If Saints are taken over, what will happen next ?

If the much mooted takeover happens in the next few days/weeks just what will it mean for the club, OK of course it will bring in an influx of cash but will it be at the wrong time.

At the moment we are running along a clear plan of action, OK its doing things on the cheap but we have a squad of youngsters all willing to play their hearts out for the club and the manager, they probably arent going to get us promoted but they should hopefully not get us relegated either.

If the consortium takes over then we are in a state of limbo, in truth its a case of what do we actually do ?

The arrival of Alan Shearer as manager is much predicted, but would it be folly to appoint a totally inexperienced manager to the job when he would have no time to bring in new players, we might have millions to spend, but it would be January before we could spend them, Shearer would be presiding over a young and inexperienced squad, who suddenly have had their motivation snatched from their grasps and would in the main merely be playing out a few months until Shearer could get the cheque book out.

The other option would be to keep Poortvliet in the job, but would the belief be gone, it would be the case of the sword Of Damocles hanging over both the manager and the squad, they would be aware that as soon as was possible sweeping changes would be made, again there would be a big loss of motivation, confidence and belief with what could be catastrophic results.

The big worry is that we could be faced with a similar scenario as Leicester, Milan Mandaric changed the manager early in the season and threw money at the team in the transfer window, but by then the damage had been done, Ian Holloway supposedly experienced both as a manager and at Championship level could not manage the balance and a demoralised leicester squad, who like Saints should have been nowhere near relegation imploded.

When the consortium come in it really needs to be a case of evolution not revolution, in my view they should consider keeping Poortvliet and continuing to use his methods in the short term, of course he would be able to go out and get a few loan signings with experience so this would enable the club to start to build a stable foundation.

If this was the case, then perhaps if Alan Shearer is the man he could work alongside Poortvliet and learn the ropes, as the New year arrives and the transfer window open, Shearer could become more involved in bringing in players and changing things.

This way morale could be kept high, the youngsters would still be getting their chance and feel they did have a future at the club, it would be good if Poortvliet himself was perhaps in the future plans in some way as he seems to have earned a reputation here as a good and solid man, he and Mark Wotte could probably continue the youth academy and build it up for the future, as I feel the academy has already proved its worth over the past five years and could do again, at the moment big money rules in football, but you have to ask just how temporary it is.

I like many Saints fans would welcome big investment from the right sources,however caution is the word, we are at a stage where we could be about to take some big leaps forward, but we dont want to be like Leicester and take a big drop backwards before we have really got started.         

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