Topcat

How did you come up with £200m?

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.

I generally agree with that logic, although I doubt our value would drop that drastically, especially as we’re a business with a guaranteed £65-75 million on our books (and no, it doesn’t matter that the payments are staged! Accountants adjust for such things).

 

Mr Gao is a successful and ruthless businessman. I cannot believe he’s an idiot who doesn’t realise the state we’re in, or that he can be easily duped by Ralph and Les’s positive spin.

 

He clearly didn’t borrow £200 million just so he could asset strip and repay his lenders really quickly. It isn’t a payday loan to get us through a few bad months, it is a long-term loan to give him the capital to invest long-term so he can grow the value of his asset. That’s how multi-million Pound businesses make money.

 

Borrowing £200 million, asset stripping and selling off the shell of a club remaining to cobble together £210 million to repay the loan plus interest would mean he hadn’t made any money for himself at all!

 

The best way Mr Gao can make money is to ensure Saints remain an established Premier League team (with accelerating TV money) that makes good returns on investing in players by buying cheap, improving them and selling for big profits. And then repeat. Then in 10 years time he may have a £400 million asset. He can then pay off his loans (plus interest) and walk away with a massive profit - and happy supporters too!

 

Step 1 imho won’t be to hire a new First Team Manager (as he is hopefully self-aware enough to leave that to football experts), but to hire a Chief Executive with a remit to turn things around quickly and avoid relegation.

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

............... Even if we squeak staying up, Reed's legacy for me will be appointing and maintaining the worst Manager in our history.

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.

It's not worth signing anyone who won't want to play in the Championship next season and League 1 the year after that. We really need to plan for the future, not just the next few months of enjoying our last few games as a Premier League side. Some fans really need a reality check if they think the club are going to try and buy Premier League quality players this window who they'll have to let go in the Summer. They're smarter than that.

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.

That’s the worrying thing. How’s he going to pay back the £200mill bank loan when we are stuck in the Championship?

 

He could easily just asset strip to pay off the debt and leave a right ****ing mess.

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.

I am not sure the side will be improved by any major signing. What we lack is on-field leadership, we are too easily bullied and fold too quick. We need an inspirational captain to lead from the front a la Jimmy Case or Alan Ball. Guys who never knew when they were beaten.

Sadly very true.

It doesn't look good. I'm still hoping for a turnaround, but we've left the new manager option too late.

 

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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.

Waste of time, we're as good as down now and I'm an optimist!

 

How can we possibly get the equivalent of 6 wins from the remaining fixtures when we've managed 4 all season.

By all means have a go at me for being negative but please be realistic before you have a pop.

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?

He's not the brightest of lads.

true

I think the ''destroyed'' comments comes from what he's now going to have to do. He's clearly now going to force a move via agents/media/striking.

 

He will go, and our friend Ralf will find his position untenable. But once again, I'm sure we'll hear the fact that ''he wanted to go, we want players who want to be here''. No, we know want to know why the flying **** so many want out. It's not normal, something is horrendously wrong.

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.

There must be something so horrible going on at the club that so many want out, this badly. It's not even a little request, it's a steaming great big hissy fit from them all.

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?

Or they could be working their arses off to get in an experienced manager, along with his coaching staff, and working out a transfer strategy..

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

It seems pretty clear that the players are in the dark concerning the boards intentions for the club's future. So what the hell have this new board been doing since they took over? They have had months to get to know the players and sort out contracts. Just what they the hell are they playing at? Its all very well appointing a manager and hope they will sell the players a dream but if they, the board, don't take responsibility with the players and Sell them a vision what difference will any manager make? If the incoming manager gets the same silent treatment this could end up being a even worse mess.

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?

Where exactly is our OWNER in all this ??, that Katharina woman ???

Has she gone back to Switzerland to wind the Clocks ?? ( or Watches )

Her silence is deafening

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.

This will not affect solely Saints. All clubs looking to recruit players from World Cup squads - and that will include pretty much every PL club - will be in limbo.

There hasn't been a lot of business done since the end of the season, even among the top clubs.

Presumably they won't be able to integrate any players they sign until late July - possibly even later as the top clubs are likley to be chasing players from counties expected to make the latter stages of the World Cup.

If there is one peculiarity about World Cup summers it is that it pretty much plays havoc with every club's transfer ambitions.

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.

I reckon that probably means southampton want something sorted by the end of next week.

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.

He doesn't lead, he tells other people how to lead. You know like a Uni prof, tells you how it is and then gets hit by a bus crossing the road because he's dreamed up some nobel prize theory.

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!

When we got relegated we refused to sell our star striker after he made it clear he didn't want to be here any more. Beattie went on to score 2 goals before being sold at a knock down price in January. Some people seem to think we should be doing the same with Lambert. We need 100% commitment from everyone and Lambert and had he been forced to stay I doubt his heart would have been in it.

 

Our success depends entirely on who we appoint as manager and who we sign to replace the players that do leave. Nobody ever gets relegated because they sold their best players to Champions League clubs. They get relegated because they reinvest the money poorly in the wrong players, or make hasty decisions in appointing the wrong manager. Look at Everton, they were a bottom half club, then they sold Rooney and qualified for the Champions League.

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