What a relief it is to be writing this column again. My last offering at the end of March did not, thankfully, see the light of day, beginning as it did with the not altogether prescient words, ‘Well, we’re not in administration then.’ This was 24 hours before the biggest crisis ever to hit Southampton Football Club in its 124 years plunged us into the near-100-day nightmare of rumour, relegation, hearsay, heartbreak, Pinnacle and panic that we have emerged from.

However, emerge we have, with a new owner and the start of a new era - the post-PLC years. These 12 years, the last five of which have been virtually all downward spiral, have led to a rather clear conclusion: if you forget that the football side of things is what the whole edifice rests on you are doomed to fail. Regrettably, when power brokers and men with grand ideas get things wrong at football clubs, it is not they who feel the sharp end of their failure. Most of the time they can disappear to other jobs, having first undertaken the ‘not my fault’ roadshow.

The non-playing employees of Southampton FC who lost their jobs as a result of relegation in 2005 and because of the subsequent cutbacks can be forgiven any lingering anger today. For the last five years, fans have merely had their loyalty and devotion tested; most of us, however, have not lost our livelihoods because of the outcomes of a series of football matches. Remember that.

For many people, one of the saddest aspects of this takeover saga has been the association of Matthew Le Tissier with the failed Pinnacle bid. Regardless of their real intentions and ability to complete the takeover, I do not believe that Le Tissier should be criticised for essentially backing the wrong horse. He’s a footballer, not a financier, is as diehard a Saints man as any and simply wanted to use his connections to save the club. How many of us, in the same situation, would not at least try and prolong the club’s existence? Ultimately the desired outcome has been reached - it’s just taken a nerve-shredding amount of time. Additionally, if rumours are to be believed, we would not have survived to see this takeover without Leon Crouch’s munificence. He has played his part and deserves thanks.

The revisionists and the historians can now pick over the bones of the PLC years and there are plenty of arguments still to be resolved. It will remain a controversial period and it will probably be books subsequently published that will inform the most broad consensus in the future. For now though, there is a huge opportunity. Arguments and confrontations, over keyboards, pint glasses and in the stands, among the long-suffering Southampton fans can be put aside. The line in the sand can be drawn here and we must unite behind the club that we love.

Since 1 April, the football has been secondary to the survival of the Saints. Now that we have a future, on 8 August we can begin to help the team overcome the 10-point deficit that we face and avoid a bottom-four finish. Based on the last three seasons in League One, we will need 59-60 points just to stay up, usually good enough to finish around 14th. It is to be hoped that common sense and experience of English football is prevalent among whoever our new owner appoints to run the club and they make money available to sign the physically powerful and experienced players that we will need just to be competitive.

The appointment of the new manager is a crucial decision and we could do a lot worse than to return to Gordon Strachan following Mark Wotte’s dismissal. While not a particularly big fan of Wotte, he acted with dignity throughout the summer and even accepted the decision of our new owner with grace and professionalism. I hope he finds another job soon.

Hopefully, the bottom of the curve has now been reached and we can begin to level out, at the very least. It’s a long way back to the top flight, where we belong, but it feels like we are taking the first steps today. With season ticket in hand, I’m looking forward to talking about battles on the pitch rather than in the boardroom. See you on 8 August - the new era kicks off at 12.45 p.m.

We’ve had more than our fair share of hot air so far this season. From the talking-up of the chances of a quaking set of teenagers (which fooled plenty of people, mostly those desperate for a change of approach), to some bloke called Poortvliet claiming that we were aiming for the play-offs having won the princely sum of one game, to a luxuriously coiffured Mark Wotte patronising the very people who pay his wages, there’s been a lot of nonsense spoken and pledges made for very little actual result. While the latter’s point was an exceptionally cheap shot at a section of fans who are pursuing their protest against the board’s unacceptably poor performance in exactly the right way (i.e. while still giving total support to the team), however, he has at the very least earned the right to point to some progress, for a week at least, due to a long-awaited home win.

