Southampton Docked 10 Points!

The 10 point deduction imposed by The Football League is due to the club’s holding company going into administration. Effectively this relegates the club as with just 2 games left and in 23rd place in the division any “Great Escape” now is going to require a divine intervention that even Le God himself, Matt Le Tissier, couldn’t produce.

Whilst all this is gutting from a Saints’ supporters point of view, it’s not unexpected. The team has been poor all season in part to unmotivated players and also due to a Dutch management experiment that just went wrong. However, the fault of the demise of the club lies with it’s now ex-Chairmen of Rupert Lowe, Michael Wilde, and Leon Crouch plus club’s Directors who with varying degrees of blame have conspired to turn a well run football club into total financial disaster.

But things could still get worse!

There’s currently no guarantee that the club will even be in League One (Division 3 old money) next season with the word on fans’ forums that the situation is a lot more precarious. Could we really fold in the next few weeks? It doesn’t sound possible, but unless a buyer is found the future of the club, at least in it’s current guise is far from bright. It’s typically Saints to be strapped for cash in the middle of economic crisis meaning that all the rich guys of the world no longer want to buy a football club!

At least any potential buyer now knows our destiny this season, so perhaps from out of the gloom a Shining Knight on St George’s Day will emerge.

Perhaps there’s a few rich affiliates who fancy buying a football club?

However, the one thing this game did have was 2 Southampton goals which had the cats running for cover as scenes of jumping off the sofa, cheering and screaming at high decibels accompanied with a little jigging erupted around Swansea when Gareth Bale and Bradley Wright Philips found the back of the net. I can’t remember the last game I watched involving Southampton that resulted in such events – hopefully there will be more to come as the Saints start their push back to the Premiership (actually anything has to be an improvement on the last couple of seasons).

Hopefully this is the start of a new era for Southampton and perhaps the start of The Saints marching back into The Premiership.

As Theo has really only played a handful of senior games for Southampton, his departure is not that gut wrenching. He isn’t a legend or in the league of a Le Tissier – indeed other than a couple of superb goals in the first team, coupled with outstanding youth team performances he really hasn’t had that much time to endear himself to the masses at St Mary’s and join the ranks of Ball, Channon, Osgood and Keegan. No one gets near Le Tiss!

For Saints’ Fans though the news is yet another body blow following last season’s relegation and the side’s steady slide down the table. With promotion and even the play-offs looking like pipe dreams there’s not much to cheer about and the loss of Walcott has added to the misery.

With rumours abound that more players will depart before the end of the transfer window it does seem that things are going to get much worse before they get better – if indeed they can get better. Two words to worry the Southampton board should be “Nottingham Forest” – look what has happened to them!

As for Theo – it’ll be interesting to see where his career goes from here. Will he play for the Arsenal first team this season or even next season? Some bookies are offering odds on him playing for England and even playing in the World Cup! Saints’ fans will want to wish him all the best, but would have preferred he’d stuck around a bit longer – at least we’d have something to cheer about – although some might argue that at least we still have Nathan Dyer, and long term he could turn out to be the better of the two players. 

The only good news Southampton wise was that Harry Redknapp’s return to Fratton Park is to be investigated as Portsmouth “have been charged with a breach of ‘approach rules’ by the Premier League”. At least it takes the attention away from the mess he left behind down the M27.