Sheffield Wednesday’s Predicament Is A Stark Warning To Saints Fans
Friday, 7th Nov 2025 10:04
Saints take on the Owls having at least got themselves back on the rails, if not quite yet back on track, but their next opponents are really a case of be careful what you wish for.
Southampton Fans who call for Sport Republic to “Get out of our club, could do well to look at the plight of Sheffield Wednesday at the moment, their now former owner Dejphon Chansiri, arrived with much fanfare in 2015 and spent a lot of money in the early year, most of it badly.
Two years ago Chansiri announced that he would no longer invest any money in the club due to in his words, “protests which included damage being caused, insults aimed at Chansiri himself and people approaching his family”
In short he had had enough of of being personally abused, of course the situation there is a lot different to that at Southampton at the moment, but in simple terms owner puts in shed loans of money and then after getting called loads of bad names and being slagged off, stops putting his money into the club and it slides into administration and potential oblivion.
The problem nowadays is that those who sing ” get out of our club” don’t seem to realise it’s not as simple as that nowadays as Wednesday fans found out, club owners these days are not local businessmen in it partly for the love of the club, they have different aims, getting out of a club for an owner only has two routes, one is finding a new owner who will buy you out, not that easy to find these days and the second is to stop throwing money at it, accept that you are going to lose the money you have put in, but at least not any more money, this usually means that the club is heading for big trouble as new owners do not appear on the horizon.
So ask yourself this, if you were paying a friends rent because they had no money and they went around slagging you off on social media, how long would you keep paying their rent, we all know the answer to that one.
So in the situation that we are in, we need to be looking at solutions and not moaning about what has gone on incessantly without offering any solution, their was a protest called for last week, meet at the Ted Bates Statue at 2pm, turned out it was just someone making mischief, there was no organisation or real publicity, the few that did turn up and I do applaud them for doing so, found nothing happening and left.
If the number of those who said on social media that they would be there had actually gone, it would have been impressive, there were more sat on the Saints bench with Will Still an hour later than at the protest.
Go back 18 months when a similar display of devotion to the club was called for ahead of the play off game against West Brom to welcome the team coach and thousands turned out, there were no chants of “Sack The Board” and a week or so later after the win at Wembley, many were proclaiming that they had just had their best day ever supporting Saints.
So what have Sport Republic ever done for us ?, to paraphrase Monty Python’s film The Life of Brian,
Putting lots of money into a football club is no guarantee of success, Chansiri has found that out at Sheffield Wednesday and Sport Republic at Southampton, no one can accuse them of not spending big, only not spending wisely or more to the point, not appointing someone who knew how to spend it wisely.
Of course this is a very simplistic viewpoint, SR makes mistakes gets relegated, makes some good appointments gets promoted, makes more mistakes gets relegated again.
No one can deny that they have not made mistakes, but if you are going to protest at least get to the core of the matter and not fire blindly in all directions.
Whilst no one can dispute they have made some big errors, so far I don.
‘t think they have been made with malicious intent, they are trying to achieve their aims, which despite the claims of some, will not be achieved in League One, it needs Southampton FC to be successful.
The purchase of Goztepe is not a cash cow that is milking money from Sport Republic that could be used at Saints, I think we have loaned them 3 players and one of those has now been sold, the average salary in the Turkish Super Lig is low, at Goztepe the average is £462,583, around £9,000 a week, it’s hardly going to buy us much at our level.
The building of the fanzones, the opening of the Dell Bar and the new climbing zone have not cost that much, the total outlay would probably not even the pay the wages of a free transfer League One player for a year let alone leave any over for a transfer fee.
Of course football fans only care about results on the pitch, but this is 2025 not 1975 or for that matter 2005 or even 2015, English football has moved on, to succeed you have to generate revenue off the pitch that is not TV money or gate receipts.
Liverpool’s revenue last year was 718.7 million, an increase of £104.9 million (17.1%) over the the previous year.
When Fenway Sports Group (FSG) took over at Anfield in 2010, Liverpool’s total revenue was approximately £183.6 million, which was a slight decrease from the previous year. By contrast, the club’s commercial revenue alone had reached £77 million in the 2010-11 seasonal.
This is what we are competing against if we want to be in the top flight, we are never going to get near that, but at least we are trying to generate other income streams and make St Mary’s a hub that is used 7 days a week, 365 days a year or thereabouts.
This is not a bad thing, football clubs have to keep moving, just because we are doing badly on the pitch doesn’t mean we should stop trying to expand off it.
The problem is that most Southampton supporters are looking just at results on the pitch, whish have been boom and bust over the last few years and proclaiming that the club is rotten to the core, that is not the truth, the truth is that Sport Republic are not bad owners, they are good owners who have made some bad decisions, they are far from alone in that respect, have Manchester United suddenly picked up on the pitch since they have had a lifelong of the club as the driving major shareholder?
At the moment Sport Republic are good owners, but as at Sheffield Wednesday it is very easy to turn them into bad owners, flog all the players so you can get some of your money back and then simply stop funding the club, it happened to Portsmouth some 15 years ago and its now happened at Hillsborough.
I am not saying that Sport Republic are not doing anything wrong, they clearly have, but the big question is whether we want them to succeed and if so helping them do that, rather than hindering.
I am not saying don’t protest, far from it, fan protest is good and indeed very important, but it needs to be focused on what the core issues are , in my experience club owners only pay attention when it is organised and makes the point well, complain about Goztepe & the dell bar and you are easily shot down, complain about a lack of a Director of Football for most of the last 3 1/2 years and that meaning that we have made multiple bad choices both in appointing managers and signing players and that is to be blunt the only thing that is wrong with this football club.
As a club there is nothing much wrong that an unbeaten run of 22 League games followed by a win in the play off final that can’t put things right.
We did it two years ago and even as we were about to achieve it our then Director of Football was poached by Manchester United, was that SR’s fault ?
So be careful what you wish for and if you aren’t prepared to get off your arse and protest at 2pm at the Ted Bates statue week in week out, that you think your opinion is worrying Sport Republic because you have posted it on social media, then you need to ask yourself a few questions about how you can ask the owners of Sport republic to put their hands in their pockets and care about this football club, when those who are so vocal on social media can’t bebothered getting out of the pub.
I write this with all respect to those that actually did turn up at 2pm last week, at least you showed you cared !
All Photos Via Reuters
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Bowlercow added 11:11 – Nov 7
The most worrying recent news is that Solak has lost control of his media empire He stated that it wouldn’t impact on SFC I find that hard to believe because it was his cash cow
In addition it has been claimed that he took Russian money in exchange for sympathetic air time If that gets proved the the EU could confiscate his assets.Like Abramovitch at Chelsea he would be unable to fund SR.
Following that chain of events we would again be put into administration and looking for another Markus
SW apparently
Bowlercow added 11:12 – Nov 7
Oops
SW apparently have attracted the owners of Walmart They have serious money Rumoured to be worth £116billion
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