The dust has settled, more dust has been kicked up and us Saints fans no longer have the Sword of Damocles – more commonly known as liquidation – hanging over us. Instead, we have the far more familiar upheaval of searching for a new manager to be getting on with. Being a Southampton fan is never dull.

To be fair, we haven’t had a proper speculation season on a new manager since Burley took his baffling substitutions to Hampden Park.

So while supporters come up with fanciful, terrifying and downright odd suggestions (Ivan Golac is my personal favourite) for the man who will be pinning the team sheet to the St Mary’s wall next year, the men entrusted by new owner Markus Liebherr go about the serious work of trying to find someone competent yet foolhardy enough to take the job on.

The problem I have is that we simply have no idea of what Liebherr (or rather, Nicola Cortese and Andy Oldknow) are after. Discipline? Continental flair? A big name?

Not. A. Scooby.

An interview with Cortese certainly provided something of an insight, but as with anything like this, it is easy to read far too much in to it. After all, he had barely got his feet under the desk so you’d imagine that by now he’s got a firmer grasp of exactly what is wanted – and needed.

Still, I do love the ‘in the know’ rumours – which of course, almost without fail are so wide of the mark they make the Sunday Sport look on the money – flying around. Between the comments on the Echo’s stories and SaintsWeb:
– Strachan has already supposed to have been unveiled three times,
– Tony Adams has single handedly engineered his odds with subtle betting patterns, and
– Darren Ferguson would love the chance to drop down a division and leave upwardly mobile Peterborough for the chance to work with the talents of Anthony Pulis.

It keeps those few quiet moments at work interesting, at least.