Roger Moore scores: good things come to those who wait

I don’t know that many Southampton fans personally, but through the power of the Internet, I have come to know hundreds, possibly thousands, of Saints. Only, when I say ‘know’, I mean of course that I recognise them by their ‘handles’ rather than as real people.

Occasionally you find them in a bar away from home and can put a face to anything from ‘morph’ to ‘matt le tisser7’, although the ‘Beattie9s’ and ‘Telfer Legends’ are in much shorter supply than they once were.

Invariably, these virtual Saints fall into camps; the ‘Pro Lowe’ brigade, Redknapp’s army, those for and against Ricardo Fuller’s continued inclusion and those who think Marian Pahars is God versus those who fear he only has to look at a bus to catch it.

Most amusing of all, are those virtual Saints who, on the strength of one good or bad performance, can leap between polarised-opinion at the drop of a proverbial, as though their previous posting history was mere twaddle.

Now I confess to the odd error of judgement myself. I mean, who really thought Crouch was £2million well spent, until he played? But this fickle-ness which blights football seems to me just a reflection of the perverse way the English media deifies and demonises from one day to the next. And it reflects how we have come to do exactly the same, without a second thought.

Every football club has its moaners and every one its optimists. I try to be the latter, although for a Saint optimism comes as easily as dung from a rocking horse.

The time I enjoyed most as a Saint was the early to mid 1980s and came under a manager who had been with the club for 10 years by then – the other Big Mac. And maybe there’s a lesson here for today’s fickle fan-base and those who see no light at the end of the St Mary’s tunnel.

Lawrie took over from Ted Bates in the summer of 1973 and presided over a calamitous slide down the old Division 1, earning us the unenviable record of relegation alongside Norwich and Manchester United, yes, you read that correctly!

I don’t know what Lawrie’s actual results were for the first year in his equivalent of the laughably named ‘Championship’, but I’m guessing they weren’t spectacular or we would have bounced straight back like both United and Norwich.

Instead, it took four years to gain promotion back to the top flight (albeit 1976’s FA Cup win proved enough of a fillip for most Saints of the time to have stayed in the Second Division for life).

‘Keep the faith’ is a mantra more fit for the Catholic church than Saints, but surely there is something to be said for giving a manager the time it really takes to build a successful side?

I thought our squad was good enough to stay up last year and I thought Redknapp was the man to do it. When he didn’t, he seemed to have avoided most of the blame with fans admitting that he inherited a poor, flabby squad that needed trimming, training and tactical improvement.

Yet here we are, only three ‘footballing’ months later with calls for his head? How can that be? What’s changed between May and October save for the loss of our three best strikers and the addition of some useful freebies and the introduction of one or two promising kids?

Here’s the thing Saints must ask themselves, how long is long enough to rebuild a team and then have it genuinely challenge at the highest level? Lawrie took four years to take us home and then another six before we actually topped the table (ultimately finishing 3 points behind Liverpool).

And I don’t buy the story that football has changed fundamentally since then. In those days Liverpool had all the money. Now it’s Chelsea. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It’s hard watching your team draw so many games and harder still to dominate and lose. But irrespective of the results, if you can look beyond the short term, maybe, just maybe, we’re re-building. And maybe re-building Southampton will take just a little longer than three months.