AMID our fight to avoid relegation, we have felt sorry for ourselves over the number of injuries players have sustained over recent weeks.

Last Saturday was a case in point where we had nine players unavailable through injury or illness.

Over the season so far, we have used six different goalkeepers, a further indication of the problems we have encountered in a campaign where, having stepped up, we needed a little bit of luck.

That has certainly been lacking.

With plenty to worry about on that side, our recent figures for the financial year to May 2008 indicate we have not got the same worries as many clubs over finance.

Although we have talked about it before in this column, Southampton’s financial demise has brought it to the fore once again.

For a club of that size to be in jeopardy of folding totally brings it home to people just how precarious quite a number of clubs’ positions are.

For whatever reason, directors who come into football clubs leave their business acumen at the door.

They fail to grasp the realities of running a football club within its means.

Figures such as the £2.6 loss, before transfers, in the first six months of the year by Millwall, £14m by Leicester – and the list is endless of huge losses – are fine just as long as somebody is prepared to finance those losses.

That means a businessman, or group of businessmen, must be prepared to gift a club the money to sustain their spending.

If they do not then the results are there for all to see.

Earlier in the season, over dinner with Lord Mawhinney at the House of Commons, there was talk of a number of clubs going totally out of business. Not just going into administration, but folding totally.

There continue to be lots of tales of woe and yet football is awash with money.

Most of it goes into the Premiership clubs – we would all like to see a more equitable share-out of monies.

But for the last five years we have lived within our means and I think that has been a handicap to us this season.

I know that clubs have signed players they could not afford. Sooner or later that will come home to roost, but living within our means has cost us a number of good quality players.

We started a trend in using a substantial number of loan players and a good many other clubs have now followed that.

Over the past five years, we have run a very tight ship and maybe again that is a trend that other clubs will recognise as the right way to go.