Fans just have to put up with their owners

Football club owners may infuriate but supporters will just have to deal with it.

There’s a common thread running through three of the biggest football stories of the New Year.

It links Southampton on the south coast, Hull on the east and Cardiff in the west. It’s about owners and their whims and fancies and can be summed up by paraphrasing the old song: “It’s my party and I’ll do what I want to.”

Southampton’s Executive Chairman Nicola Cortese left the club after losing a power struggle with owner Katharina Liebherr. Cortese was the man responsible for creating the most admired club of 2013, bringing in progressive manager Mauricio Pochettino and promoting young English talent from the country’s most productive academy. That was obviously not enough for the woman whose family’s money rescued Saints from oblivion, and Cortese walked.

At Hull, owner Assem Allam also threatened to walk away if the FA doesn’t approve his application to change their name to Tigers. Allam has invested around £75m and has just broken Hull’s transfer record three times. But he believes that it’s his club to do with what he wants.

“No one on earth is allowed to question my business decisions,” he said. “I won’t allow it.” The fans detest the thought of losing their identity yet are scared stiff of their rescuer taking his money and leaving them high and dry.

Cardiff supporters know how they feel. They’d put up with a change from blue to red and seen a dragon replace the bluebird, because Vincent Tan’s money had underwritten Malky Mackay’s efforts to make them a Premier League club.

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly until the relationship between the two suffered an irretrievable breakdown. Tan gave rookie boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer Mackay’s job but the fans are still caught in modern-day football’s most common dilemma love the club, hate the owners.

Manchester United have had it with the Glazers, Blackburn with the Venkys, Liverpool with Hicks and Gillett. You might point out that all those owners are foreign, but Newcastle fans would remind you that Mike Ashley has a similar talent to perplex and anger.

The bottom line is that the people with the money will always make the decisions. All fans can do is complain about them.