For over 70 decades I have witnessed the comings and goings of ownership and control of Southampton Football Club.   The incumbents have been many and varied and have ranged from  local businessmen and local worthies to chancers, foreign investors and at least one of genuine benevolence.  Of more recent times, the club has been in the majority ownership of a Chinese gentleman who, because of Chinee politics  and curbs on foreign investment, has been more than a little absent from the south coast and keen to release himself from his association with the club.  During his tenure, he didn`t put any money into the club and didn`t take any out and left the club`s highly competent management team to get on with running things.  To be fair to them, they have done a pretty good job of so doing.

And now it seems that we have new majority owners - I use the word deliberately as Katherina Liebherr has retained her 20% share in the club so as to protect the legacy of her late father, Markus, who was the one owner in recent times who demonstrated not only genuine benevolence but also a genuine `feel` for the club, the city of Southampton and what the club meant to the city.

With an unusually muted announcement yesterday the new majority owners were revealed as newly formed investment company Sports Republic..  The investment side of things is headed by one Dragan Solak, a Serbian born billionaire entrepreneur.  He is joined by Rasmus Ankersen who has been a director at both Brentford and FC Midtjyland in his native Denmark and by another Dane, London based investor Henrik Kraft.  The price paid for their controlling stake is reported at £100million, in other words the equivalent of buying one Jack Grealish.

They have made all the right noises but then new owners invariably do and it remains to be seen whether this takeover - for that is what it is - turns out to be as beneficial as we fans hope it will.  What is encouraging is that the present management team have been quietly working away at this for months and months and Chief Executive Martin Semmens - who enjoys the confidence and support of the majority of the fan base - has declared that the new majority owners were by no means the only ones considered and that the `choice` to accept them was made in the best interests of the club`s future. This is perhaps confirmed by the speed by which the Premier League approved the takeover following the recent introduction of new criteria as a result of Tracey Crouch`s review into the `fit and proper person` qualifications for Premier club ownership.

As for me, I hope it all works out for the best, even if I still cling on to my share certificates from the good old days - when you could buy shares in Southampton Leisure Holdings plc - in the vain hope that one day I might get a dividend.