SAINTS' executive directors have hit back at Leon Crouch.

After being axed as chairman of the club's football board on Monday, Crouch and his fellow PLC board member Patrick Trant both issued statements hitting out at the club's executive directors.

At yesterday's press briefing at St Mary's, those directors wished to respond directly to the comments made in the statement and today the Daily Echo gives them their full right of reply.

We have reprinted Crouch's statement in full, and also the executives' response to many of the points raised in it.

For example, Crouch said: "I feel both betrayed, angry and saddened by what has happened at the hands of the Executive PLC Board. The role of a Non-Executive Director in companies big and small is to exercise a steadying influence on Executive Board decisions. That is what I, along with Non-Executive Directors Patrick Trant and Keith Wiseman, have tried to do".

The executives replied: "Mr Crouch undoubtedly has many qualities. However, few if any of his fellow directors of Southampton Leisure Holdings Plc during the course of the past 12 months or so could honestly describe him as having exercised "a steadying influence".

Crouch said: "My predecessor Michael Wilde and I have both, as the largest shareholders, invested more than £4m of our own money".

The executives replied:"There would appear to be a common misconception that Mr Crouch has injected investment funds into the football Club or into the Company as a whole. He has not. He purchased shares from a financial institution in April 2006 but none of the money he paid for those shares came into the Company".

Crouch said: "As a lifelong Saints supporter, it was a privilege to help. My untimely departure today as acting chairman is hardly a model for attracting new investment that the Club needs so much".

The executives replied: There is no reason to believe that the removal of Mr Crouch from the board of Southampton Football Club will have an adverse influence on the Company's prospects of attracting new investment.

Crouch said: "Good people are leaving the Club because of this counter productive backdrop".

The executives replied: There are very many reasons why people have left the Club. These reasons are invariably ascertained at an independently conducted "exit interview" immediately before any employee leaves service. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone has left or is likely to leave the Club as a consequence of Mr Crouch's tenure as a Director or as Acting Chairman coming to an end.

To read the full list of executive responses, don't miss today's Daily Echo - plus a statement from the executives detailing the background that led to them voting Crouch off the football board.