SOME Saints fans feared it, and the Daily Mail was convinced of it.

Saints were in ‘meltdown’. With a capital ‘M’. Crisis time had arrived.

A year ago tomorrow, January 15, 2014, executive chairman Nicola Cortese departed Southampton FC.

Owner Katharina Liebherr reluctantly accepted his resignation, and duly plunged Saints into an uncertain future.

Angst and woe quickly followed.

The national press were prophets of doom, insisting boss Mauricio Pochettino would follow Cortese out of the door and star players would also leave.

James Coney, writing in the Mail, said: “Typically, just as things were starting to look rosy for the Saints, a new boardroom row looks set to tear apart everything that has been built.

“With Cortese gone, Pochettino will surely follow. And after that, who next? Lallana, Shaw, Lovren, Osvaldo, Schneiderlin?

“A club that seemed upwardly mobile, has sunk its fans in to the depths of despair again.”

The Mail were quick to add fuel to the flames by questioning the desire of Liebherr to remain as owner.

“There are now widespread fears among staff at Southampton that Liebherr, who has no previous experience of running a football club, will decide to sell,” the paper stated, BBC journalist Ben Smith wrote: “Southampton fans will do their best to ignore the thought of the worst case scenario – chairman, manager, star players and ultimately an owner disappearing in a blur.

“While it may be too soon to declare Southampton a club in full-blown crisis, what no one can question is that the impact of Cortese’s departure will be felt long after the ink has dried on his severance agreement.

“Love him or loathe him – he will be missed.”

It was revealed that Cortese had initially handed in his resignation in October 2013, but Liebherr didn’t want to lose him.

All she wanted were changes to the way the club was run and a degree of oversight and accountability for Cortese’s running of the club, although that did not extend to having a say on potential signings.

Liebherr had no desire to wrestle day-to-day control of the club from Cortese; she just wanted basic corporate practice implemented.

Cortese was the sole registered director of the club, which gave him a huge amount of freedom to do what he wanted and Liebherr wanted better checks that he was doing a good job.

“The manager is basically a department head like the others,” Cortese told a Leaders in Football conference in the autumn of 2013.

He might not have realised it, but so was he.

Cortese was head of the department heads, but he was an employee too.

Dispensable. Like the rest of them.

At the time Cortese left, Saints were an impressive – by their standards, anyway – ninth in the Premier League with 30 points from 21 games.

A year on, it is hard not to laugh at the way words ‘meltdown’ and ‘crisis’ were scattered around the media like confetti.

Today, Saints are six places higher and nine points better off – having played 21 games, the same amount they had when Cortese left in 2014.

Last Sunday’s historic first league win at Old Trafford for almost 27 years enabled Saints to jump above a Manchester United side whose starting XI cost £269m more than their visitors’ had.

With 17 games left, Saints are on course for a Champions League finish which would be one of the most amazing achievements in English football history.

That is not journalistic hyperbole, that is a fact.

It is easy to possess the benefit of hindsight, especially when you glance at the current Premier League table.

But the national press were wrong to take the knee-jerk reaction to Cortese’s departure that they did.

Certainly in the Mail, their condemnation of Katharina Liebherr and her role in the chairman’s departure was at times sickening. “She certainly has no interest in football,” they quoted a source before making a crass comment about her appearance.

Liebherr must have some interest in the game, as she flies in from her Swiss home for most home games.

The strong Cortese bias in parts of the national media a year ago helped whip up a feeling among some Saints fans that, indeed, the club’s meteoric rise from the depths of minus ten points in the third division was in real danger of stalling.

Without their chairman, the only way was down.

History has shown that feeling to be totally wrong.

It goes without saying Cortese has not been missed.

But if Saints had got just one decision wrong, I might be writing a totally different story. More of that later.

Following Cortese’s departure, it soon became obvious that Pochettino would leave last summer.

Given countless chances to declare his loyalty to Saints by the media, he refused to take any of them. Despite being offered a new contract by Cortese’s successor, Ralph Krueger, Pochettino then was indecent in his haste to leave and join Tottenham.

That departure, more than Cortese’s, was the spark for the player exodus the national press had predicted five months earlier.

If fans were not totally concerned about losing their chairman or manager – after all, this is football and that’s what happens (though in fairness not as often as it does at Southampton) – the mood quickly changed after that.

Rickie Lambert was sold. Adam Lallana was sold. Luke Shaw was sold. Dejan Lovren was sold. Even Calum Chambers, not even a regular, was sold.

Saints had banked the best part of £90m but, their critics argued, had flogged off their crown jewels.

It was proof, some crazily said, that Liebherr wanted to sell the club, and a firesale of stellar names was proof positive of that.

A relegation fight was virtually a certainty, critics were lining up to predict.

At that time, post-World Cup last summer, Saints fans could easily have been forgiven for wondering what would have happened had Cortese stayed.

The former chairman publicly stated the players would never have been sold under his watch, though it was easy for him to say that.

Would Lambert, Lallana and Lovren have all turned down Liverpool to stay loyal to a club that finished 23 points off the top four in 2013/14?

Saints were as close to the relegation zone last season in terms of points as they were to the Champions League places. The same Champions League places that, to the astonishment of most of the football world, they now occupy.

Would Shaw have turned down a move to Manchester United if Cortese and Pochettino had still been at St Mary’s last summer?

Of course, we will never know. But it’s pushing the boundaries of credability somewhat to believe it.

One decision stands out over the course of an incredible last 12 months of Saints’ life.

It was the decision which, if the club had got wrong, would have ensured Cortese remained in the forefront of fans’ minds rather than at the back of them.

It was taken on June 16 and it saw Ronald Koeman appointed Pochettino’s successor.

In that one moment, Katharina Liebherr was vindicated.

By appointing the Dutch legend, it was obvious that the people she had put in place – Cortese’s successors in the boardroom – were more than capable of continuing the good work.

Without Cortese, Southampton FC were still able to attract one of the most highly respected names in world football.

The rest, as they like to say in articles like this, is history.

Well, potential history anyway with regards to Saints’ chasing of a fabled Champions League slot.

If they do finish in the top four, it would be nothing short of a sensation.

From ‘meltdown’ to the Champions League, within 17 months. Some going.

Like Pardew, like Adkins, like Lambert, like Lallana, like many others ... Nicola Cortese played his part in getting Saints to their current, lofty position.

It would be unfair, a year after his departure, to say ‘Nicola who?’ because the former chairman oversaw a phenomenal period in the club’s history.

Football is a results game and he presided over back-to-back promotions.

No one can take that away from him.

Most of the credit for the current league position must go to Koeman and his staff.

They have overseen a huge rebuilding project and surprised the footballing world in the process.

But, 12 months on from ‘meltdown’, Katharina Liebherr also deserves credit.

She was thrust into the media spotlight a year ago, and can’t have felt too comfortable as a result.

She was portrayed nationally as the villain of the piece – potentially wrecking the club her late father had helped save from oblivion – with Cortese the departing hero.

History has proved that theory totally wrong, and Saints can look forward to an even better future than Cortese could have realistically imagined ...