Southend United chairman John Main goes into the lion's den twice this week but is confident he will emerge without a scratch.

The Blues chief meets the supporters' club at Boots and Laces tonight (8pm start) and goes into an extraordinary shareholders' meeting at the same venue on Wednesday.

Main knows he will face a firing squad after the controversial decision to sell off Roots Hall for £4m and lease it back at £400,000-a-year rent.

He maintains that, far from being the villains of the piece, the board had no option but to do the deal and is sure both the fans and the shareholders will understand once all the facts are put to them.

"There's no point in me trying to kid anybody and attempt to minimise the financial gravity this club finds itself in," Main told me.

"I have been hurt by suggestions that the major shareholders, Martin Dawn, have in some way come in and ripped the club off - that couldn't be further from the truth.

"We have also been accused of selling the club's silver by flogging the ground, but there was no silver here when we arrived.

"Roots Hall had already gone - a sale and lease agreement had been done with a north London finance company with £800,000 coming in at a monthly rent of £25,000 spread over four years.

"When you consider the club already owed the bank £1.3m and the Inland Revenue and VAT office a further £1m, people can see there was just no option left but to take the decision we had to make.

"We felt it was better to do this deal and settle up all the outstanding debts - let the club start from scratch with only one major creditor.

"If anyone can come up with any alternative solutions then I'll gladly listen, but I don't think there are any. We were left with the prospect of Southend United going under or throwing them this lifeline.

"I believe, under all the circumstances, we have a very good deal. There are no guarantees for the long term, but at least we do have some sort of immediate future.

"I want people to remember that we have only been in total control here for a matter of months. Possibly if the responsible decisions we are now taking had happened in the past then we wouldn't be in the dire position we face at the moment.

"The soccer industry, especially at our level, is in a terrible mess with clubs paying salaries to players which they can't possible afford. We are attempting to get a structure here which will certainly help give us a brighter road ahead.

"It's going to be tight and needs a lot of careful handling, but we must develop our youth structure and hopefully bring good players through like Trevor Fitzpatrick, who could produce a lot of money at the end of the day."

Main appealed for the fans to look deeper into the club's plight and not simply scratch the surface. "I have read in the local media that it is thought the £4m we got for the ground is way below its true valuation," he said.

"Well I'm certainly not going to try and pull the wool over anyone's eyes - if I tried to con people I would rightly get shot down in seconds.

"But the money we received from an independent valuer is the true worth of what is in some parts contaminated land."

Main said it was planned to put in an application with the council for a new stadium within the next two to three months.

"I'm not counting my chickens or taking anything for granted, but if we do get the go-ahead then things will suddenly look a lot different than they do now," he added.

"Imagine a new football stadium with leisure facilities and a hotel - we will have a 30 per cent stake in that development and, who knows, might even be able to get the necessary finance to take full control for ourselves again.

"The one thing we desperately need is for everyone who loves this club to pull together - directors, fans and shareholders - to become a family and all do everything in our power to work towards a common goal - to make Southend United solid and secure again.

"I want to be honest and straight forward with people and not try to hide anything or gloss over the harsh facts of life.

"Hopefully the people in the meetings this week will listen and understand that rather than raping the club we are desperately trying to give it the only realistic future it's got."

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.