Christian Purslow has detailed how Steven Gerrard’s “outstanding interview” simply blew him and Aston Villa owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens away after a five-hour long meeting.
On his big interview,
Steven Gerrard said: “I had to be very well prepared to convince Christian and Johan and I knew I would have to tick a lot of boxes, I knew it wouldn’t just be given to me, I had to prove I was the No.1 contender for the job and I took some time to be as best prepared as I can and it was about detail. I think it helped obviously coming off the back of winning the league and having a real decent pedigree in Europe and having the values that I have kept as I have moved along in my career, from being a young lad.”
Almost stopping Gerrard in his answer,
Christian Purslow said: “Steven is too modest to say and I don’t have to do this but he deserves it. Preparation, the calibre of his first interview was outstanding. From my perspective, we were blown away with the level of preparation, the thoughtfulness, the clarity around a pretty detailed blueprint Johan had given Steven to be ready to talk about. It was an outstanding interview and left us in no doubt that we were on with the right man. I must also add that in his meetings with our owners – these are extremely serious businesspeople, Wes Edens seven years ago acquired probably the 30th ranked team in the NBA and this summer they were world champions. So this is a businessman and sports investor who has been on a journey in the NBA as a highly demanding and is a highly demanding business sports executive, and Nassef Sawiris is an extremely highly respected international businessman who happens among other things to be one of the largest investors in one of the world’s biggest sports companies. Their interviews were equally successful with Steven, so I appreciate your question, that is a high pressure, high stress situation to find yourself in whoever you are and he handled it with extreme professionalism.”
As for what impressed key figure
Johan Lange said: “The clarity in terms of style of play, the training and how – from the first day – to work with that style of play, introduce it into our squad, the analysis of our current squad, from the outside was outstanding as well. Then of course as well, Steven has competed and won domestically but also in Europe against great teams on the Continent as well. Overall, it was a fantastic experience and we were 100 per cent certain that Steven was the right man for the job.”
