fascinating Chelsea Insights.
And I asked Liverpool FC fan Gavin Day (@superbag) his thoughts of the CEO’s time at Anfield and whether he was popular.
“Are CEO’s ever popular?
He was only with us for a little over a year and it was a traumatic period for the club with the ownership tenure of Tom Hicks and George Gillett coming to a painful conclusion in the High Court.
Fundamentally we owe him, along with then-chairman Martin Broughton and fellow board member Ian Ayre, a huge debt of gratitude as they were instrumental in ousting the owners and negotiating the FSG takeover, thus saving us from bankruptcy in the process.
During that period he also secured the original Standard Chartered kit sponsorship deal, which was a record at the time. He was a very important figure at Anfield and the positive current situation we find ourselves in can partly be traced directly back to him. At the time many fans blamed him for a lack of investment in new players, the departure of Rafa Benítez and the subsequent appointment of Roy Hodgson but hindsight tells us these were systematic of the owners’ financial problems and lack of football knowledge rather than any inadequacies on Purslow’s part.
