Tough questions for chairman Wilde?

And his first ever Southampton Leisure Holdings PLC annual general meeting could well be very interesting.

Wilde faces a potential grilling from shareholders regarding exactly where he is with bringing in the new investment that was talked up so much back in those pre-EGM-that-wasn't days.

Those shareholders so keen to ask questions are expected to range from the man or woman in the street to Rupert Lowe, who along with his board supporters dramatically resigned as Saints chairman three days before the EGM was due to be held at St Mary's on July 3.

There is, of course, no reason why Lowe, former managing director Andrew Cowen, Guy Askam, Michael Withers and David Windsor-Clive should not attend.

They remain shareholders in the club - in Lowe's case, he is still the third largest individual shareholder behind Wilde and Leon Crouch - and as such retain a financial interest in events at St Mary's.

Shareholders could well ask Crouch why he decided to go into print asking Wilde to put his hand in his pocket and help pay for any new signings that George Burley asks for in January.

In the wake of a great 3-0 victory at Leeds, wouldn't it have been better to keep quiet until the AGM and let Burley, Grzegorz Rasiak and Rudi Skacel enjoy a few more days of hogging the back pages?

Crouch obviously has his reasons and he might divulge them, if asked.

Lest we forget, Crouch only decided to side with Wilde rather than Lowe less than a week before the EGM was due to take place.

And that was despite stating quite emphatically that he was an 'agent for change' after paying over the odds - to the tune of £1.6m - for the Invesco shareholding that had previously been nailed on to support Lowe.

Is Crouch now privately wishing he had backed the Lowe camp?

Does he covet the position Wilde holds, that of football board chairman?

Will he delve into his deep pockets to back Burley - even if no one else on the board does in January?

Questions, questions, questions. As always with Southampton FC, it seems, there are more questions than answers.

It didn't have to be like this.

With the benefit of hindsight, Wilde would have been better off keeping talk of new investment to a bare minimum prior to the EGM.

While Gavyn Davies' public endorsement of his regime was no doubt welcome in the eyes of the St Mary's fanbase, it did create the expectation that Davies would later transfer his carefully chosen words of support into hard cash.

And no one, among Saints fans, has more of that than the former chairman of the BBC.

Rightly or wrongly, Davies 'coming out', as it were, only served to get supporters pumped up into believing the mega millionaire would come racing down Brittania Road on a white charger bearing a very large cheque for George Burley as soon as Lowe was packing his bags.

As Wilde told the Daily Echo last week, converting his regime's 'in principle' agreements of support into filthy lucre is not as easy as the rank and file fan would either a) believe it is or b) would like it to be.

As soon as Wilde talked up the new investment - and two and a bit pages in his manifesto was indication enough that this was a topic his board were very serious about entertaining - he must have realised the issue wasn't going to go away unless Saints were emulating Reading and Sheffield United's early-season successes of 2005/06.

Chief executive Jim Hone told the Radio Solent fans forum just before the start of the season that new investment was hoped to be in place by January.

Fans don't forget those sort of comments.

Saints supporters heard enough from Lowe over nine years to eventually lose faith in what he was saying. For example, regular comments that certain players wouldn't be sold were usually followed by the player leaving for a fat fee.

In the light of what preceded him, Wilde would be wise to utter statements he feels safe won't come back to bite him on the nose.

For instance, I hope for his sake that Gareth Bale won't be sold in January.

So far all the comments coming from his camp hit a familiar note - 'the player is not for sale'.

Those comments smack of a Lowe-ism. Saints fans can be cynical and rightly so - they have seen it all before.

Should Bale be sold, Wilde would be asked 'are you Rupert in disguise?' and, while that would be unfair in so many ways, in terms of the club selling their crown jewels it would be hard to argue.

I believe the Wilde regime have done many good things in their short time in charge, and let's not forget that - they have only been there a few months.

Surely Wilde and co should be given more time before the pro-Lowe vultures start circling?

They backed George Burley to the tune of over £5m in a few weeks - Lowe having previously sanctioned the £2m purchase of Rasiak - and have done their utmost to attract fans back through a variety of schemes.

The bottom line is that a lot of fans won't come back until the team is winning regularly, and Wilde can only do so much to influence that.

Secondly, many supporters think the admission prices are too high. They are not wrong, but the 2006/07 price structure was in place before the new directors arrived and therefore wasn't changeable.

After just a few weeks in charge, the new board had brought in the painters and decorators and tarted the reception area, function suites and corridors in brand new red and white colours.

Hone told me the stadium now looked like a football club rather than a hotel.

Red chairs were brought into the boardroom to replace the previous (Portsmouth) blue ones. Pictures of fans started to go up in the boardroom and the concourses.

They were all small items as far as the overall picture was concerned, but it all added to the summer feelgood factor.

On the pitch, the jury is still out on the squad's ability to win promotion - but they have a fighting chance and that is good enough at the moment.

Off it, the jury is also still out on Wilde's ability to attract the new investment that was talked up back in the summer.

Only he really knows if he has a fighting chance of getting it.

If he does and Saints win promotion, the critics currently lying in waiting to quizz him this lunchtime will be silenced.

If he doesn't and Saints stay down, it could turn out to be the biggest story of next summer and influence Saints' short and long term future.

For without much money to play with in the Championship, it will be mighty hard to get any sort of feelgood factor going again.