An interesting article from an Ipswich Town supporter who compares the dark days Ipswich Town have been through to Saints 

It is a Tuesday evening and the weather has decided to suggest that it could rain, and rain hard, but it has not quite decided to offer any raindrops. It is Champions League Semi Final night between Chelsea and Barcelona and the TV coverage is gradually hyping up the game with a mixture of advert breaks and some close up shots of Thierry Henry. ‘It IS Barcelona versus Chelsea,’ and saying those five words suggests to you that this is a truly showbiz fixture.

It is the sort of game that would be muttered in the same breath as the Monaco Grand Prix. This is football at its most glamorous, and you know that it has all the hallmarks to be a classic game when you have Drogba, Eto and Messi on the pitch to spellbind you with their precocious talent. Regardless of what people may say about the importance of the Premier League title, the FA Cup or the League Cup, you know that anyone associated with the Premiership’s ‘so-called’ top four has their eyes especially focused on the Champions League trophy.

 We can enjoy our Champions League Semi Finals, and feast with the world’s top footballers, but we should never forget about another side to our national game circa 2009. For anyone who cares about the health football on a level that is greater then the latest colour scheme of Cristiano Ronaldo’s drawing room, the sight of the Saints floundering in a deep financial mire should send a shiver down the spine, and a cold feeling in the heart. Regardless whether you are a Saints fan or not, the sight of the proud faithful having to pay the emotional price for years of malaise, should be a lesson to us all.

I am left wondering how I would have felt if my club had finished this season like Southampton Football Club. I can not bare to think about it. Southampton has joined a long list of provincial clubs that are washed up in the slipstream of the Premiership millions. There is a growing list of ‘family run’ clubs that had a moment in the sun, decided to splash some cash, and build some new stands or a whole stadium. A B list international striker is brought with much fanfare, and causes their team spirit to collapses, results fall apart, managers leave, and someone discovers that there may be some bills to pay.

 Despite the boasts by some of my fellow Ipswich fans that we are a ‘massive’ club and are on the road to certain Championship, then Premiership, glory under the stern stewardship of Roy Keane, it was not that long ago that we were facing the financial abyss.

The Saints story is strangely familiar and it is not easy to cope with. None of us will ever really know how close Ipswich Town Football Club was close to total financial meltdown in the years following our 2002 Premiership relegation. You know the story. Players on eye-watering contracts, sacked managers, the sale of the youthful hopes, staff redundancies, and empty stadiums?

It is a very sad mess, which is often exacerbated by the talking heads of the boardroom behaving like the captains of the Titanic. The guilty party disappears over the financial horizon to leave a battlefield of dashed hopes and shattered dreams. In a vain attempt to punish financial mismanagement, the club suffers a points deduction which seems to penalise no one apart from a new (and often totally innocent) boardroom regime, and the long-suffering fans.

 Throughout the financial chaos, it was the fans that parted with their hard-earned cash to support their beloved team and the league position slipped lower and lower. A points deduction does nothing to help a club draw a line under the wretched past and attempt to sketch out a plan for the future.

What is it like to support a team that is trying to reach 0 points before the end of October, and a club that has forked out £32 million for a Brazilian wonder kid? There is no comparison. You can not even make one up. It is difficult to believe that the Saints will be the last club to suffer this fate. How many fans from clubs will see the soul of their clubs being torn apart in the national media? We live in hope that football’s high command will do something to maintain the stability of clubs outside the Premiership’s top four.

For the sake of football, it is not healthy to see the slow death of the provincial game. The Champions League will stumble along to its inevitable final in Rome at the end of May, and we will marvel at the wizardry of Europe’s top footballing talent.

There will be the calls that the English Premiership will be the best league in the world, and English football is unparalleled in quality. What the story of Southampton, as well as the chronicles of clubs including Leeds, Nottingham Forrest, Sheffield Wednesday, Charlton Athletic, and Luton Town, teaches us is that there is a part of the English football galaxy that is chronicling sick and needs some collective treatment from the footballing family.

Photo: Action Images

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