I have stayed away from mentionning my beloved Southampton FC but the time has come for an almighty rant. My football team has been taken over by incompetance and mediocrity. A few years ago Southampton FC had moved from the Dell to a new 35,000 seater stadium, were in the FA Cup Final and subsequently qualified for UEFA Cup football.
Since then we have had five different managers. We are now 16th in the Championship (old second division), have sold all of our best players: Kevin Phillips (£3m), Peter Crouch (£7.5m), Anti Niemi (£1.5m) and most recently Theo Walcott (£5m rising to £12.5m depending upon appearances). In return we have bought a 19 year-old Polish goal keeper and...that's about it.
Our club is managed by Rupert Lowe who appears to have become a Megalomaniac. When we were releguated he played up the fact that our internet based TV channel was hugely successful. Although this may be a good business achievement, it matters not to the thousands of fans who have payed thousands of pounds to follow Southampton up and down the country only for the club to step down a division. He has also brought in Sir Clive Woodward, who coached England's rugger-bugger egg chasers to World Cup victory. Only problem is that it was in another sport. He is now director of football and is being payed a reported £850k a week (more than any player or staff member at the club). His input seems to me to have been building a 'presentation suite' at Southampton's training ground.
What I mean to say in this rant is that the club has lost direction and focus. They are being managed (both financially and sportingly) by a bunch of incompetants. This has been brought to the attention of fans who chanted: "We want Rupert Out, We want Rupert Out" and plenty of other chants who can't be mentionned in a respectable blog such as this. I'm not the only one thinking like this, however. This brilliant article by Nick Illingsworth from the Southampton fanzine, The Ugly Inside sums up my thoughts well. This is coupled with the views being posted on unofficial internet message baords which are now openly discussing protest and wanting to throw the man out of the club - only problem is that they can't realistically do this. One seemingly pro-Lowe message was greeted with this gem of a comment:
WHAT IS IT WITH YOU? ARE YOU RUPERTS LOWES FATHER OR JUST HIS P.R. AGENT? OUR CLUB IS THE LAUGHING STOCK OF ENGLISH FOOTBALL. WE ARE NOW NEARER TO RELEGATION THAN THE PLAYOFFS AND STILL NO MONEY HAS BEEN FORTH COMING FROM A TOTAL SALES POT OF WELL OVER 30 MILLION.
It seems that an overwhelming majority of fans now are disgusted, angry and fed up. The glory days seem to be a long time in the past now. Who knows to what new lows Lowe will take us (not bad, eh?). Its time for Lowe to look in the mirror see that the fans of the club who have bought hundreds of pounds of merchandise, spent thousands of pounds on travel and tickets, struggled, toiled and sweated for the club, deserve much better. Unfortunately, it seems that the only way he will go is if he realises that its in the club's interest for him to do so. Let's hope the fans make him realise this.
Lowe is a parasite that only the modern, money obsessed football can produce. I hope that your club never has to deal with someone like Lowe in the future and that G_d absoves him of his sins when they eventually meet up.
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