Southend United

With the World cup going on it's been easy to forget the turmoil going on at my local club Southend United which is turning in to a nasty soap opera.
The latest piece of news we didn't want to hear was that manager Steve Tilson has been relieved of his duties and put on the proverbial "Gardening leave"?
For anyone not familiar with this story Southend's 2010 has been nothing short of a disaster, relegated from Division one after looking like an outside chance for the play offs at the turn of the year, late wages for the players every month this year showed that the clubs financial situation wasn't too rosy and a first winding up order served on them by the inland revenue was a sign of what was to come.
Top scorer Lee Barnard was sold for a paltry £175k to Southampton in January which made no sense as he'd scored more than half the teams goals, assistant Paul Brush was dismissed after a dismal run after Christmas which coincided with 2 months without pay for the team.
Slowly the team slipped into the relegation places despite some good performances, the lack of a top goalscorer (like Barnard) costing them dear, more rumours of late payments and another winding up order served on them which was narrowly avoided after Sainsbury's (who are buying Southend ground Roots hall) stumped up the £2.3 million owed to the taxman.
All along dodgy chairman Ron Martin claims the club is in a good financial situation with a new 22,000 seater stadium due to be built in the next couple of years at nearby Fossetts farm, Sainsbury's have also underwritten £3 million for that project which surely means there isn't much more to come from them.
Since relegation most of the loan players have left leaving very few players at the club, this week Damien Scannell went to Dagenham and Captain Adam Barrett and Alan McCormack had their contracts cancelled, 2 other players are close to leaving: goalie Steve Mildenhall and fans player of the year Simon Francis which will leave only 7 professionals on the books and Southend are under a league transfer embargo so no players can come in.
With the manager now gone things are looking in a really bad state, they face yet another winding up order from the taxman and one from a loan company as well, the remaining players haven't been paid since March so possibly they wil leave as well?
Maybe I should get down there and offer my services as they'll need another 4 players at least.
I wonder how many of the 22,000 seats they will fill in the conference or lower if they go out of business?