Message Board regular "Winchester Exile has been viewing the posts this week with interest, here he gives his take on the situation
NC has been crucified on the Forum in the last few days. Some of its justified, some of it isn’t. However, whether justified or not, I believe NC as the top man at the club is our best bet at the moment and here’s why.
When Marcus Leibherr picked up the club for a bargain in July 2009 he placed a great deal of confidence in NC as his Executive Chairman. There was no reason to doubt Marcus’ decision at the time and that faith has been continued by Marcus’ family after his death (NC’s still in post right!). During the bidding process, the other possible buyers were second rate, even Matty’s lot. We struck very lucky with Marcus and its unlikely this will happen twice. If Saints were to be sold again, we have no reason to believe that the bidders would be any better than the second raters around the last time and who wants second rate owners?
There can be no doubt that NC can be an intriguing character and that he rubs some people up the wrong way. Given the unsuccessful summer transfer policy, I’m also not convinced by the structure within the club at the moment. However, NC has steered the club to the PL and championed the development of the academy. As we’ve seen by the acquisition of Ramirez, he’s willing to stick his neck out and all clubs need their top man to do that from time to time. This doesn’t however mean to say that he must get every decision right but he must get it right overall, given time. I think NC is a believer in the long term and is willing to sacrifice short term gain for long-term stability. He’s not there yet and I think even he would agree with this. There is some way to go.
In some ways our current predicament is providing the ownership/club management/team management combination with an interesting test. If they can steer us through this then it will be a real triumph and proof positive that the regime should remain. If they don’t then something will have to change. Crunch time is approaching but there is a little way to go yet.
There’s a lot to be said for stability. It could be argued that the more stable a club the more successful it will be. Despite the club as a whole not performing as everybody wants at the moment, including NC, a change of ownership or even Executive Chairman would not necessarily bring about success.
Matty has stated that NC is not a nice human being and he may be right and he may be wrong, I don’t know. But at least we know what we’ve got with NC. A hard nosed Executive Chairman who will make a decision that he thinks is right for the club and then execute it. Who knows what we’d get if the club was sold or a new man came in.
Sometimes it’s better the devil you know and as argued above, the current ownership of the club is the best for Saints at the moment and that ownership, like it or not, comes with NC at the helm. The grass isn’t always greener elsewhere – just look at that shower down the road.