Hard to believe but it has been a year since Nicola Cortese left Southampton Football Club and a lot has happened since.

With all that has happened in the last since, itis hard to believe that it has been a year since Nicola Cortese left Southampton Football Club, back then many supporters believed that the club would go into meltdown and that our days as a Premier League club were numbered, they thought that the entire success of Saints depended on one man and that one man was Nicola Cortese.

But with the benefit of hindsight we can ask the question "Did Saints succeed because of Cortese or in spite of him ?"

As Saints marched up from League One to the Premier League some lost sight of what the job of CEO/Chairman entailed at a football club, in very basic terms the job of a CEO is to appoint those who know how to run a football club both from the playing side and at a commercial lever and then to see that they all do their job.

That being the case the glory is for those that win football matches and so it should be.

But carefully planted stories in the press had gave the illusion that success was only down to one man and that Cortese was an expert in every field be it sports nutrition, tactics, player aquisition and running a business.

Of course Cortese did many thinks well, but for every think he did well there seemed to be half a dozen things he did not so well and some of them, like scrapping payment plans for season tickets or introducing a car parking ticket system that could not hope to recoup the outlay seemed to be done just to spite the fans, he was almost certainly a man who held Saints supporters in utter contempt rather than considered them the lifeblood of the business.

When he took over in the day to day running of the club in November 2009, contary to popular belief up till then his role should not have been as hands on as he was making it, meaning his relationship with the original Chief Operating Officer was unworkable, the alarm bells started to ring although not many were listening, back then, someone in a senior position in the club told me that Cortese would take the club forward, but because of his single mindness and insistence at controlling everything it would take twice as long as it should do as mistakes would be made along the way and that it would be a stormy ride.

That now looks a very accurate bit of forecasting.

Football fans in the main are only concerned with results, if the team is doing well then they think the club as a whole is well run, Katharina Liebherr certainly didn't feel that way and was asking questions that allegedly our ex CEO did not want to answer.

Perhaps one of those questions was about income versus expenditure, it cannot be denied that promotion to the Premier League brought in riches but from a commercial point of view our income was just about the lowest in the Premier, we were the only club failing to sell out corporate hospitality for instance and as any marketing manager will tell you corporate hospitality is what brings in the revenue, Katharina would almost certainly have wanted to know why out revenue was literally half of the team above us in the ranking.

But it wasnt just income, the club was spending money without seemingly any concern where it was coming from, the training ground was not only running two years behind schedule but had more than doubled from the original budget.

On the playing side perhaps 4 signings rang the alarm bells and hindsight now tells us they should have done, Gaston Ramirez, Mayuka, Vegard Forren & Osvaldo cost the club somewhere in the region of £35 million, add wages, signing on fees, annual bonus's, national insurance & pension contributions and you can more than double that over the term of the contracts. Add the training ground excess and the total for this would approach £100 million

OK we got some back from the sale of Forren but that was a drop in the ocean, even now we are probably spending over £100,000 a week just on paying wages to Gaston Ramirez and Osvaldo to be out on loan, even after the contribution from their current temporary clubs, that is one expensive mistake

It is easy to see why Katharina Liebherr might have thought that here was a guy who just content to spend my money with no consequence or accountabiliy of his actions .

A year on and we can see why from a corporate governance level things had to change, back then we had one man who refused to be accountable to anyone despite the fact that he was an empoyee not the owner, now we have a proper structure in place.

S a year on the club has not floundered on all levels it is flourishing, supporters will only see the on field results, but behind the scenes things have changed drastically, those running the club now see that the supporters are the key to success, they provide income for the club, yes perhaps its a drop in the ocean compared to the Premier league cash, but the fact is without its supporters the club is nothing, a year ago we paid £20 to watch Burnley in the FA Cup and 15,000 turned up, this year prices were halved and the crowd doubled, the revenue was the same but the feelgood factor is here this year it wasn't last.