Wotte’s record to date (one win, two draws, two defeats) has yielded in five matches the same number of points as were obtained in the previous eight league games, so it would be only the most curmudgeonly of Saints fan who would not recognise that there has been an improvement. It is due in the main to a quarter of the season’s goals tally to date (eight out of 32) having been scored in Wotte’s time, as opposed to the pathetic 24 that Poortvliet’s teams managed in 28 games. Say what you like about his PR techniques - Wotte has got us scoring again. It’s helped him a great deal that he’s got a fit and dangerous striker in Marek Saganowski and is actually being allowed to play him, but Saturday may just have clicked things together in the best way possible for the first time this season, i.e. with the right balance. Compare Saturday’s starting line-up (seven players with at least 100 career appearances) with the one that was flicked aside by Manchester United (just four) and it is pretty clear that Wotte is correct in putting more faith in the club’s elder statesmen. Jan-Paul Saeijs is becoming an increasingly dominant figure at the back, Chris Perry is forming a decent understanding with him and Jason Euell gave an exemplary display of mobile target-man play (take note, Jon Parkin). The change of formation (two up front with McGoldrick in the hole) was a success too. The immense amount of work got through by Euell and Saganowski made it difficult for Preston to build pressure, especially in the second half, and McGoldrick, of whom I have been critical at times this season, showed that he has value at both ends of the field with some fine defensive headers. If his performances can consistently justify his attitude then there will be few complaints.

The same can be said of the head coach, who has not endeared himself to the fanbase through some rather ill-advised observations on fans and their belief in the club in difficult times. Mark Wotte has every right to call for unity - what would the official site put in its articles at awkward moments if he didn’t? - but criticising a fanbase that has only started to turn (and then not on the team) when the club’s all-round performance has become insultingly poor is only going to tax the collective patience. I think that Saints fans generally find it very difficult to forgive and, in the future, when this current dark spell in our history is over, those whom the overwhelming majority hold responsible will still arouse strong emotions when mentioned. Whether Mark Wotte is one of them is down to his performance in the next 13 matches. If he continues to improve things in the manner that he did on Saturday then he might just get away with it. To those looking for statistical precedent, there is one good sign - the last time we won back-to-back home matches was in October 2007, and the second of those wins was against Cardiff. If Mark Wotte wishes to stop the protestors, then this Saturday he and the team must show that the Preston result is an indication of blue skies ahead rather than being just a blip.

The quiet abandoning of the hubristic ‘total football’ motif, the departure of Jan Poortvliet and his replacement by Mark Wotte did not come as much of a surprise. Poortvliet, who will probably now slip quietly back from Lowe Country into obscurity in the Low Countries, was clearly unable to meet the standard required by Southampton Football Club. He will remember with fondness the occasional good days Saints had, but fans will think of him as a bemused Hollander whose team only really seemed to come to life against Reading. A Royal dutchy, if you like. I do not envy James Morley, the club’s website editor, in having to update the online history to cover the failure of this sorry six-month gamble while remaining loyal to his employers. He’s maintaining a brave front, however, with no fewer than four articles stressing the need for unity having appeared on saintsfc.co.uk since 23 January and the club’s apparent change of approach being stressed by the fact that all of the ‘player’ quotes this week were given by personnel aged at least thirty.

The club, however, is now in limbo. Wotte, pitched in apparently unwillingly into an horrendous salvage operation with the future of Saints potentially at stake, may or may not be the right man - it would be harsh to judge any progress based on one game. If he revives our form up to a point but we are still relegated, he can point to the poor start made by his predecessor as the excuse, whereas survival will see him hailed as a miracle-worker. The draw against Norwich, trumpeted as a triumphant tactical recovery despite the bodged initial team selection, was a reasonable start. But the real convincing of a militantly angry fanbase needs to start with the next two games. With 18 points achieved away from home thus far, we are not far off the generally accepted target of 23 (i.e. at least a draw on average). However, if Jan Poortvliet resigned over the club’s poor home form then Wotte presumably has to start winning to avoid the same fate. Against two of the Championship’s play-off chasers, though, it will be tough. Our chances will certainly be improved if the balance of the side favours some of the club’s experienced players, with Marek Saganowski leading a two-man attack. Kayne McLaggon deserves a run in the side as well; his speed and directness have met with fans’ approval thus far. Additionally, he has not had the confidence knocked out of him through playing in too many defeats, as has happened to so many of his discarded young colleagues.

The planned march of fans has been met with a mix of support, ambivalence and condemnation. Some of those condemning it have done so on the basis that it is unsupportive of the club and unrepresentative of the fanbase as a whole. There is a simple response to this accusation: organise a march to the ground in support of Rupert Lowe, Michael Wilde and the incumbent board and see how many turn up. When compared to the numbers who actually march pre-Swansea, this will presumably indicate which proportion of the fanbase is most ‘in touch’ with broader opinion. Looking at the bigger picture, however, regardless of whether Wotte is able to effect a recovery and keep Saints in the Championship, with Lowe and Wilde in charge the basic problem will still remain: their shareholding interests, reluctance to invest money and particularly the former’s poor sense of what the football club’s priorities should be will continue to hamper Saints, rather than help.

