Trevor Birch named as new Managing Director

Birch will work alongside Hutchinson from April until Hutchinson leaves the role at the end of the present season. Birch claims to have "unfinished business" in the game, following his failure to make an impression at Liverpool. He was Bill Shankly's last signing at Anfield but Birch, 43, considers his 7-year playing career to have been a relative failure.

Hutchinson announced his decision to leave the post in December, giving the reason that he wants to spend a lot of time with his family before returning to football in another capacity. He has held the position for 15 years and masterminded the signings of Gianluca Vialli, Franco Zola, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Marcel Desailly. His close friendship with chairmen Ken Bates made for a formidable working partnership that Birch will need to form with Bates if he wants to keep the position.

In other news, reports suggesting that Chelsea are preparing a bid for Japanese starlet Hidetoshi Nakata have been quashed by the player's agent who claims that he has not heard anything from Chelsea or anyone else. Nakata is currently out of favour at Parma and despite an expected fee of around £17 million, Nakata's popularity in Japan would make Chelsea a lot of money in merchandise in the Far East. Watch this space for more news...