Pinnacle Withdraws from Southampton Takeover
Posted on | June 30, 2009 | No Comments
This is a Portsmouth site for Portsmouth fans, but when such a serious situation develops, threatening the very existence of our closest and most hated rivals, it can’t be allowed to pass without comment. My purpose here is not to recount a history of the rivalry, on and off the pitch, or catalogue past derby fixtures, but merely to give a view of the real prospect of the demise of Southampton Football Club.
The Pinnacle consortium fronted by Matthew Le Tissier have today withdrawn from negotiations, but in addition to this, so has a rival bidder represented by Dorset businessman Marc Jackson. This leaves one viable alternative, a Swiss group which apparently now has until Friday to commit to a deal. Yes, you read that correctly. They apparently have three days to agree the deal, or the club will be wound up.
Only two days ago, the Pinnacle deal appeared to be nailed on, despite controversy over a previous deadline passing a couple of weeks ago. This was by all accounts to do with the Football League stipulating that the deal would only be allowed to go through if the club were not then able to appeal their ten point deduction. From what I can gather, Pinnacle were finally ready to accept this before the goalposts were dramatically changed during the last 48 hours, when the Football League announced their intention to impose a further points deduction due to recent financial irregularity.
How these irregularities came about and who was to blame is predictably the subject of speculation and debate, but it is more than one Southampton fan’s contention that they were the result of the Football League’s own procrastination regarding the signing of the deal with Pinnacle. As with the history of rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton, this is not intended to be a detailed account of the breakdown of the takeover, but some background is essential.
What I want to concentrate on is what our view of this as Pompey fans is, or should be. Of course there are plenty of gloating posts on the forums and there must be a place for that in the normal run of things, but I think the time for gloating has gone. In fairness, I believe the reason even Pompey’s most blinkered fans will have seen nothing wrong in it over the past few weeks, is simply because they know deep down that Southampton will be bought and saved eventually. Well, the situation is now critical, and no Pompey fan would seriously wish Southampton out of existence if they really thought about what that would mean.
It would mean that no longer would we be lamenting the fact that we have probably one of the least-played derby fixtures in the country, because we would not have one at all! We’d end up like Leeds United with no natural local enemy. The very lifeblood of a local rivalry is the constant desire to prove yourself the better side. That we do have, despite the lack of action on the pitch. The two teams have played each other a grand total of 26 times in 110 years, and not in the league until 1960! Pompey’s record is won 6, drawn 6, lost 14.
Most of us wouldn’t need those figures to tell us that we have unfinished business. In recent years, Southampton have been the more successful side, spending nearly thirty straight years in the top flight. In the same period (not including our recent stint) Pompey had managed just one. But still, we quite rightly believe that we are historically the bigger and more successful club (two league titles), and the balance has begun to be redressed with another FA Cup to our name last year.
So let Southampton sink even further, to the bottom of the bottom division if need be, like Portsmouth in the seventies. And let them stay there for a while, as we build our fan base with a new owner, host World Cup matches, and re-establish ourselves as the premier south coast club. But let them come back at us too, so we can enjoy a genuine local rivalry again. Football would be poorer without local derbies that really mean something.
Despie the seriousness of the situation, I still don’t think any football fan genuinely believes that the worst will come to pass. An eleventh hour rescue will surely appear. It will have to. I think we are in that eleventh hour right now.
Tags: Football League > Leeds United > Marc Jackson > Matthew Le Tissier > Pinnacle consortium > Pompey > Portsmouth > Southampton takeover > World Cup
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