There are many reasons to look back at 2008 as the worst year in the history of Southampton Football Club. On the pitch, the 12 months yielded just 13 wins in competitive matches, a truly shameful statistic. Off it, the threat of unity, stability and even competence at both managerial and boardroom level was ruthlessly crushed by the May return of the two proven failures, who then proceeded to install a personable but naive and underprepared Dutchman to coach the team. In years to come, when sports historians come to chronicle this period in the club’s history, it is to be hoped that 2008 marks the low point in the club’s fortunes. Sadly, the signs are that 2009 could plumb even lower depths. Calls for unity from whomever are absolutely worthless while the balance of shareholding power remains in the control of the most divisive figures associated with Southampton FC. Fans won’t push the club forward when they feel that those they are pushing are taking it towards a cliff edge.

There are some practical measures, however, that can be taken to avert the most pressing issue affecting the club, namely the demonstrably poor form of the first team, on which everything ultimately rests. Firstly, the final game of 2008 against Reading highlighted once again the biggest problem that we have, which is that our young players need some bodyguards. January has to see some physically big and powerful players bought to the club, either on loan or permanently. Would Roger Johnson, Cameron Jerome, Patrick Agyemang, Clinton Morrison, Chris Iwelumo, Wes Morgan and Michael Duberry all have enjoyed their days facing us a bit less if they’d have been up against more opponents of similar height and build? We were promised ’style and steel’ from our team - the style has been intermittent, the steel almost totally absent. This is the biggest reason why we’ve lost so many matches and are 23rd in the league - fact.

Secondly, Jan Poortvliet’s situation has to be addressed. The bottom line is that he hasn’t got his team playing to a satisfactory standard and has had plenty of time to do so. Quite simply, he has to go and be replaced by a manager with a proven track record of managing effective Championship-level (or better) football teams. Iain Dowie, Aidy Boothroyd and Billy Davies are all presently unemployed and would steer the club into safer waters. The stumbling block is, of course, the untenable position that sacking Poortvliet would put Rupert Lowe in. Therefore, it is more likely that Poortvliet’s departure (if it comes) will be disguised as a mutual consent job, regardless of the fact that two or more parties have to agree for anything to be mutual. Some Saints fans were predicting as far back as last May that Poortvliet would be disaster, and his replacement would come from within the club. It remains to be seen whether this was perspicacity or fatalism.

2009 is shaping up to be a year of change. If current form continues then there will have to be a change of manager in order to avoid an unthinkable change in the division that we compete in. Either of these scenarios could lead to changes in the boardroom and, potentially, the latter could change the status of the club’s parent company as one listed on the Alternative Investments Market. The one change that would benefit everyone - that of fortune - seems to be a long way away. You make your own luck though, and if the status quo remains we are going to need a lot of it to remain in the Championship. I will be delighted to be proven wrong.

The fifth home league defeat of the season, giving us a record of six points out of a possible 27 at St Mary’s thus far, can be dressed up in any amount of bullish rhetoric about valiant displays, all pulling together and being sure that we’ll be fine come next May. The bottom line is it’s one win in eight now and the matches that we most need to win (in front of our own fans, for financial as much as mathematical reasons) are being frittered away. Far from being the fortress that Michael Wilde wrote about in the latest match-day programme, St Mary’s has been an open house this season. ‘Southampton FC will be at home this Saturday. We request the pleasure of your company. Please come and help yourself to the points.’

Wolves, a team long on confidence, hard work and help from poor officiating, were certainly given a fair game, however. Regardless of the injustice of Jason Euell’s sending-off and the mountain of effort that was put in during the second half though, the damage was done early on with two very soft goals following the nonsensical selections of Lancashire and Gobern, neither of who is yet up to the rigours of Championship football. We’ve already seen James, Thomson, Mills and White cruelly exposed by virtue of their inexperience this season and it was telling that none of these even made the bench against Wolves. I hope that the confidence of the youngsters has not been irreparably hampered - it’s not their fault that they’re being picked before they’re ready. It is worth recalling Graham Hiley’s observation following Michael Poke’s injury before the 5-0 defeat to Hull back in March that pitching 16-year-old Andrej Pernecky in ‘could have had a permanently damaging effect’. He’s right, of course - so what’s changed? I think that we can all answer that…

