Roger Moore scores: where did it all go wrong?

Are you young/old enough to remember Jackanory? It was the BBC’s way of trying to make books glamorous. Dress up a recognisable celebrity, sit them in a chair and let them read stories on television – thus defeating the object of both mediums, since neither was intended for the other.

I never did watch for pleasure, only as a prelude to a more interesting programme – Blue Peter or Crackajack (crackajack) maybe, but here’s a story even Jackanory would have seen fit to question.

It revolves around a football club and it’s become something of a cmodern-day farce…

Alright, alright so I’m not really going to bore you with the details of a story you probably know only too well, but the latest instalment of the circus which surrounds SFC just underlines for me exactly how far our once great club has fallen.

When I first started supporting this club it was lying in the old Second Division and basking in the after-glow of a recent FA Cup success. I only remember that 1976 final in dreams, but I’m sure I watched on television – which family didn’t watch Cup Finals then - and how I benefited from the man who oversaw that generation of our club.

Lawrie McMenemy built a side at Southampton who played good football. An ambitious man, he became ‘Mr Southampton’ – attracting players of the stature of Kevin Keegan, unearthing talent of the quality of Steve Williams, Danny Wallace and Steve Moran, and blending them like the finest whisky.

For me the 1980s will always hold a special place because of a special man – Lawrie Mac. Love him, loathe him, no-one could ever doubt Lawrie bled red and white – even if eventually, his spiritual red and white home on Wearside called him back. But for all Lawrie’s great legacy, the hole he left behind has simply never been filled.

Some clubs have been lucky enough to have two great managers (Shankly and Paisley at Liverpool, Busby and Ferguson at United) and some have never been lucky enough to have even one. The question that still vexes me (with or without Harry Redknapp) is will we ever see Lawrie’s like again here?

Where is our hero?

Those kind of managers don’t exist, you cry. But they do. I saw one today – Neil Warnock. Here’s a man who is Sheffield United – another who bleeds the red and white. A man who has known his Chairman for 17 years, worked for him at Scarborough Town and now has taken his counsel (and money no doubt) to turn down our near neighbours. Blades fans will rejoice that Warnock will stay.

So where is our hero? Where’s the man committed to Southampton and to our future success?

Well, sadly, nowhere to be seen.

Not on the board and not, for my money, in our revolving managerial office. Don’t get me wrong, I supported Redknapp and probably still do. I think he could do a job, given time and the freedom to do it, but is his heart here or at the other end of the M27? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Except for one man perhaps; the man who employed or (as of Thursday afternoon at 4pm) ‘employs’ him.

Rupert Lowe is a man who doesn’t bleed red and white so much as dividend and p/e ratio. It’s easy to knock a football Chairman, well it is in the case of Southampton fans anyway!

But when we’ve won fewer games in the past 10 years than any other domestic club, when we’ve overseen 10 different managers in that decade and when yet another bizarre managerial episode seems to be reaching its climax, whom else is there to blame?

But, no, it looks like good old Rupert will escape again with fans relishing the idea of saying good-bye to a manager many really didn’t want, from a club they don’t want to mention, and all helping to conveniently disguise where the real problems within our club can be found; the boardroom.

There is a moral to this story: just don’t expect it any time soon. There could be many more chapters yet…