Building a football club is like building a house, you have to have the foundations in place, those foundations are the supporters and commerical revenue, build that and the rest builds itself.

In every way the club is now stronger than before and although it will take time, under the current leadership both on and off the field it will get stronger every year.

It could have an should have happened under Cortese, but under him it was always a short term view, Mauricio Pochettino initially looked a forward thinking tactically aware manager, yet we now know he was far from the case, his experience was in avoiding relegation and he could never get that mindset out of his system, he was scared of getting relegated and therefore did not want cup runs to get in the way, he would state that the Europa League would be the worst thing for the club, but better to play in it and use it as a reserve run out than not at all, Ronald Koeman has shown us what a progressive manager with a hunger for success can do.

Now with a years hindsight we can see that the club was being held back, ironically Cortese the man who had said that football managers were just departmental heads and would discard staff because he thought they had reached the height of their powers, now seems to have reached the height of his and found himself just another departmental head where it was time to go.

Some supporters loved to sing his name, other fans sneered at us for that, this was something that happened nowhere else it was crass and worrying, but now it is rarely mentioned and never with any warmth, he was not one of us and never wanted to be, to him Southampton Football Club was just a vehicle for Nicola Cortese.

So in hindsight Saints are all the better for his departure and yes we do have things to thank him for, but we could never move forward to our potential till he went, this time last year he was holding the club back not moving it forward.

Of course this season may not end in success for Saints on the field, but if it doesnt we now know we have the foundations in place to keep competing and as we did in the 70's and 80's be a club that can challenge for honours.

Photo: Action Images

landsdownsaint added 14:03 - Jan 15 Thank god for NC ! I'm so glad he done everything he did,but as you say it was time for him to go .
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ClickInsect added 14:04 - Jan 15 "So in hindsight Saints are all the better for his departure and yes we do have things to thank him for, but we could never move forward to our potential till he went, this time last year he was holding the club back not moving it forward." How was he holding the club back? It's pretty much public record that probably the principle reason why Cortese left was because Kat refused to put any more capital into the club. Was Nicola a scumbag on a personal level? Yes. Was continued capital investment the way to go? Well I'm personally still not convinced that the current administration can be realistic about a top four position with a bottom five wage bill & a 40m surplus in the transfer budget. Did the club make a few crap transfers? Yes, but show me a club in the premier league that hasn't. You could look at Alex Ferguson's record & selectively make him look like a no-hoper as well. On balance, the club gotten insane value from the money invested in players. I'd sum up Cortese by saying that he put together & led a five year plan that did something for this club that the rest of the football league would sell there grandmothers to get anywhere near. He left when he did, because he was a lunatic arse hole unwilling to compromise or to work collaboratively with anybody. We were extremely fortunate to have him & fortunate that he left when he did! It worked perfectly for us.

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FrankSaint added 14:35 - Jan 15 Nicola Cortese may 'have been a bastard' but he was 'our bastard'. His personality and his story are probably more complex than you suggest.
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davepid added 15:19 - Jan 15 Does a CEO have absolute say over who we sign? .did NC really come to Nigel Atkins saying I've found this great striker , Jonatahn Forte, who've Ive signed., he's far better than any of the others I've followed.And Nigel replying funny that I signed him when I was at Scunthorpe. I simply don't belive the manager has no say in who we buy or identify to buy . Is it just coincide that a Canadian ice hockey star knew so much about the more modest priced players in European football last summer who just happened to have some contact with our new manager. sorry nic doesn't add up Cortesse= failure with the 4 players you identify

