CB Fry

It can be done, but Sheff Utd had to get into and then relegated from the Prem to bring that about - that would have been their second year of £11m parachute payments. And I am sure you can be a profitable CCC club without parachute payments but then not at the same time as pushing for promotion in the short term. I doubt, say, Forest are going to return a profit for this season. But they might get promoted. But yep, you're right, this is about ML realising the value of his assets, which for him and us means establishing a Premier League club. So great!

Spain have got some sh *t-hot video editing schools apparently.

I think TDD makes some valid points. Let's remember that ML and NC don't love Saints like we do (I don't expect them to), they are business people and at the moment are making calculated punts. But the challenge with English football is you can get promoted to the CCC and you won't make money - if we are buying £1m players now, the expectation is to be buying £3m players then. And you can easily get promoted to the Prem and not make money - in our very best season up there we made £500k profit if memory serves, and that was a lifetime away when we were paying pauper wages. Even Hull have racked up debts and they seem to have spent pretty conservatively. Your Boltons etc aint never going to make no money. So we do have to watch the size of the bubble we are blowing up. The plan I have no doubt from ML and NC is to get us to the Prem as quickly as possible and after a season or so sell high to the next passing arab/F1 owner/yank. It's a fine plan and I support it. They bought low and will sell high. But that was Madjeski's plan too and that didn't quite work. So I am loving the current spending and don't question any motives from our owners. It's exciting and I love it. But let's not kid ourselves that ML is Steve Gibson. The ML era will have a finite lifespan,whereas Gibson looks like he is there for life and for love, which brings its own problems. But at the moment we all have the same agenda - Promotion, then Promotion. In a way, getting there is the easy bit. So let's worry about that for now, because it is enough to worry about.

You too, which is why I am happy to agree to only slightly differ. My main angle is this is the first genoowine inside info I can remember seeing and it was quite exciting last night (as browsing a webforum goes of course). All the ITK guff we've had over the years and some lad says "I'm going to ask him" and he did and got a response. It was just great, it was a nice thread to see taking shape yesterday. Of course there is no harm in keeping it off for now and lets hope we do sign the lad - he's local and second tier quality, so what's not to love.

Fine, just a couple of points. > Maybe we don't want a player dopey enough to post his own transfer speculation on facebook to sign for us. > God help us in the Premier League if Cortese is determined to control the entire media agenda for his football club, when we're back in the big time he might come up against the odd Wille McKay or Kenwynne Jones. He is going to have to start swallowing this stuff. Welcome to professional football. > I don't underestimate forums or the internet, but I do when it is the transfer of a player hardly anyone in Britain knows or cares about to a club in the third tier of English Football. We'll agree to disagree, [thanks for your response Minty too], we fall on two sides of an argument but I can see what you're saying. He'd better be a bloody good player if we are cutting him this much slack from the off.

Well that takes me back to the point I made earlier - this forum is not that important, and that kind of thinking is just "forum ego". Do you really think Brian Stock is going to give two chuffs about you and me? And if there was never anything posted on here negative about, say players, managers, chairmen etc just in case we upset them then it would be a pretty dull forum, no?

It has also created some unbelievable pomposity. It's a web forum and all a bit of a laugh. If a footballer is dopey enough to start talking up his own transfer on facebook more fool him and fair play to whoever found it and spread it about a bit. I thought forums like this were poke and prod the ridiculous edifice that is professional football, not be an anodyne outpost of the PR wing of the Football League. It's not about impatience around Stock's signing, I couldn't give a stuff if it takes an hour a month or we don't sign him. Until he signs he hasn't signed, fine. But this was a lovely little mini-story created by this forum and it has been stamped down so we don't upset the club or the player (diddums!). Where's the fun in that?

Quite. Brian Stock talks about being excited about moving to Saints on Facebook and it somehow makes the deal fall through (not sure why it would, because Doncaster are hardly going to want to keep him) then that's Stock's problem and the clubs decision to bin the deal. How is it the fault of this forum, and who is going to blame this forum? When that dopey Palace player did the same thing (he was going to Fulham I think) it was the player that got it in the neck. The player. No one else. I saw the Stock story develop last night and it was the closest I've seen any forum get to a genuine story. It was this forum at its best. Not least because it was one lad brave enough to ask a player and then report the answer. Not some pompous "ITK" giving it large. A genuine, delicous exclusive. Fantastic. And then the mods delete it because they don't want to upset Cortese. Good god. I think the people who run this forum are letting their egos run away with themselves. You're just not that important chaps.

