Topcat

Promotion to prem is worth £170m to £290m (Deloittes). It follows that relegation with no guartantee of a bounce back in the period of continued Prem payments, will drastically reduce the Club's valuation.

The lack of a CEO for all this time raises questions about Gao's business sense.

Yes, the worst winning record of any permanent Saints manager ever! Pelligrino = 17.39% Wigley = 17.65% (and then was fired) Contrast with Puel 37.74% and then fired.

The Club had a notional book value of circa £240m at the time of the 80% sale by the Liebherrs. If we get relegated the notional value drops by approx £200m and that would normally be a very good reason why spending £50m+ to avoid relegation would be a sound move. The fact that the Board have been so slow to act, does not indicate that they have been acting smart.

How much debt is owed to McQuarrie Bank etc?

Two weeks of transfer period gone and no signings. Gao's £210m+ investment in Club at risk of being reduced to under £50m.

Sadly very true.

It does look that way. As several posters earlier have said, we dropped points under this manager vs easier fixtures and then went into December knowing that it was a) going to get tougher and b) that we needed a new manager in place ready to agree signings right now.

The more i look at the detail, the worse it looks. The same form to date would bring us to 34 points, but many teams have got better than the earlier part of the season and our recent form is bottom of the table.

A bad season for us when the top 6 reassert the gap on the rest? 16 games left but only 7 at home. Of the home games 4 are against top 6 sides. Which leaves just 3 against teams in places 10 to the bottom, all of which are likely to be relegation fights. One draw vs the top 6 and 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss against the bottom 10 produces just 5 points for the home games. Of the 9 away games, 1 is vs a top 6 and 3 are vs 7th,8th and 9th (Burnley, Everton & Leicester). Can we nick a win from them? Looks doubtful. We need some luck otherwise, 2 draws at most from these. Which leaves 5 away games against the "bottom" sides. One win, 2 draws and 2 losses. = 5 points. Overall a total of 12 more points. Which takes us to 32 points same as the prem relegation season. In the past ten seasons, the average number of points required to keep out of the relegation zone is 36. The schedule looks very tough unless we can nick a few extra wins against the form. Pray for a couple of those or that Stoke, West Brom and Swansea do worse.

Anyone remember Rupert Lowe's approach in the Prem relegation transfer period in January 2005? 1. Sell Beattie for £6m. 2. Spend less than that on replacements. 3. Make a profit from transfer window. 4. Get relegated.

Why does Kreuger tolerate incompetence? Is the core problem the failure to anticipate and line up replacements? This started with Pochettino. He had sent the message that he may not stay by putting off contract discussions until the end of the season. When the end of season came he then started negotiations with another Club and resigned on 27th May. It still took Reed & Kreuger 3 weeks to 16th June to replace him with Koeman. 4 weeks if we count the probable negotiation period. A well run Club would have had the short list ready and secured the replacement from that list in a much quicker time. Two weeks from the first Spurs approach at the outside. Compared to this we just look totally unprepared and very badly managed. This problem of an absence of anticipating departures permeates all this summer’s transfers. Players only seem to have a premium price set but no stated replacement player identified and lined up. The Club knows the sale price of everything but not what a realistic purchase is for their replacement. Nothing lined up. A well run Club would also set a plan that required a replacement to be agreed before the sale went through. So we end up going into a transfer period needing at least 3 new players to refresh and fill gaps before departures (CB, 2nd Goalkeeper and striker) and that target list has got longer with each sale. Currently we need 6+ players two weeks from the start of the season. If Kreuger really is such a smart management guru, then why the F is his organisation so slow at recruitment and so bad at retention? Or does he really not understand the football cycle in the summer period? Or is the problem that Kreuger is so slow in taking decisions? Unless it is a decision to sell a player for a pre-set price?

true

Ralph presents himself as a management guru. Yet we clearly have an organisation unable to hold onto its main talent. A fatal position for any organisation to be in. Either Ralph is very distracted with other work or he really is a flake.

You are sadly right. To have 7 first team starters want out in one summer period must be unprecedented unless that Club had been relegated or gone bust. I do wonder if a contributory factor is down to the way that Reed conducts his dealings with players. Adam Blackmore said as much. At a time of great turmoil, Reed has failed to settle Cork and Fonte's contracts on top of the 5 who have left and the 2 that want out. That is 9 of the starters in turmoil.

Mods, I suggest you start a seperate thread just for the questions (with backup facts/rationale) that we want Talksport to ask Kreuger. Otherwise he will just waffle and spin it all away. Kreuger, needs o be reminded about what he and others have actually said and what happened thereafter.

Sadly not surprised having heard somethings about his lack of self-discipline. This may have been one sale made at the right time.

In the two weeks since the season ended. What has Les Reed achieved for the Club in that time? 1. Lost the Manager within 2 days. 2. Lost the top striker. 3. Not signed a single player from outside. 4. Not signed a new Manager. PS - Also fired the two people running the youth team before the season ended, upsetting some of the key young players. Did Les actually have a plan, with targets, milestones and actions to achieve things in the post season?

The longer this drags on the worse is the level of failure by Kreuger and Reed.

When a line manager leaves, it is the job of the next above in that chain to work hard on reasssuring their next reports (players) what is going on. Reed quite clearly is failing in that job. Kreuger talks to the great and the good about Leadership. The irony is that we have at Saints a classic study in how Leadership should not act in a crisis. Maybe Kreuger should re-read some of his speeches and start to walk the talk?

She hired Kreuger to be the Chairman. It is his job to ensure there is stabity going forward. All Katharina should do is judge if Kreuger is doing the job well. So far his performance is highly questionable.

Yes but very few of the PL teams will have to be replacing 5 or more of their starting 11. Most (except ManU and the 3 promotions) will be building on a core of 8-9 of their current first choice starters and a squad largely intact from the previous season. We are likely to be at the top end of player churn. Unfortunately we are being reduced to the level of stability of the 3 promoted clubs, in terms of a settled side, but without the benefit of having a Manager who knows all the retained squad. ManU hope to overcome their scale of change by spending £250m. We are likely to see a net transfer spend of minus £30m+. We may even be outspent (in net terms) by the 3 promoted clubs.

Even if the Board make a good appointment by the end of this week coming they are coming up against a number of logistical problems. 1. The World Cup starts on 12th June and we are now in the period where access to any players involved is going to be limited as most Managers will want to keep their players focused on the tournament. That only really ends in early July when the teams drop down to a few. But any complex transfers involving a multiple link of players and teams (think of a chain of house sales) could be held up by a player in the chain in the World Cup. 2. Players involved in the World Cup may not be willing to attend tests straight after - they may take 2 weeks leave. We could be at the end of July before some players are really willing to engage. 3. The season starts on Aug 16th. Of the teams rated on shorter odds than us for relegation only one of them is without a Manager. Our rivals have settled Managerial positions and Managers who know all of the players registered with that team. Our eventual appointment will have to get to know them sometime in late July/August..... 4. Yes there are players uninvolved mainly in the Championship. There are also those players at lesser teams in the PL, all of which have similar or better funding than us. 5. The window for transfers this year is congested and they will be leaning unfortunately on the judgement of Les Reed! Enough said. 6. So to summarise, it is highly likely that we will not have all the players on board that we need when the season starts. Think back to the effects of not having Boruc and Levron at the start of the 2012/13 season. All caused by not making a fast appointment with MP or even forcing his situation with Spurs before the season ended.

Yes or as the Consultant who asks you to tell him the time using your watch. I do believe that a media backlash on Kreuger may be the best we can hope for to wake him up!

All the reports indicate that we tried to sell our star striker in January.