The End Could Be Close for the Saints

On arriving home from work yesterday afternoon and switching on my computer as I always do, I would then usually check my emails and start replying to the hopefully long list awaiting my attention. It can often take me up to 24 hours to fully catch up with the backlog.

However, yesterday for no apparent reason I first clicked on the link to the sports news. The headline that shone back at me was of something very close to my heart. At first I had to check it was not April 1^st and not some made up story, on double checking and realising that it was definitely the 2^nd. The headline was about my favourite football club (or soccer as some of you prefer to call it) Southampton. That very day they had been put into administration. The team I had lovingly followed for over 40 years through good times and bad, and in recent years it has been mostly bad. The team are on the brink of going out of business. That was one of the issues here, many years ago when I was a young lad I started following my team and it was a sport, sadly big business has taken over and it is no longer a game. Now it is run purely as a business, unfortunately one of the side effects of this is the cost to the average fan; the man in the street has been priced out of the game.

The reality of the administration being imposed on the club is that if a buyer is not found within the next 24 days then the football club I and many others have supported for many years will be no more. A few clubs have had to close in the past, have gone out of business. Most of these have been smaller clubs, my team is not one of the biggest in England, certainly not a big player on the world or even on the European stage, but until 2005 they were in the top flight of English football. They had been playing at that level for over 25 years, not a bad achievement for a smaller city club.

So, what went wrong with this football club?

As I said it is now a business, and the person running the club was a businessman and not a football fan. Many times he had been asked to step down when things had not been going well but through his own arrogance continued on hoping that his way would eventually come through, well he was wrong very wrong and the outcome looks like being the end of a football club. He being a businessman will just go on to the next venture and will not be affected.

Some of the biggest mistakes he made were in his key appointments, using inexperienced coaches, having the final say in who should come and go when transfers from other clubs and not listening to the advice of the experience around him.

The proudest moment for me as a Southampton fan was as a 16 year old in 1976 standing at Wembley stadium as my little team overcame the odds and beat Manchester United in the FA cup final, the only time they have ever won the trophy. Other happy memories of lesser occasions but that I think may well now be the pinnacle of my being a Southampton fan. As I said earlier 24 days is all that could be left to save this club, if someone comes in with a rescue package they will be treated as an instant hero by many thousands of supporters, if not then an until recently well run club will go to the wall, and sadly in this present economic climate others may follow. I hope I am wrong with this assessment and in 25 days time can say it's OK, but if they do survive this latest chapter in their long history then a long hard fight to try to get back to where they once were will not be easy.