What is so contentious about that first paragraph that proves "the press have always had it in for us". Looks like a report suggesting two pretty poor teams in a poor match. It probably was. Being that Saints were playing a club from the division below how was beating Crystal Palace "an incredible achievement"? And if you are talking about winning the final, I am not sure how you expect a journalist writing a contemporary report about the semi to know that we had won the freaking final. He's a journalist, not Doctor Who. Possibly the most pathetic thread ever.

Well, most people at the time were saying he was rubbish regardless of who he was managing. And he has proven, yet again, that he is an excellent manager. So it's not a case of we'll never know, we do know. He's second in the league. He is an excellent manager at CCC level, which funnily enough is what we were after.

Just the small fact that he's taken his clubs to the play offs in every single full season he has managed in the CCC. Including twice with potless Preston. But no, he would have been rubbish for us, just like the experts on here said

Squinny is a Southampton/Hants word definitely. My brother used it to his daughter in earshot of my missus over Christmas (who is from Lincolnshire) and she'd never heard the word before. So I think that one is a southern thing. Also a Southampton thing is the use of "nipper" to mean any male under about 25, in other areas (I've lived in the west and in the midlands) it seems you can only use it to describe small children. People I know in Southampton call each other nipper all the way up to our twenties and beyond. And Gert is definitely a Southern thing. Great word.

I think Jan said the Robben thing about Holmes, I don't remember the "world class Ryan Smith" line at all. And no-one ever said BWP can finish like Torres. Wotte quotes were all about him and BWP talking about Torres and learning from how he plays, with the general point being about being ice-cool composed in front of goal. The Echo worked it up into "BWP could be like Torres" story and a load of snidey pri cks on this forum got all wet in the trouser area about it. But if you look at what Wotte said at the time it made perfect sense. You want to get better, watch and learn from the best. But according to message board tw ats that was some terribly scandalous thing to say. PS - I'm not defending Wotte, he was bloody awful for us.

You'll see in the my original post I mention wage bill. I would be very surprised if any other L1 club could afford the combined wages of Kelvin, Jaidi, Connolly, Thomas, Perry and Waigo alongside the other three names you mention there. Some clubs could afford some, but we've got the highest number of big earners in one team. And even the three you concede we have "spent money" on, they cost somewhere not far off £3m, which is a bloody fortune in this division and, again, a bit of a stretch for at least a third of clubs in the Championship. We really have spent that much.

Thank god we've still got Sir Clive's eye-gym over at Staplewood. It'll be up and running in no time. PS - Have we still got the eye-gym?

You say you are in Sweden but I question whether you are an inhabitant of planet earth with comments like that. Our transfer outgoings and wage-bill is astronomical by League one standards and I am happy to bet it is higher than at least eight Championship clubs. He has spent a fortune and I think we are going to keep going.

Richmond seems obsessed with not having the club there. I love the fact our stadium is in the heart of the city it serves, seconds away from where it was formed and right on top of the streets and houses of one of the oldest areas of the city in its working class heartland. Some people still mourn the fact we're not in a souless out of town trading estate outside the city in the middle of nowhere. In a stadium much smaller than the one we have. I think almost every rational fan breathing air would say that the stadium we have and the location it is in is fantastic. But some folks just aint rational.....

Bless him, but having seen Colin Farmery's name elsewhere recently as part of the new Pompey Trust, I am pretty sure he is just like our very own Anorakocracy. Name in the papers, doing his bit, getting involved, rounding up bucketeers, blathering on about "we could be like Barcelona" no doubt. Good luck to him, and well done on the "interview", old son. But does Sacha Gaydamak speak to him as an equal, and as a man he is going to give real answers to? Is this a man who really cares? Or just someone to unload a bit of flannel to smokescreen his desire to get his flamin' money back? You decide!

