Alanh

As someone else said on another thread. This is L1 and the press don't sell many papers off the back of a rumour about some player no-one has heard of outside his immediate family. There aren't many, if any rumours flooding the press or internet about any other signings in the division with the possible exception of Fabian Delph and how much Leeds want to sell him for.

Holidays? Are they currently employed elsewhere so negotiations have to take place? Has he not made his mind up yet? Is he assessing who he should keep from the current set up? All plausible reasons. Some managers have their assistants run round after them and get appointed at the same time - Sven and Tord Grip, WGS and Gary Pendry etc, but AP obviously doesn't. I'm sure he's working on it but he's only been at the club for 2 weeks and having assessed the squad probably now has a better idea of who he needs to bring in. I reckon we'll get an announcement before the end of this week.

I thought they all played pretty well on Saturday with the exception of Wotton who constantly looked offthe pace. On the few occasions he got the ball he seemed to waste possession with either hopeful punt upfield or a misplaced pass. For me one of the most pressing issues to address is to get in a midfeild general who will control the pace of the game and help link play. Based on last season on this one friendly I don't see Wotton as being that player.

Rasiak looked interested on Saturday, in fact more interested than I have seen him look in a Saints shirt for ages. It would be great to be able to keep him but judging by the interview with Pardew it looks like GR would prefer not to be in L1 next season. I tend to agree that he was playing for a move to some extent. I can't agree with SaintRichmond's idea that we must have GR if we are going to score goals. 6 players scored more than 20 goals in L1 last season so it must be possible for us to find someone to fill GR's boots. If as reported he doesn't fancy the idea of L1 I'd rather have someone who does and will give us 100%, and with the sort of fee GR will command we should be able to pay for a decent replacement.

I'm not convinced that we want Euell at all. He could not control a ball to save his life last year and just because he is playing in a divison lower this season I doubt he will have improved that aspect of his game. I think we need either Stern or Rasiak, not both, so signing him depends on whether we sell Rasiak or not. We certainly need pace up front so I'd go for someone like Lita if he would drop to L1 and we can afford his wages. Steve Kabba might even be a decent option but I don't know how old he is or if he has any pace now. I think we are OK on the right wing with James being my first choice, but agree we need a left sided player to be first choice ahead of Holmes. We definitely need back up for central defence if Thomas and Perry are first choice. It is odds on that Thomas won't get to the end of August before he misses a game through injury.

If he was asked the quesion in Feb he was probably laughing at the concept of taking over a club sliding towards relegation and administration without two beans to rub together. I guess he's laughing a bit differently now that we are on a much stronger financial footing.

He'll be off as soon as a decent offer (from his perspective) comes in. He doesn't want to play in L1 and we need players who are committed to the cause. Sell him, get some cash in and bring in someone hungry and lively. Also, I see that Molyneux is in the squad for tonight. I thought the received wisdom on her was that he had been released. Obviously not.

Good luck to him. He wasn't a great manager but respect for the way he conducted himself since administration. This can only be a statement of intent from the new regime. I think that we'll see someone new in very quickly - probably for the start of next week. If they are this quick with strengthening the squad we should see some new faces in very soon as well.

No idea what the latest on Rasiak is but are you sure him and Stern would be a good front two. They are both as pacey as snails and neither of them offer anything but being a goal poacher. I reckon we need one or other of them, but we also need a pacey front man who will pull a defence out of position and contribute to defnding by chasing down loose balls and defenders in posession.

Assuming they are all fit I would like to see something like this: Davis Murty - JPS - Perry - ??? James - Gillett - ??? - Holmes ??? - John Mills might be OK for LB, but I think we should at least look for a new face there, if only for competition. I'd sell Rasiak ASAP and replace him with someone with a bit of pace. Stern and Ras up front wouldn't work as they are too similar and neither have any pace to speak of. We definitely need a central midfielder to complement Gillet. Ideally someone who can play the ball around a bit and score a few goals. I'd be keen to get in another left winger as well as I'm not convinced by Holmes, but would put that at a lower priority than the above new players.

I think you are probably right. I don't think Lowe would have let wage costs get out of control in the summer after the parachute payments finished. Having said that the lack of investment, dwindling crowds and negativity that would have come with himi being in charge would probably have sent us close to admin and relegation anyway.

I thought there would be a problem with it's legality for the Power lap time, it will be interesting to see if they remove it from the top of the board next week. The FXX has been around for a while so I was surprised they hadn't had on on there before. I guess it was part of the deal for getting MS on the show. Shame he didn't really have a go in the reasonabley priced car (Liana?) to see how he compared to the other racing drivers who have done a lap in it.

