Southampton: Mauricio Pochettino would be ill-advised to follow Nicola Cortese, says Jeff Stelling

When Southampton fans woke up on Wednesday morning they could surely never have imagined that a few hours later their club - who are in the top half of the Premier League with some of the most talented players in the division and huge ambitions - would be in turmoil.

A lot depends on who comes in to replace Cortese and whether they will give him that same level of support. They've spent a lot of money over the years on players like Dani Osvaldo, Gaston Ramirez and others like Jay Rodriguez and Dejan Lovren, so Pochetinno will want reassurance from whoever takes over that that sort of financial clout continues and also that there won't be a fire-sale of their young talented players. As well as Lambert - who is towards the end of his career, there's buyers for Luke Shaw, buyers for Adam Lallana, buyers for the likes of Nathaniel Clyne and James Ward-Prowse. There will be a queue of people knocking the door down to buy Southampton players. It's important that whoever does come in continues the club belief that those players are the future and they want to hang on to them for as long as possible. Saints fans today are going to be mighty worried because they will remember only a handful of seasons ago - and I mean this with no disrespect to my club - that they were traveling to Hartlepool for away games in League One and now they're travelling to Liverpool and Old Trafford. You don't need a long memory to remember the bad times at Southampton and I know from talking to a few of the fans that it could all fall apart if the worst-case scenario was to be revealed and they're desperate to see someone put in place by the Liebherr family who is a safe pair of hands. They're desperate to see Pochettino carry on as manager and they're desperate to see the young players to stay at the club.

JEFF'S GEM OF THE WEEK

There's only one I can pick, it's in the Conference and it's Hyde for their 2-0 win at Welling. People who watch Soccer Saturday regularly will know that I've been wearing the Hyde scarf for the last two or three weeks. They hadn't won at all this season, it was their 30th attempt in midweek to win a game and they did it! People who were calling me a jinx are wrong, I must be their lucky omen - they're now on an unbeaten run of two. The goalkeeper is a Chilean called Lawrence Vigouroux and he was keeping his first clean sheet of the season and here we are in the middle of January. Onwards and upwards for Hyde, they've now got seven points in the season and are only 19 points of safety with two home games to come they could soon be looking over their shoulders as Hyde go on the march.