1) Errr - St Mary's Stadium is really rather near the spot the original club was formed, but no, you're right, an industrial estate just outside Eastleigh is where the soul of the club really is. And I don't think anyone was advising knocking down St Mary's Church to build a ground, so the Gasworks site was a sensible option was it not? you have no clue and never have. 2) Yes it was 25k. What is the point of building a 25k stadium that "could be expanded" in the middle of nowhere when you can have a 32k stadium actually in the bloody city the club is from. We are Southampton Football Club. For the city of Southampton. For the people of Southampton. You have no clue and never have. 3) Cinema, Bowling Alley, Supermarket, whatever, the point stands. Why you are obsessed with business ventures I don't know. Stop worrying about profits and maybe concentrate on the football and the city our club represents and being in the heart of that city. That's what really matters. Not a frigging hotel or a bowling alley.Have you been to the Madjeski? Have you? And that's what you really wanted for our club and our city? Is it? You have no clue and never have. 4) Do you travel by Helicopter? You can't walk from Millbrook to Stoneham, but you can walk from Millbrook to town. Or hop on a bus. Or drive. It's a piece of ****. Getting to town is pretty easy and you certainly don't need a car from most parts of the city. But you would need a car to get to some godforsaken trading estate you get all dewy eyed about. If your priority as a football fan is transport links then support a club with better transport links. I support a club based in the heart of the city of my birth just a stones throw away from its birthplace. What a fantastic place to be. You want it next to a branch of Lidl and a Frankie and Benny's in the middle of nowhere. Brilliant. I'm right and you have no clue and never have. 5) All you do is drone on about Lowe over and over and over again. You haven't got a clue and you never have. How about telling us how absolutely brilliant SISU are again, your other heroes, because Coventry are streaking up the table at the moment aren't they. Look at them go. SISU and Stoneham, the SaintRichmond "fan's first" dream ticket. You have no clue and nver have.

There is no such thing as the FA Premier League. The FA do not run the Premier League and even the name FA Premier League was phased out after about three years. And being that the League is essentially the twenty clubs in it, why would the other 19 bail out a club that has basically cheated their way through its competition over the last four or five years. Why would Bolton, West Ham, Blackburn, Wolves and the rest support that? The League can get plenty of positive PR by letting Pompey suffer because they can grandstand and preach and say "never again". But what the League want is that lot to struggle on for long enough to be the Football League's problem next season.

Any news about Dennis Rommedahl on there?

As others have already said - they've been saying this for months. And it is interesting they never say "we'll be paying back what we owe" just "the embargo will be lifted". Much like accusing the taxman of behaving "illegally", everything that comes out of that toilet of a football club is empty grandstanding and pointless posture. A football club built entirely on blagging it.

Well if it was down to you Saints would now be playing in their spiritual heartland of errr, an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere on the way to Eastleigh. In front of 25,000 maximum. And surrounded by a cinema and a bowling alley. Brilliant. But you think that is what genuine football fans really wanted, because, and I quote YOU "it's nearer the airport". You haven't got a clue and never have.

This is an utterly dispicable post. Granted, to be expected from this particular forum member, but utterly dispicable all the same. Comparing not getting your usual seat at a football match (which you have been boring us all with for a fortnight) with what people went through at Hillsborough in 1989 is absolutely shameful. Go and have a chat to one of the Hillsborough Mums, Dads, Brothers and Sisters who lost children, husbands wives and parents that day because they went to a football match. I'm sure they'll share your pain of having to queue slightly longer than normal for a beer at half time.

Go the way of Excelsior Mouscron. Skint, booted out, all the players free agents. I think the red and white Mouscron badge is a nice little symbol for the kick em out Saints fans to sport, no? http://news.google.co.uk/news?sourceid=navclient&rlz=1T4DKUK_enGB318GB318&q=Excelsior%20Mouscron&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wn PS - I think the bottom two options are essentially the same thing - if Pompey in current form is destroyed their will be something else cropping up pretty quickly - the comparison is Aldershot more than AFC Wimbledon. That 4,000 hardcore fanbase will still want a club to support.