The brief revival of ‘Lowe out’ chanting cannot pass without comment. The St Mary’s crowd has shown remarkable resilience up until now this season, but the flash of mass displeasure, rather like its first appearance in January 2006, points to one thing: Lowe is a dead man walking unless we start winning. The interesting question this time around is who could potentially act as executioner. With no-one apparently about to step in from outside the club then a cabal of Lowe’s current supporters saying ‘Rupert, it’s all over’ is more likely. Who, though, is compelling and brave enough to take the first step? And if it’s none of them, then for how long can the supporter protests, which are only going to grow unless the results start coming, be ignored? And what will the response of the local media be? There is not, as Adam Leitch responded to my question in the Echo webcast on Friday, any favourable coverage being given in the newspaper to the club in return for first access to news stories. However, if things do begin to turn as ugly as they did in the first half of 2006 then their stance will be interesting to monitor.

With seven games to go until the busy Christmas and New Year period, not only will we soon know who we will be facing in the FA Cup (it’s bound to be Leicester) but we will also pass the halfway mark of the season. At that stage the debate about how long Jan Poortvliet should be given is surely redundant - it’s quite surprising that so many fans are apparently undecided on him after 20 games in total. When is the line drawn? Thirty matches? Forty? League 1? Supposedly performing and not winning is a destructive habit and, really, only teams that win consistently can genuinely lay claim to playing well. At the moment we do not have a winning culture at the club, where everything is geared towards the first team maximising the assets at its disposal. While (perhaps out of necessity) shareholdings and balance sheets continue to trump goals and wins, this does not look like changing.

We’re nothing if not consistent, it seems. Watford’s third visit to St Mary’s ended like the other two, with them cantering away with three goals and three points. The strange thing is, while the personnel on each team have changed, Watford’s methods have not altered in the slightest; they’re still a side of hoofers and bargers, unencumbered by the need or desire to play the short pass accurately. They’re out there for the result, pure and simple. I had hoped that, without Marlon King and Dan Shittu, two exceptionally formidable presences at either end of the field, Watford could be more easily contained. Then, buoyed by a fortnight of rest and a home crowd creditably responding to an appeal to turn out and support the club, our team could make its forward play count against a side struggling for away points and build on the win over Norwich.

Instead, we were subjected to a display of astonishing ineptitude, throwing into sharp focus the difference between the hubristic rhetoric of ‘total football’ and its actual implementation in a league in which it is becoming increasingly and unpleasantly obvious it is ill-suited for. Consecutive heavy defeats followed by tough away fixtures often see players told to get ‘back to defensive basics’. A good idea for Saints, you may think, but the problem in our case is that few of the team appear to know what the required basics are. It’s not surprising - many of them have fewer than 20 league games to fall back on - but watching a team that fails to mark men and track runners and seems unable to cover teammates or hold a position must make even the most blindly faithful wonder how long this can be allowed to go on.

The two-week break has not, it seems, changed anything about David McGoldrick, who delivered a second consecutive awful performance, reeking of someone believing a new contract makes him untouchable. He, like Lloyd James, would benefit from some time away from the action, or at the very least being played in his correct position. That they aren’t raises questions about Jan Poortvliet’s judgement, competence and, I’m afraid, the scope of his influence. Is it genuinely that of a man with whom the buck stops? Listening to his post-match interview, it was most worrying that he thought that ‘teams know how to play against us’. If this is the case, why is he not changing tactics, either before or during a game? Twenty-three outfield players used thus far this season have failed to fit into the 4-2-1-2-1 formation to consistent effect, so it is obvious that a rethink is called for. It seems that, without a tactical back-up plan, Saints are throwing untested players at the situation like so much mud at a wall, hoping that some of it will stick. Paul Wotton, to his credit, followed Poortvliet with another interview and pin-pointed accurately where Saints are going wrong, citing the team’s ‘mentality’ as key. He’s got a few games under his belt, and whomever is picking the team would do well to listen to his opinion.

