PREMIER League boss Russell Martin has found love with former glamour model Lucy Pinder.
The Southampton manager is said to be besotted with the 40-year-old — who is a die-hard Saints fan.
The couple have grown close in recent months but were out together this week when the football coach was given an honorary degree by Brighton University.
They also turned heads at a Sky Sports social function, with pals saying they are “smitten”.
A source said: “They’re a match made in heaven — or at least in Southampton.
“They’re mad for each other.”
Russ, 38, is plotting his side’s return to Premier League action after May’s win in the Championship play-off final.
And he has been coming to terms with the end of his marriage to Jasmine, the mother of his three children.
The split rocked Russell, who throughout his football career talked proudly of his fitness model missus, calling her a “supermum”.
In 2018, he said of her: “To achieve what she has with three little ones is amazing.”
The couple split last year. Since then he has been comforted by Lucy and gradually the duo have forged an unshakeable bond.
A source said: “There was no crossover. Russ’s marriage ended and he was glum. It was all about looking after the kids and making sure they were OK.
“But amid the grief, as he threw himself into work, Russ grew intimate with Lucy.
“She is a regular face at Southampton functions and is always around the club as a die-hard fan.
“Over the weeks and months their friendship grew into something more.”
Pin-up Lucy, now a TV personality, shot to fame as a glamour model in the early 2000s after she was spotted on Bournemouth beach by a photographer.
She went on to become a regular in now-defunct lads’ magazines Nuts, FHM and Loaded and has been in several movies — debuting in 2012 in Strippers vs Werewolves — and appeared on Celebrity Big Brother.
Russell declined to comment.
