“As main club sponsor, its logo will now take pride of place on the first team’s kits through to the end of the of the 2021-22 campaign,” the statement said, adding that the logo will also be “on the front of the Under-23s’ and Under-18s’ shirts, along with the various squads’ training wear”.

The deal is said to help the club “to establish and develop the company’s brand and presence in China”, something which has increased following the arrival Gao Jisheng as majority shareholder in 2017.

That site is currently a placeholder that thanks visitors, says it will launch soon and also tells them to follow on social media. But there are no social media handles.

According to a search of domain registry site Whois.com, the site was registered with Go Daddy on March 13, 2019, for one year.

The Chinese language version of the company’s website, which also includes the same LD Sports logo, is more detailed but no less intriguing.

Purporting to be for a company called Ledong Sports that is also branded as LD Sports throughout the site, there are inaccuracies including two different founding dates.

The first is given as 2010 and in Southampton, although there is no evidence of an English address on the site. Instead, the address is listed in Wuhan, Hubei province.

The other start date is given as 2015 as per their “about” section. The length of its existence is unclear but the website has nothing with a publication date before April 9, although the story published on that date begins “May 7- London time”.

Similarly, there is no mention of the record deal between the company and the club in the website’s news section.

The company claims to have a relationship with European clubs such as Borussia Dortmund, Valencia and Frankfurt, although there is no further evidence of this on their site or that of the clubs.

Interestingly, the Chinese characters for this cooperation are incorrect and translate literally to “rent houses with” rather than to cooperate.

The company claims to have over 100 sports centres and 2,000 employees across the world.

There are three members of the coaching staff listed on the website with photos to accompany them.

Gary Diaz is said to be a Uefa-A Licence coach – the highest qualification in the game – and has experience in coaching and management at a number of English Premier League football clubs, as well as being a coach at the Southampton FC academy – the club has been asked to confirm this. Frederick Taylor is listed as having experience at Atletico Madrid and Alan Hebrew is listed as having coached a youth team in Spain.

Searches on other Chinese websites claim that the company was founded by Chinese-born American Daniel Knox, who emigrated to Southampton aged six. After his dreams of becoming a professional footballer were ended he went on to gain coaching qualifications and work for clubs including Millwall and Southampton before starting Ledong Sports in 2015.

Southampton fans used social media to highlight some of the other photographs on the website, including one where a man appears to be interviewed by Western media outlets.

Others speculated that the Justin Tan quoted in the club statement as business development manager of LD Sports was the same person who works for Shanghai-based digital agency Mailman. The company have confirmed this to not be the case.

Elsewhere, Nick Harris of Sporting Intelligence laid out his fears that another Premier League club had got into bed with a betting company, while Professor Simon Chadwick wrote on Twitter that it “Carries hallmarks of Chinese state influence”.

As of Tuesday afternoon the Chinese website was down.

Saints finished 16th in the Premier League this season with 39 points from 38 games. They made headlines when it was reported that the club was under investigation by the English Premier League with regard to its ownership.