Come back and stay

So long time no blog, but that's what twitter does for you!!

On the football front, things at St Mary's have been quietly going well. Premier league stability, good squad, good manager and a style of play that has made others look up and take notice/copy us.

So this week I didn't expect a national paper to have the head line "Model club in meltdown" and it refer to the Saints. But that is exactly what happened.

So what would have prompted such a disaster?? Had HMRC found a huge unpaid tax bill?? No. Had the club been sold to a Pompey fan who wanted to change the home kit to blue?? No. Had The manager resigned? No. Had the club accepted a £20m offer for Guly and Danny Fox?? Sadly nope.

What had happened was that the Chief Executive, Nicola Cortese, had resigned. Yes that's right a senior employee had resigned. But he the man who is largely acknowledged for single handily turning a bottom of League One club in to a team who were in one win away from topping Premier League at the end of November. (It's gone a bit wrong since then, we're now 9th, but you get the picture!).

He's done that by being appearing to be ruthless. He has sacked two managers, Alan Pardew and Nigel Adkins, who had both done well at the club. Pardew, winning the Football league trophy at a Wembley Final and Adkins had achieved back to back promotions to take the team back to the Premier League. He has overseen all aspects of the club and the transformation has been amazing, but there have been those in and around the club that have alluded to a less than approachable person who expects complete allegiance to "the Southampton Way" as it is known.

I have only heard him speak once, at a Q&A after a League One game and he seemed genial, humorous but there was steel there too that all successful business people would say that you need. Success needs tough decisions and that need tough people.

Well this week he resigned. Why he did that, no one knows as he has stayed silent. So it's all rumour. Rumour that the owner, Katharina Liebherr, wants to sell the club and she and Cortese fell out over it. but she has said that she "he has done a wonderful job and we very much wanted him to stay". Rumour that A C Milan want him to do for them what he has done for Saints, but working with the Berlusconi family would be a lot less easy than the Liebherr family.

The logical reason is actually much more straight forward.. If the Liebherr's do want to sell then Cortese has said in the past that he knows people who would want to buy it to keep the stability going. But you can't negotiate to buy the club if you're paid to negotiate the sale!! Therefore I suspect that Cortese will be back with new owners to buy the club and reinstall him back to his old job! Sunseeker the luxury boat builder, based in Poole, for example, which is owned by the Chinese conglomerate, Wanda Group, is already a club sponsor.

If however that gap could be long enough for a kit with red and white stripes to be ordered for next season then that would be good!!