So does the FXX qualify for the power lap? It didsn't look like the nose would go over a speed bump, which is their qualifying criteria. Mighty quick car though.

Fulham

Good on you for committing to a ST when we are at our lowest league position in your lifetime.

You would think, but in the greater scheme of things getting the details of a transaction worth about £14M is more important that a few extra days worth of planning for the team.

I don't live in Southampton and never have so don't have the same attachment to the city that many on here do, however I think the OP is completely wrong about why Portsmouth would be of greater interest than us. The simple reason is because they are in the Prem and therefore have a guaranteed income of £30M a year from Sky. Provided they get the right manager in there is every chance that they will maintain that status given that every year prety much 1 or 2 of the promoted teams goes back down again so the chances of relegation are less. Also, the chance to build a newer bigger stadium in Portsmouth might offer the chance to increase matchday revenues. Saints are a project which needs building, does not offer the guaranteed Sky income from being outside the Prem, and has already got the stadium so there is less opportunity for growth. With the right benefactor (like the one Hull got) we might get back in the Prem in the next 5 - 10 years and then we'll be prime candidates for the sort of takeover that Portsmouth are looking at.

Pretty much. I've heard that Barclays are coming down heavily on all of their debtors and are calling in as much of their debt as possible. Their decision to bounce that cheque won't have taken into account the timing of the league points penalty deadline, the impact of the decision on the players morale, the time until the end of the season when we could sell players and see a reduction in our wage bill as high earners contracts expired. they will simply have looked at a spreadsheet and decided that the debt needed to be reduced. The frustrating thing is that we might have been able to make it through to the end of the season had more of our shareholders put their hands in their pockets and funded the club from April to June. Leon Crouch seems to be willing to do that now, it's a shame Lowe and Wilde wouldn't do the same when the cheque bounced.

They get their money from the fact that Spanish clubs are allowed to sell their TV rights individually rather than collectively, like we do here. This means that Barca and Real get to generate about 15 times more TV revenue than the team at the bottom of La Liga. They also have 163,000 members who pay an annual subscription and a stadium that holds about 98K fans so generates a huge amount of income for each match even with the cheaper ticket prices that they have in Spain (compared to the UK).

We have got to get him off the books, but like Leeds did with many of their big earners, I bet we have to pay a proportion of his salary for the next year in order to complete a deal with a buying club. This is a great example of why the new buyer (if there is one) has to do due diligence, otherwise they could find themsleves having to fork out the best part of £450K (50% of his annual salary) for a player who's no longer at the club.

This has got to be the way to go, although your number of 16 is too low. Make it 25 - 28 players registered for the first half of the season followed by a new registration of the same number post the January transfer window and you have got a workable system. Man Utd have used about 29 players in the Prem this season so it shows that it is practical. The Champions League already has something like this in place where clubs have to register a squad for the group phase. Liverpool have 62 players registered to their first team squad. Many of them are out on loan so the 'real' squad number is much less but even so many of those players won't see first team action all season. I believe that this type of system would help keep costs under control, help spread talent around and balance up the competition a little without fundamentally changing the game as we know it.

It would be good if the board at the time had the foresight to include that clause - it's pretty standard practice after all. To those that claim Stern coming would make this impossible, wasn't it clearly stated at the time that they were two seperate transfer deals and that we paid for Stern?

Presumably it means that there have been talks about the possiblity of someone buying SLH - i.e. paying a price per share to the shareholders. These talks have now been terminated and I guess that means that the most likely scenario now is for the assets to be sold off, raising the prospect of different owners owning different assets (not a great scenario), to pay off as much of the debt as possible. Not really a significant change to the situation and we are still no clearer on whether we will have a club to support in August.

Lisbon is a great little capital city - quick to get to, small enough to walk around, and has some great neighbouring resorts in Sintra and Estoril if you want to get out of the city for a trip.

They haven't pulled out, they have issued an ultimatum saying that they will pull out rather than sign up to the current cost capping proposal which will result in two sets of technical specifications - one that is less restrictive for the teams who agree to the budget cap, and a more restrictive one for the teams that don't. I sympathise with them as it does seems like daft proposal in a sport like F1. It will make GPs more like Le Mans where different categories of car compete on track at the same time when surely F1 is all about all the cars racing each other on 'equal' terms. Surely it would make more sense to simply say that there will be a budget cap that all teams who want to participate in 2010 will have to adhere to and there will be no two tier (double decker?) set of regulations.