I have backed Katharina Liebherr to keep Southampton Football Club moving forward, however that doesnt mean that mistakes will not be made, they are being and they need to be addressed.
When I read some of the opinions posted on social media sites, I have to say that many of them are written from an ill informed position and that the wrong people are getting shot at by the majority, in order to idenify what the problem is at St Mary's at present it is first requisite that the person commenting understands the corporate structure that is now in place.
Ralph Krueger has come in for a lot of flak, but he is not the man responsible for running the club on a day by day basis and making the big decisions, as Chairman his job is a part time role, he is there to counsel and advise the CEO and make sure that the wishes of the owner of the Club are followed.
The CEO is Gareth Rodgers, formerly the Financial Director, he is now the man charged with running the club on a day by day basis and keeping it running smoothly.
The problem is for many is that the lines were blurred under Nicola Cortese, although initially Cortese was not CEO but only Chairman, within months or arriving he had taken on both roles and effectively ran the club as CEO reporting only to himself as Chairman, the death of Markus Liebherr meant that he could get away with this a lot longer than he might have otherwise, if this all sounds a bit familiar then it is, it is exactly the same structure we had when Rupert Lowe was in charge.
Perhaps where the club first went wrong is when they made the appointment of CEO, those close to the club and aware of the strife that had been going on in the background for the previous 18 months or so with Katharina Liebherr having reservations about how the club was being run financially could see there would be no smooth transition, that there would be stormy waters and that there needed a steady and experienced hand at the helm.
Initially this looked to be the case with first Cristian Purslow formerly of Liverpool and then ex Man City and Blackburn CEO John Williams was in the frame, ultimately neither were appointed and this was perhaps a mistake, in hindsight what was needed at the helm was a strong CEO with the experience at this level.
With respect to Gareth Rodgers he did not fir this bill, his reputation as a accounts director is second to none, but a football club needs someone able to lead from the front rather than from behind the scenes sometimes and this is one of those times.
But ultimately the CEO is not as influential on the playing side as our ex CEO would have had us all believe, the CEo has to run the club overall, he does not have responsibility for one department he has them all to oversee and the word here is oversee, under Cortese the commercial side of the club had been neglected and gone to pot, a number of marketing directors had all been and gone in a short space of time, all seemingly unable to work with Cortese and this is what ultimately caused his downfall, but even Cortese had to take advice and the man responsible for giving him it was Les Reed.
Back in May Reed confirmed that he was the man responsible for the transfers and contracts at the club and it is this statement that may yet come back to haunt him.
Reed is not a respected figure in football if you believe the likes of Steven Gerrard who savaged him in his biography and the Liverpool captain claimed that Reed had no idea how to handle players and had no respect in the game.
Certainly although Reed had held positions of power in the FA, at club level his experience is not that impressive including the infamous 41 day spell as Charlton manager.
Under Cortese, Reed's influence started to grow, although it is believed that in the later stages of the former CEO's reign that the pair had fallen out, since Cortese left though Reed seems to be effectively the Director Of Football and Katharina Liebherr seems to have been convinced that with Reed running the football side of things that Rodgers could run the business side of things whilst Reed dealt with running the football issues.
This is all good corporate governance but again in hindsight KL and her board have underestimated the need to that strong experienced character heading the club.
From the Reed perspective as it stands at the moment he appears to have failed miserably in his objectives, so far we have lost four players and signed only two and this is where the crux of the problem lies, Reed at this point should be standing firm, he should be addressing the players and making sure that Saints are calling the shots and not the players.
The truth is that all of these players have been tempted away by far better offers both financially and in terms of the stature of the clubs they are joining than they can get at Saints, over the past year there have been those that beleived that the players bought into some sort of masterplan that if followed to the letter would mean Champions League football without a doubt, this is bunkum, Dejan Lovren would have known all about the Premier League, he would know that a club of Saints side would not have been able to jump from 14th in their first season back in the top flight in 8 years to 4th just on the basis of a few promising youngsters and £30 million spent, look at how long it has taken Man City to truly establish themselves and Spurs with multi millions cant break into the top four except on the very odd occasion, if Lovren wanted Champions League football it would not be happening at St Mary's in the short term.
The fans want to see that the club still has ambition and to do that Reed has to start to show that he is in charge, the players who wanted to go should have been informed in no uncertain terms that no one is going anywhere until their replacements have been signed, this softens the blow to the supporters, as it stands now we have seen four men leave and only two come in despite almost a month of rumours in the press.
The truth is now that Saints do not need to bring in the money first to buy a player, they have plenty in the kitty and they need to spend it and spend it fast and that means concentrating on bringing people in rather than negotiating for them to leave, if those players don't like that then tough, but they should be told that face to face and left in no doubt how the club are going to handle things.
The worry for now is that Saints are going to struggle to bring in the players they want, even now Reed seems to want to haggle over the odd million or two as shown by Pelle's arrival from Feyenoord and Celtic's claim that Saints offer for Forster was derisory, yes of course we don't want to overpay, but sometimes you have to and having seen Liverpool and United both overpay to sign players from us we can afford to take a loss on a million or two.
But my biggest concern is Reed's track record in signing players, it should not be forgotten that Reed advised Cortese and to be blunt our transfer dealing over the past two years has not been great when it comes to signing big money players, Reed seems comfortable dealing in the domestic market as shown by the likes of Rodriguez, Clyne and Davis but after that it starts to get a little shoddy, Vegard Forren and Mayuka each cost £3.5 million and contributed nothing and then there is the two marque signings of Ramirez and Osvaldo, the truth is that although there has been a few good signings overall our transfer record is poor and well over half the money we have spent in our first two seasons back in the Premier league was effectively squandered.
So the eyes of Saints fans are on Les Reed, we need him to ensure that no one goes out of the door until we have not only replaced the players already gone, but have signed any other replacement, if someone goes before we sign anyone else then I am afraid that I will have lost confidence in Reed to do his job, yes he has been in a very difficult position, but he has not handled it well.
As I say I still have the utmost confidence in our owner and her board, but it was always going to be a learning curve for her and in hindsight perhaps she felt that keeping Reed in situ and appointing Gareth Rodgers would be good for continuity at a time when there was enough upheaval, this may prove to be a mistake.
But as a squad we are still in a far better position than we were two summers ago and that leads me to think that there is no reason why another decent finish in the Premier league is more than attainable, back then our squad finished 14th without the likes of Lovren so those predicting relegation should perhaps take a look at other clubs squads and the money they have to spend and realise that all that matters now is what we do next, if we replace those gone with good signings then we can and should be stronger than last season, as i write there are big question marks over the man responsible for the transfer dealings, in the next three weks we will find out if these are well founded or knee jerk reactions.
What is needed now from Saints supporters is to keep calm over the next three weeks, that is when we should judge what has happened over this summer, not now when the transfer dealings are still not finished, we do not need to make a drama out of a crisis before the transfer window shuts.