Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl has confirmed that Joe Shields is set to leave St Mary's this month. football.london understands that Saints' senior head of recruitment is set to join Chelsea.
Shields only joined Southampton in the summer after nine years at Manchester City. His July arrival was followed by singings including Romeo Lavia, Gavin Bazunu, Juan Larios and Samuel Edozi from Manchester City.
In his Friday press conference, Hasenhuttl was quick to play down Shields' role however, highlighting the signing of Lavia as one in which he was not involved. The Austrian coach appeared unhappy with how the situation has unfolded.
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Hasenhuttl said: "As clear as I can do it - he came in August and is leaving in October. For us, it's not the perfect situation. I don't know, sometimes people get driven by new chances and we see this a lot here with a long-term project. If he wants to leave in the short-term maybe he has his reasons."
He added: "It's not a big loss for this club because the impact he had in the six weeks was not the biggest.
"We are not in the situation where we now fall into depression. He came in August when a lot of transfers had been done and he was not the person that brought Romeo Lavia in for example or someone like this. We'd like to have people here for longer but it's better for him to leave immediately."
Chelsea are set to make a number of appointments with Christopher Vivell expected to be the club's new technical director in addition to Shields. The former Red Bell Leipzig director came in for criticism from his former employers having parted ways earlier this month.
Leipzig chief executive Oliver Mintzlaff said: "We already know that Chelsea likes what we do but I cannot comment. I don't know of any talks. Chris has certainly done a great job over the last two years, but in the end, things didn't fit anymore. If the trust is no longer there in football, co-operation no longer makes sense.
"That is why we released him. We made this decision with full conviction."
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