Nordic Saint

Well, it is the case, and the club isn't paying it back. Football club owners, like race horse owners, do it for fun and always have done. They don't do it to make money. "Though Bloom has ploughed more than £200million into Brighton his wealth is unknown. Some estimate it at a billion pounds, based on his expenditure at the club." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4783574/Brighton-s-Tony-Bloom-gambling-Premier-League-survival.html

Owners usually put money into football clubs. Thy don't take it back out again. Tony Bloom, Brighton's owner has spent about £150m of his own money on buying Brighton a new stadium and players. It would be almost unheard of for him to take a penny back out again. Kat is special.

We were heavily linked with Trippier as one of our main transfer targets just before Paul Mitchell went to Spurs and then Trippier followed Alderweireld and Wanyama there.

You say 'he' but surely it's 'she' Kat Liebherr the club is paying the 210 million to, albeit, via Lander. In fact, she already has the money. The club just has to pay it plus interest back to the bank from whence it came.

From today's Echo: "The accounts state that Lander Sports (UK) International Co Ltd acquired the entire share capital of St Mary’s Football Group Limited – essentially the club. However, there is a Hong Kong based Lander company above that, of which Katharina Liebherr has become a minority stakeholder, which explains how she remains involved." http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/saints/news/16100297.IN_DEPTH__A_detailed_look_at_the_Saints_accounts/

It will be increased because it doesn't take into account the van Dijk money either. But, a lot of money we get from selling our best players does seem to get frittered away on players like Bednarek, Hoedt and Carrrillo. Whilst the priority of the board and owners is clearly to make money, the performance of the team continues to decline and in the long term that will turn those profits into losses as we'll be relegated and left with a lot of expensive players on high wages who aren't really good enough for the Premier League and who nobody else wants.

The main reason the team has been toothless is that we have't had a goal scorer up front. When Austin replaces Carrillo, we'll have one.

FT Blackburn 1 Saints 0

At €8.8 million he wasn't much of a punt for a club as rich as Monaco. Like Chelsea, they can afford to buy loads of young players in the hope that one will come good. The season they bought him, they also bought Fares Bahlouli, Thomas Lemar, Corentin Jean, Gil Dias, Allan Saint-Maximin, Gabriel Boschilia, Jemerson, Rony Lopes, Ivan Cavaleiro and Adama Traore, most of whom are now worth less than they paid for them.

Whilst I agree that the performances of our U23 team over the last couple of seasons have been appallling, it's too soon to write them all off. Will Smallbone, Alfie Jones and a couple of others show the potential to one day be first team players. We'll see.

We certainly do not want a repeat of Strachan's two games against Arsenal at the end of the 2002/03 season, when he played a weakened team in the first one, so we got thrashed, and were then demoralised for the second one. We should field our strongest team for both games..

Should we wait at least 100 games before saying anything about him? Pretend he's not there? It got a bit like that with Clasie. We needed a goal scorer last summer and we were crying out for one at the beginning of January. If Carrillo was the best that Ross Wilson and Les Reed could come up with, after all the research they supposedly put in, then they are incompetent and that is a big concern with an important summer transfer window coming up.

There is a much more significant difference than that. Cuco scored a goal for us.

#blackbox was at Tottenham when Liverpool signed Salah, and they already had Harry Kane. He's at RB Leipzig now so it will be interesting to see what players and managers they sign in future.

The first manager to have three goalkeepers as first team coaches: Kelvin Davis, Dave Watson and Eddie Niedzwiedki.

I wonder if Les and Mark gave them a half-time talk?

He's not going to let him out of his sight, is he? He's literally not giving him an inch of space. He was with him at training too. At least it gets Old Les out and about.

Hughes has just scored Leicester's 2nd goal!

Only about 100 left now and it's still Thursday. It will certainly be sold out by Sunday. Unfortunately, with plastic sheets covering the front 6 rows, you won't see us on TV. There will probably be just one glimpse when they zoom into about a dozen of our fans just before kick-off.

This reminds me of the early part of the Carrillo thread. Les Reed is making a series of poor decisions and we shouldn't be trying to justify them. We should be trying to get him out.

We should beat Wigan but after that I'd expect Hughes to start to have an influence so we'll get shambolic defence and heavy defeats. This season Hughes' Stoke team lost 3-0 at home to West Ham, 4-0 at home and 5-0 away to Chelsea and 7-2 away to Man City so we can expect similar defeats in our remaining games.

There was a thread on a West Ham messageboard earlier in the season saying that a certain DOF had let them know he was available but obviously they didn't want him. Who would? So, we are still stuck with him.

So.. a team which was below us in the table sack their manager because he was going to get them relegated and we appoint him as our manager to save us from relegation???? Is there really nobody left at the club who can see how stupid this is??? #LesReedmustbesuffferingfromseniledementia

Our aspirations are to be the new Stoke, although if Hughes does become our manager, it will have to be a Championship version of Stoke.

I sincerely hope Les Reed isn't going to impose Kelvin Davis and Dave Watson as first team coaches on the new manager.