The bigger crowd was one of the few pleasing aspects of an otherwise wretchedly poor afternoon. It is testament to the faith and pride of a fanbase that has had little to celebrate at St Mary’s this season, but the performance that ‘entertained’ us will hardly encourage the disenchanted to return. Ultimately, we’re mostly getting intricate keep-ball in the middle third of the field, interspersed with teenagers being brushed over, rather than practical results and it seems that my previously stated aim for us to win 13 of our home league matches this season is looking a little optimistic - we now need 12 from 17 remaining games. Next up at home are Coventry City, and it would be a bonus on current form if the two away games prior to that were to yield any points at all. Bravery, in terms of slaying some sacred cows in team selection and from some hopefully resilient and fast-learning young players, is now vital. It’s not going to get any easier, but the team can make it easier for us to believe that we’re back on track by learning from previous mistakes. Is that too optimistic a thing to ask for?

Delighted to be joining the Saints Web … hopefully the fans will take to my style of writing … when I heard that Saints Web were in for me there was only one place I wanted to go … Was attracted by Steve Grant’s revolutionary new moderating system …

Joking over. There isn’t a hell of a lot to be joking about at our club at the moment, after all, even with a win at Doncaster moving us up a couple of places. It’s pretty obvious that, financially speaking, we’re in the mire and the dwindling home crowds, starved of a home league win, are not going to return without a significant upturn in form. Rupert Lowe’s tactic of treating the club like a train set has evidently had a high cost in terms of fanbase confidence, and if the Doncaster result proves to be an exception rather than the rule then the nigh-on certain arrival of administrators will be something that he will have hastened. If this club is ever to start looking upwards again, external investment is the only way of doing it. Otherwise, the player sales that have to happen will wreck a settled side as soon as it starts to gel.

Ah, Rupert Lowe. Of all the situations that he has faced while in charge of the club, this is the least enviable. The role of the unpopular pragmatist is not one that has exactly been thrust upon him - I’d imagine he’s slipped back into it fairly easily - but he has associated himself so closely with Jan Poortvliet and the need to reduce overheads that the last thing he needs is for the team, the success of which everything rests on, to struggle. With Andrew Cowan having publicly declared that investment is being sought, it is to be hoped that all interested shareholders do the right thing for the club if and when someone is brave enough to take Southampton FC on. In the meantime, a stand-off situation seems to have developed, with fans aware of the need for cuts but grumblingly unhappy about it. The club is treading a PR tightrope, and with matchday attendances now increasingly important, it is an awkward balance to maintain.

At least the club now has a new ally in the form of the Echo. The new entente cordiale has not gone unnoticed among fans, with the Echo website seemingly being offered first chance to print news stories in return for sympathetic coverage. This is a double-edged sword for both parties, however. All newspapers, out of commercial necessity, must reflect the opinions (or prejudices) of their readership and there have already been a couple of rumblings, especially after the disgraceful defeat at Rotherham.

One person who, alas, is no longer available to help the club’s media relations is Graham Hiley. The journalistic equivalent of a loyal, honest club captain, even when he was having to put a brave face on the club’s most egregious errors, I always felt he had the populist instinct of a hardcore Saints fan straining to get out. On occasions, the mask slipped and he allowed himself the chance to really let rip, even at his employers (or on one memorable and swiftly removed occasion, his ex-employers), but he did, on the whole, help create as good an official site as we could have wished for, with more red meat on offer than the bland gruel of most clubs’ online propoganda emporiums. It is regrettable that saintsfc.co.uk has now descended into three-bags-full-sir mode.

On the field, the season has predictably yielded mixed performances without much practical reward. It is unfair to call the season a write-off yet, but it will be asking a lot for Saints to finish any higher than lower mid-table. Bullishly pointing to Manchester United’s squad of ‘kids’ that took the Premier League by storm in 1995/96 (and ignoring the fact that they were backed up by at least seven senior pros, two of whom were world-class) as what could happen means absolutely nothing, as our youngsters are simply not as talented as Beckham, Scholes et al. What they are going to do, however, is wear the shirt, and therefore they need and deserve our support. It would be nice to see some of the assets that we have at our disposal used more intelligently, however. Rudi Skacel still has a part to play, as will Jason Euell and Wayne Thomas when fit again. If we can’t sell ‘em, use em!

Home form is going to be the key this season. We, the fans, have the chance to help the club financially and the team vocally, and with 19 league matches still to play there, a look at the fixture list suggests that we can and should improve on 2007/08’s paltry nine wins. With 53 points the new safety mark, 13 wins would give us 39 of those. That would leave us 33 matches (less the eight we’ve already played) to find another fourteen. Regardless of what you think of Lowe and that bloke with the shares that he needs to follow him, they are apparently not going anywhere at the moment. The young players that wear the shirt need our backing. Give them a try. Let them know that you want it and they might just respond.