SaintDonkey

Personally I credit myself with the fact that they're producing the most (and the most supportive) stories about Southampton of all the national press at the moment. Sadly they moved offices a couple of months back so they don't drink in the same pub any more so I can't get any inside gen But believe me they've heard me rant about Lowe enough times!

Up in the posh seats this question was asked. Apparently 7 first team players are deferring their wages. Can't remember all their names but it included Davis, Euell and Skacel - the last being a such a pleasant shock it wiped the other names from my memory.

The Guardian online is one of the best football news sites going - far better than (and imitated by) most of the papers who have more football coverage in the printed papers. Just compare the front page stories in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/footballand the Sun http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/. The Sun doesn't have a single highlighted story about about a club outside the Premiership, in fact you have to scroll down half a mile to find a story about a team outside the 'big four'. The Guardian has it's articles about the big four and the rest of the Premiership, but also about the coach situation at Bayern Munich, Joe Royle at Oldham, Championship play offs, Italian, Spanish and French football, what's happening in Mexico. Plus of course 2 articles about Saints. If you want to read about Man Ure, the Arse and Chelski go with the tabloids. If you want to read about football go with the Guardian. All IMHO of course and in no way influenced by the fact I work opposite the Guardian's old offices and drink in the same pub as half their sports desk

I'm with Alps on questioning whether this is good news or not. I speculated a while ago that property developers might be interested in picking up Staplewood and the farm, strip those assets (and maybe Saint Mary's) and then jettison the team. If these guys are in it for the property rather than the football this could be far worse news than even the return of Lowe. This may be signing the teams death warrant rather than saving it. (damn I need some happy pills!)

Thought I'd just give my gut response rather than a reasoned argument, and when it comes to supporting a team it's all about the visceral reactions isn't it?

If Southampton Football Club dies it will be at least partially due to the actions (and inactions) of it's fans. It's going to be hard for me to then back a 'fans' club knowing that some of those fans may have been responsible for the death of SFC. Too many on here advocating the fans club now are the same who advocated the boycott that has contributed to this situation. Too many are acting as apologists for the pitch invasion on Saturday that could be the final nail in SFCs coffin. So no I could not support a team founded by the murderers of the club I love.

Did we really need yet another anti-Lowe thread? I think everything's been said before several dozens times today alone.

I would expect we would sell Lallana, Surman and McGoldrick as our most saleable assetss, and that most of the players on higher wages would be out (plus I don't rate Schinderlin so see what we can get for him) If we can keep Davis, Saejis and Perry that would give us a good grounding at the back. And hang on to Wotton for his attitude more than his skill. So squad next season... -----------Davis James---Size---Perry---Mills -------Gillett---Wotton Thomson-----------Holmes -------White---Paterson Bench: Gobern, McLaggon, Forecast, Hatch, Lancashire, Smith (yes I rate Smith - I know that's a controversial view)

While I disagree with the tone of the article, and applaud Crouch for his efforts to keep the club alive I do agree it would be wise if he took a step back from the club when this is all over. He is far too much the 'anti-Lowe' impersonified and as such divides the fans almost as much as Lowe does. If any one is in any doubt of this just read this thread!

As was my response - hence the winky smiley thing

First priority is to get the debt down to a reasonable level. 5 Million to Barclays, say 10 million to Aviva to bring the mortgage payments down to a more sustainable level. Then you can either throw money at the team or work on a longer term plan. I think the longer term plan is more realistic, and with the ten point penalty is somewhat forced on us. So 3 million on players next season to build the base and a upper mid table finish. 4 million more the following season to go up as champions with a settled squad ready to compete in the Championship. I suspect that then we'll need around 5 million more to be around the play offs but it'll need more like 10 million to be competing with the terms on Premiership parachutes. The key thing is building a team and keeping it together. If we want to get back up we have to avoid being a selling club, if we sell our best players at the end of every season we're not going to progress.

I've got to admit that the Guardian piece does read like it was written by gesalt of several people on this forum. The repeated anti-Lowe jibes, the proportion of blame laid at Redknapp's feet, the dismay at the behavior of some of the pitch invading 'fans' on Saturday and the overblown 'where has all the money gone' conspiracies could have all been plucked straight from threads on here. Although obviously the Garudnia can run to a spell checker these days

If you'll forgive the bout of childish frustration. POOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tell that to the Luton board!

But midnight where? If it's an Australian based consortium we've got less than 6 hours of Monday to go, if Hawaiian based it's not even Monday yet. We need to stop with this senseless speculation as to what day it is until we know the identities of the bidders

Aging has beens the lot of them. I'm not sure we need Telfer's skills on the pitch but we certainly need his attitude in the dressing room. When he left Bournemouth it wasn't because he wasn't good enough it was that he was injured and since they were in a financial mess rather than sitting on in the treatment room drawing a wage they could ill afford he had his contract cancelled to help them stay in business. May be if a couple of long term Saints casualities had done the same we wouldn't be in this mess...

Great - financial irregularities will mean more docked points, even if the guilty parties are long gone from the club. Conference south here we come!

The whole possible sanctions arising from the pitch invasion alluded to in the first article does worry me. Yes plenty of other teams have done it before and gotten away wth it - but how many of them were involved in legal action against the FL at the time? The FL seems to be lookng for a stick to beat us with, and we may have just given them one. I heard the figure 23,000 bandied about as the number we needed at the Burnley match to avoid going bust before the end of the season. We managed that just with 927 to spare. Possibly that means we have around two grand of contigency money - so a modest FA fine of say 5k would wipe us out.

The final whistle at Derby. A bunch of kids had just outplayed a team that had just dropped from the Premiership and was expected to be in the hunt for promotion. I was bouncing around gleefully thinking to myself 'maybe we can do this'. It all fell apart quite soon after that, but for that moment I was happy.

First time in the posh seats - didn't realise one came with the ticket.

Ignoring the people who respond to every thread which mentions trouble around matches with a nostalgic "oh it was nothing you should have been here when..." (seriously guys stop talking about eighties hooliganism as if it were a golden age) and ignoring those irrelevently citing trouble at other grounds (it's about increasing troubles at St Mary's - not about anywhere else) and actually replying to the original post. Yes. I've seen more trouble associated with Saints matches this season than any season before, and considering I've been to fewer matches this season than any other season in the last decade either we have a growng problem or I've been tremondously unlucky. Please don't be apologists ('it was just high spirits'), nostalgists ('if you think this is bad you should have been around in the 80s') or competative ('we're not nearly as bad as that lot from...'). Violence at or associated with Southampton matches is an increasing problem and the sooner we admit this to ourselves the better.

Saints is bigger than one man. Even if Lowe is back I shall continue to support Southampton FC so long as it exists. After all what are you going to do if he leaves a third time? Wind up 1885 and return to SFC?

Any chance we can focus on this line of the article Stanley dug out? It's quite possible that Scott is one of the potential investors, but speculation linking that to a return of the Lowe is hopefully just journo's putting 2 and 2 together to make 5. Or as speculated a way of on consortium poisoning another.

What do we have to lose? Well Southampton FC for a start. If we disrupt the game Saints will be faced with a fine by the FA and in case you haven't noticed we can't really afford anything like that right now. By disrupting the game you could be responsible for destorying SFC.

I shall be buying 2 - since I accidently bought 2 at the Palace match and it was the only home win I've seen all season!