Roger Moore scores: sharing the pain

Am I the only one who finds announcements about share-holdings on our club's official web-site just a tad irritating? What I really want to know is how the hell we intend to extricate ourselves from a position of peril close to the bargain basements of English football; whereas, my club is keen to let me know that multi-millionaires are engaged in football monopoly, rivalling only Ricardo Carvalho with their ability to jostle for position.

Could anything offer less hope for an immediate upturn in form than a boardroom battle? Behind the scenes manoeuvring, the drawing of battle lines, the taking of ‘sides' and the inevitable loss of focus where it matters most are just what we need. Here we go again, more distraction from the one thing that everyone seems to have forgotten at this club – the first team.

Of course, all sorts of rumours accompany the buying of shares. No doubt all the board would claim to be united in their desire to see improvements in results – you'll be able to skate across the Solent before a shareholder will admit placing their financial return above the good of a club. But is this ‘power-broking' really designed to unite our ailing boardroom and invest us with new ideas if not new money.

Or is Michael Wilde plotting to remove a certain unpopular chairman and replace him? Is he the right man for the job? Frankly, even Stalin would enjoy at least a honeymoon period in charge at St Mary's if he were able to remove the focus of so much deserved fan discontent.

And what on earth will the ‘winner' of this financial arm-wrestle be left holding? Shares in the club with the most admired corporate catering in League One perhaps.

Frankly, I've long since given up caring who's in charge at Southampton. So much so that right now, the total disintegration of the club that occupies that spot on Britannia Road with a stadium about to undergo a corporate name-change, would fill me with little more than minor regret.

You see, all the time a board can sit in their ivory hospitality facility and ignore the malaise that once was a football club, I wonder whether they preside over anything other than a P/E ratio and a regular tax-efficient dividend payment.

The spirit that underpinned not just our time in the top flight, but everything about our little club, has gone. We name the rooms after legends because they're either no longer welcome in our home or refuse to be a part of the monstrosity we have become.

Fans, battered and weary from years of depressing lack-lustre performances, punctuated by one brief flirtation with success under the tutelage of the fiery redhead, have mostly given up hope. Heroic talismans, once a constant stream from dressing room to bedroom, are now so distant that an ordinary right-back can be ascribed legendary status for a simple similarity to the messiah.

Players, once battle-ready centurions, are now drawing salaries not swords, buoyed by the thought of signing-on fees as we sink slowly down the table. Smiles have been replaced by grimaces and the only thing flowing about our football is the champagne in the VIP lounge at the player's favourite nightspot.

It won't be long before plastic seats outnumber the fans and make more noise in a stadium that for all its majesty offers nothing as noble as our former humble home.

I want our club back.