Southend United have approached Oxford for permission to talk to Ian Atkins with a view to persuading him to become their new manager. Firoz Kassam denied them permission to talk to him.

This evening there was a behind-closed-doors meeting involving Kassam, Atkins and club secretary Mick Brown. Although the discussions were confidential and any reportage is, necessarily, speculative there are only really two possible scenarios.

The first, and hopefully correct, conclusion to draw from this evening’s events is that Kassam and Atkins have agreed to work together, possibly involving an extension to Atkins’ contract for another season. The reasons why this might be the case is that Kassam would wish to keep Atkins at the helm in order for the club to maintain stability, to either make it a better prospect for selling it, or because Kassam will be staying for the foreseeable future.

The second scenario is that Atkins was telling Kassam why he wished to leave, with Kassam accepting his arguments and negotiations about to commence with Southend. The reasons why this might have happened is that, with Kassam still looking at selling up, he may not want to accede to Atkins’ possible contractual demands, or maybe that Kassam doesn’t want a dissaffected manager and is confident that if Atkins were to leave he could easily be replaced.

On the other hand maybe they just met for a cup of tea and biscuits.