With elections looming at the end of the season there has been plenty of posturing inside the boardroom over who will takeover from Joan Laporta and the signs are that it is turning into anything but a clean fight.

The crisis which the club endured at the end of the 2007/08 season led to a mass of resignations from the boardroom headed by the economic gurus Ferran Soriano and Marc Ingla who were responsible for the dramatic turnaround of the club's finances since the present board came to power in 2003. A vote of confidence was held against Laporta who stubbornly refused to stand down despite over 60 per cent of members voting against him. A two-thirds majority was needed to force him out.

Despite the success of Barcelona, Laporta has never won the hearts of fans due to his often dictatorial and arrogant stance as president. On taking over the reins in 2003 he promised to run a transparent board and also lift the covers on the Nunez and Gaspart years at what really happened behind the scenes in terms of spending. Instead while this never happened, he has been blamed for making the Barcelona board less open than ever.

As a spokesman for the Elefant Blau, the platform set up to oppose president Nunez, who was accused of becoming a dictator by the 1990s, Laporta championed the cause of the members but since being elected president himself he has gone down the same road. When accused of this at a meeting of members he responded to the questioner: "okay sit down you've had your moment of fame."

His rants and raves have become legendary. The time he argued with security staff at Madrid airport and took off his trousers in an act of petulance or the time when he kicked his chauffeur out of his car in the centre of Barcelona and continued driving himself. Many rightly felt these were not the actions of the president of a great club like Barcelona. Perhaps the biggest insult to fans though was when he brought Alejandro Echevarria onto the board and it was discovered that he was a founder member of the Franco society set up to honour the former dictator. Laporta denied he belonged to the society until he was proved wrong by a newspaper investigation.

The fight for power saw Sandro Rosell, crucial in the early signings of players like Ronaldinho and Deco, leave as he was angry at the way Laporta single-handedly ran the club and only listened to Johan Cruyff who wasn't even a board member and was entirely unaccountable. That was in 2005 and since then Laporta has gradually strengthened his hand in the boardroom by replacing directors who will yield to his every whim.

The latest saga to beset the club has been over the payment of money for the director Joan Oliver to organise a private security firm to follow four board members. When this was made public, Oliver denied it was spying but that simply the club was protecting these individuals although the information reported back did not back this up as they provided information on the presidential credentials of the directors. Most damning for Laporta was that one of these directors, Jaume Ferrer, was the favourite by other board members to replace the president but was not liked by Laporta himself.

In a board which is so dominated by Laporta there is little chance of recriminations and the man set to be chosen by Laporta to succeed him Xavier Sala i Martin is unlikely to face much of a challenge to be the continuity candidate. It remains to be seen who will fight him externly with Rosell almost certain to stand while Ferran Soriano could also throw his hat into the ring. It is set to be an intriguing battle between several leading figures who have a bitter resentment towards each other.