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SaintNick added 16:00 - Jan 15 No one will know the exact truth, what i am happy with in this story is that over the years i have spoken to many people closely associated with it. I am giving an opinion from a more informed position than most This man sucked the life out of our club and was allowed to get away with it by the supporters because he got us in the Premier League and they thought he was Liebherrs man, Markus own family did not agree with the way he was running the club and took action, does that tell you something clickinsect says that Cortese put together a five year plan, again not strictly true the plan was put together by the chief operating officer who led the club after the takeover, without Cortese the plan would have been implemented and possibly more succesfully because we would never have blown silly money on the likes of Ramirez and Osvaldo davepid points out adkins signed forte, why was a club with so much money signing Forte, im sure adkins would rather have signed someone better, but the fact is we had no money, that season we relied on free transfers and low budget, so the manager had to make and mend with loan signings etc as well If you think those 4 players have given us value for money for their £35 million transfer fee and wages then who am i to argue

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codge added 16:06 - Jan 15 Nicola who..............
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hmmm added 17:08 - Jan 15 I think this article reflects more on its author than the actual subject. It talks down our achievements under Cortese and exaggerates his failings, of which yes there are many. While he was in charge we got to the Prem in 3 seasons and when he left after a season and a half in the Prem we were in the top 10. In what is very much a results business, to suggest it could have been done quicker and better flies in the face of the facts. And the paragraph on building a house is plain absurd, if only building a successful football club was so easy

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gpsgm added 17:18 - Jan 15 I'd like to think it proves how lucky we are to have the Liebherr's. Marcus brought us the egotistical bastard we needed to get us out of the gutter, Katherina replaced him with the team that got us looking up at the stars. Good article Nick and agree with Click that our timing seems to be perfect.
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Zambucco added 21:44 - Jan 15 With you all the way Nick, never knew what all the fuss was about, a self publicised egotistical megolamaniac, who only had his own interets at heart. FFS he was a banker not a football genius. Ask two fo our all time heroes Franny and Matt, what he was really like gpsgm great point too! In the recent documentary shown on american TV NBC his name wasn't mentioned once, there was literally not one mention of him. Cortese bit the head off my hamster!

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WestSussexSaint added 22:00 - Jan 15 Cortese showed classic dictator traits. His single mindedness drove certainly contributed to our rise to th PL. However like other dictators he was oblivious to his failings especially as he could point to the success on the field. Like other dictators he was ultimately doomed to fail. Fortunately for the club Katrina stepped in before the damaged became irreversible. We should recognise the good things Cortese did for use but also recognise he was no Saint.

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BaselSaint added 10:58 - Jan 16 It seems more than a year... already forgot about him
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ClickInsect added 13:36 - Jan 16 Nick your points are always daft because you are completely unable to be objective, nor to accept that are biased. To say that Cortese had nothing to do with Saints' success is like saying that Branson had nothing to do with Virgin, that Steve Jobs has nothing to do with Apple & that Bill Gates has nothing to do with Microsoft. You see where I'm going with this? In any other field other than football, the man at the top of the pyramid gets the credit because it provides a simple narrative and a personality on which to attach success to when it's impossible for the layman or the press to really understand what is going on in a professional organisation and who to attribute the success to. The reason why your Cortese articles will always remain complete nonsense is because they are based on the idea that the performance of the club under his time wasn't good enough. You have always used the same justifications. That corporate hospitality isn't sold out. When an entire box, for an entire season costs less than a week's wages for Gaston (about 40k). That commercial deals can be signed to compare with premier league clubs, when a club had recently come from the lower leagues and didn't have a comparable brand. That all signings the club makes should prove to be good value, when not a club in the Premier league gets close to that. The reality is clearly that the bottom line is that he was the man in charge of the club when he took the owner's money and gave them a return which is far greater than the investment. He has a share of the credit, there is plenty to go around. I for one are happy he left when he did. But if you tried to explain your reasoning to fans of countless other clubs, they would laugh in your face. Birmingham, Leeds, Forest so many clubs have been managed into the ground during Nic's reign. By all means be happy he's gone, but to not have any perspective just makes you look daft and vindictive. Now the club have shown we are better without him, it's time for you to say thanks but good riddance.

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