CB Fry

Abramovic and co have been talking about being sustainable for some time. Really very little difference between them and us, except scale.

Cortese does have the Apple mentality but not the way you think....Apple is not about selling absolutely as many smartphones/tablets as humanely possible, otherwise they could just pile Ipads up in Asda and chuck em out for £150 each. Apple is about maintaining price premiums and creating desire through great design, great product and great advertising/PR. It is about as far from your let's build a stadium.....then slash the prices to fill it as you can possibly get. You can go on and on and on and on about this idea build it/slash ticket prices to fill it but nothing whatsoever, nothing at all, nothing, Nicola Cortese has done at this football club suggests he is ever going to do that. We had between 6 and 8,000 seats at every match last year that he could have sold on the flexible pricing model. Ship em out at a tenner each. Did he do it? Did he hell. You say businesses with "common sense" plan ahead, who is saying they don't or they shouldn't? Maybe, just maybe, the forecast gates for the next three years is going to be somewhere around the 32,000 mark. Maybe, just maybe season tickets will go from 21,000 to 21,800 to 22,500 over the next three years. You can happily play line graphs all day and just draw lines into the sky of 42,000 gates but I think that is total pie in the sky and nothing in our history suggests we can get close to those gates, even if we finished top ten five years in a row I don't think we would do that. Once you've finished 8th twice in a row, the following season is really not that exciting. Not 10,000 more fans exciting. A couple of final points: Not sure how someone continually talking about multi-million pound investment with the express intention to devalue the core product and reduce revenue per item can claim the high ground of "common sense". Shoot for the moon all you like son, but don't dress it up as common sense or some kind of business plan. And I am discussing the merits and the issues around this. Thinking we won't any time soon be filling 42,000 seats is a perfectly valid stance to take. The fact you see that as a "negative" or "anti-Saints" or not common sense is your problem.

What is the definition of "survive" now? Does SaintAndy666 think Chelsea are going to disappear down a black hole leaving only a pile of dust if Abrambovic walked away? If we can "survive" without the Liebherrs, Chelsea could "survive" without the Russians. I mean, back in 1984 Chelsea only got 13,000 through the turnstyles.They'd just go back to that.

Correct. We are not being run in a self sufficient way right now, not by a long chalk. I'd compare it to post-Burley. I genuinely thought the cash he/Wilde spent at the time was parachute dosh/Walcott/Crouch/etc revenue and we could afford our spending. Turns out we couldn't. Our spending right now exceeds revenue - as it has done all post-takeover seasons. And although debt has been rolled up into the club, thats not quite the same as free money. But that's for another day. The important thing is we're not some miracle club balancing the books. Far, far from it.

Well the stupidity is on the side of those saying we have "maxed out" St Mary's and we are desperate for an extension. Those other games you mention are a good example of the general slow downturn in attendances at the top level that has been happening for a while. Use that as a reason why Saints might not want to rush into a multimillion pound chase for 8,000 new seats and you get attacked by the nutjobs on here ("intelligent posters", sorry) for being "negative", "anti-Saints" and with a "Dell-sized mentality". For the reasons you state above we do not need to rush into any expansion of the ground. Unfortunately the pro-side of this debate were so utterly moronic over the summer that these threads will be around for some time yet. Our ground is perfect as it is for now.

Only pyshcologically. Statistically it is impossible to be cut adrift after five games. After five games the teams third/fourth/fifth from bottom were only ever likely to accumulate 2/3/4 points. 5 at most.

Not that hard really. We could have lost yesterday and still not be cut adrift.

We were missing a goalie up until yesterday. Not sure you can describe him as a summer transfer being that it wasn't done in the summer and isn't a transfer but there you go. He's in. Think a second centre back or a left back would have been useful too. We are injuries and suspensions away from looking very thin back there. But other than that, good business over all - delighted we haven't gone down the QPR route of Shuan Wright Phillips/Zamora/Kieron Dyer wage-drain deadbeats.

Civil war? Not really in that play off season.

Feels like our stadium is kinda the right size, doesn't it?

Burley had the benefit of the Saints go Wilde euphoria in his full season. And pots and pots of cash. And six months "bedding in" before that season started. Everything, everything, everything that experts on here like to say a manager needs. Burley had it all. He blew it. We dribbled into the play offs when we should have strolled in. Don't make out he was hard done by. He was one of the luckiest managers we've ever had.

You did read the breathless "£6m is an absolute bargain" stuff about Butland in the summer? On the back of half an hour in League 2. Butland makes this kid look like John Burridge. Edit: actually no he doesn't. I thought he'd played all season for Gills. Oh well. I liked that John Burridge line too.

I heard Alan Nixon made it all up.

Including me. Did a good job at Derby in fairness. With Raziak and Idiakez when they were good.

I don't think it's a press release, it's an interview. Any journalist is going to ask Adkins about his future right now - we've lost four in a row, and like it or not he is favourite for the sack with the bookies, and there has been a little bit of speculation about it too. Nigel's comments are fairly standard issue in my opinion. Nothing in that interview has radically changed my view about what might happen if we, say, lose two from the next three.

Bizarre. You could read your original statement 100 times and it reads like you are comparing Hillsborough to VE Day, you are suggesting that TDD should "feel the same" about Hillsborough and Easter Sunday and VE Day. that's what your question implied. The phrase is "mentioned in the same breath" which is what you did. Anyway, you're saying you didn't mean it like that, which is fine, but don't suggest that is everyone else's fault. Why anyone would want to have a Liverpool song on their ipod is beyond me but fill your boots.

When?

Personally, I think Dodd is a legend.

I think it smells strongly of Lowe recommending the club to Cortese and Harry Redknapp ringing up Leibherr and convincing him to buy the club. Or whatever garbage you were coming out with the other day. They call you the Fox for your razor sharp perception, do they not?

It's almost like buying Gaston Ramirez was, say, the Johnstone's Paint Trophy, whereas buying a centre back and a left back was, say, getting into the League 1 play offs. Sometimes people just don't agree on priorities.

Sounds about right to me.

I think he is pumping himself up a little. I doubt he gets final say on all first team transfers. You can be "head of recruitment" in a business without being the person who employs everyone. On first team players there is clearly a committee thing going on but Adkins has a say no doubt.

Clearly not a rant was it. File it under whimsical quip. Toyed with putting something about finally signing Skacel but decided it was far too funny.

By then we'd be celebrating 98 years in our 50,000 seat stadium. Having sold it out four times in that time.

Does winning the Champions League not count as "real footy"?