As a TV panellist I covered five World Cups, four of them for the BBC sat alongside mainly Bobby Charlton and Jimmy Hill, many European ties and more than ten domestic cup finals.

The interest in our game worldwide was apparent to me when I used to see the viewing figures, particularly for our English cup final.

I also knew that the Scandinavian countries had started to pay for the rights to show First Division games - or Premiership as it is now - during their winter break.

I couldn't understand why Southampton were never chosen for one of these televised games, so I enquired one day when I was at the BBC TV Centre in London.

I was guided to a nice gentlemen who was ensconced in a tiny office near the roof of the centre, which didn't even have windows in it.

He was surrounded by piles of books and silver cans full of reels of film of football games. He looked like something from the Charles Dickens era!

He made me very welcome and asked if he could help.

I asked why we were never involved and he proceeded to blow the dust off a large book, looked us up and said simply because you haven't got the facilities at The Dell.' I promptly pointed out to him that in the previous year we had erected a spanking new gantry paid for by the club, Southern television and local BBC.

Oh, that's good news' he said and proceeded to rub out the cross against our name and replaced it with a tick.

From then on we got the occasional game and the magnificent fee of a few hundred pounds.

I was more than interested therefore to hear that Richard Scudamore, the enterprising chief executive of the Premiership, has just completed another deal to sell off our games to overseas customers for £625m - double the amount of the previous contract.

As I have said before when anyone is in America they can quite easily watch five Premiership games in a normal weekend and apparently in areas of China huge screens are in town squares which regularly show our top teams.

This latest deal follows on from Richard's recently completed near £3 billion deal for the domestic rights - staggering figures by anyone's standards.

It means that if Chelsea, for instance, were to win next year's Premiership title, instead of the £30m they picked up last year it would now be £50m.

Even the bottom team being relegated would top £30m.

This demonstrates more than ever the void between the top 20 and the other 72 clubs and the near desperation shown by some to claw their way to the top level.

This has been shown yet again this week with the removal of Micky Adams as manager of Coventry.

They are now in danger of equalling Southampton's dismal recent record of a manager per year as Micky apparently is the sixth in six years to be dismissed by the Sky Blues.

Recently I attended a function at St Mary's where the speakers included our own Matthew Le Tissier but also a double act of Steve Kindon and Paul Fletcher, who were teammates in the old days at Burnley.

They finished the evening with a rousing rendition of some of the old club songs, getting everyone to join in, while Paul, now chief executive of Coventry, played - extremely well I must say - on the banjo.

I presume he wasn't doing his George Formby act when he delivered the coup de grace to Micky after Coventry lost a home Cup tie to Bristol City.

The staggering figures are that an average life in our division is just over a year per manager and close inspection shows that about 18 of the current holders have only been appointed since January 2006.

Mike Newell at three years is the longest serving, although Steve Bruce has been with Birmingham for five years but most of that time was in the Premiership.

Steve is surely a classic example to jittery chairmen.

Earlier this season the crowd apparently were shouting for his head, local media didn't help but to be fair to his board of directors they stood firm.

Steve has repaid them by topping the league and what a sweet night it must have been for him and the many members of his family who turned up to watch Birmingham thrash his hometown team Newcastle 5-1 in the FA Cup this week.

Of course it can be said that the rewards not just for players but managers and coaches are much greater now and therefore the risks as well, but surely common sense has not got to go out the window.

Too many changes can often lead to failure - we should know better than most.