The End??

Well, the time has finally come. After years of just missing out on investment, the reality has finally dawned on most Saints fans that actually this is the crunch. It isn't about who is up front, or who is managing, or even whom we were playing. All of those things pale into insignificance against the thought of not existing at all.

For years there has been a general dirge of information, which has been presented by anyone that has a keyboard, about the team and board decision-making. Most of the unfavourable decisions have been made through a necessity to remain operating and although this has always been brushed aside by the deluded mass, here we are.

Some of the main examples of this was getting rid of Pearson (cost too much), selling Rasiak, John, Blackstock, back to Walcott, Bale and Bridge (all cost too much and offers were too good to turn down).

These decisions were made out of the objective to remain buoyant, but unfortunately unlike most businesses, you cannot move to a cost leadership model of cutting costs and selling more of a lower quality product. In football it is all about quality, and as soon as you start getting rid of that the end is near.

Although in and out of the pubs of Southampton there will be many arguments about who was to blame and why this has happened, the simple truth has always been... WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY!!!!

The problem came about ten years ago when the face of football began to change forever. The money started flowing faster and faster, and the traditional small family clubs had to up their game just to compete. Some clubs went in to vast amounts of debt, a la Leeds, and some others tried to button down the hatches and try good old honest graft, maybe Everton can be in this category. We didn't have many options, we didn't go in to debt so we just tried to manage the way we always had by making money off our players that we brought through. But if you keep doing this you just become a glorified academy for the top four, but with massive costs.

Rich investors have bought 90% of the clubs in the Premiership; you can almost name them all. In the old days you were lucky if you knew Ken Bates and Doug Ellis. This never happened to Saints and this was when the writing was on the wall.

The only actual mistake the Board of Southampton made that was critical to the sustainability, and not just a bad decision that isn't made by any board all over the world, is the lack of attracting any investment. My theory on this is that the people involved with the Southampton board are small time Southampton business people who are rich if they have £2 million. Well surprise, those people get swallowed up everyday by the big boys in football now. And not one of them could attract any real money because they would have been laughed out of the room.
Other small clubs were lucky they had fans that were really rich, eg Bolton, Wigan, Blackburn. We did not have this luxury.

So if you want to know why this has happened, and equally how we can get out of it, then we never did, and we need to, attract big money investment. This is it in a nutshell.

The positives out of this situation are now finally that the divided faithful of St. Marys can now unite, and also that Southampton as a club, and as a city, and as a force can unite and get behind this team. We will find our saviour, we will stay up and we will continue into the future because the spirit of Southampton when it is going in the same direction is one of the strongest anywhere.

DARE TO BELIEVE