CB Fry

I agree with most of the rest of this post but this is stretching things a bit. The figures show we spent more than a pretty penny to get promoted, and since promotion we have got attendances back to where they were last time in the Championship. The idea the club has stumbled on some miracle elixir of growth is frankly bonkers. If we had got promoted on, say, 40% wages to turnover, that would count as OUTSTANDING (in your terminology). The idea that this is comparable with a high street clothing store is ludicrous. I bet Brightons revenues have gone up by far more % (probably in absolute terms too) than ours, and Sheffield Wednesday and United will see similar OUTSTANDING BREATHTAKING UNBELIEVABLE increases next season, pending promotion of course. Getting promoted from League one with the wage bill is anything but OUTSTANDING. It was expected and frankly, essential. Calm down people and stop bloody over egging everything.

Must have been a different Southampton finishing second in the top flight, and then eighth in the Premier League. Both of those feats achieved by the club under its own steam, not just bankrolled with free money from a billionaire.

Yeah, nice try. You did see and hear Les Reed in that interview? He can't believe his freaking luck. What are doing is clearly far beyond the neccesary, even for this tier one thing. Put it this way - if you are such an expert, would you have been on here complaining if the announement had us spending only five million?

I find it unlikely that we need to spend £15m to turn our current very well regarded academy into a tier one academy, and most of the tier one thing seems to be about time spent with coaches and teachers as opposed to grand bricks and mortar developments. If we need to spend £15m to upgrade ours, then there won't be too many tier one academies in the country.

If our prime advantage is catchment area then we don't neccessarily need the best of the best of the best of the best academy, especially when I don't think we need to tie up huge amouts of cash in infrastructure. We do have a pretty good one as it is. Making the club sustainable means being choiceful about investment too, and I remain unconvinced that this is essential. It's a "nice to have" but that isn't the same thing. And it wasn't long ago during the reign of a previous chairman that people on this forum would scream the place down if anyone suggested that infrastructure or investment in youth had any bearing on producing young players. According to many on here, Southampton just produce young players regardless, they just spring out of the ground and always have and no decision that that particular management made had anything ever to do with it. "We produced Channon and the Wallaces therefore we will always produce young players its nothing to do with fancy academies". Fascinating to see the remarkable change of tune these days. Lots of talk about how infrastructure investment is better than just spending on players, but we went into administration before primarily because we couldn't keep up with our mortgage on the stadium. So let's not kid ourselves that any bricks and mortar investment equals risk-free cash cow.

This is entirely possible. If I was the Leibherrs I think the optimal time to sell for maximum return is this summer (providing we go up). What is guaranteed at that point is a full season of hope in the Premier League and four years of parachute payments. Selling in the summer ahead of any pressure to start splashing cash on "Premier League quality players", before the agents are all over us and before we have kicked a ball, would be a masterstroke. If I was the Leibherrs that is what I would do. Mission accomplished, bought at the bottom of the market, sell at the top. That's said, I don't think this will happen, and Cortese and Adkins will of course push on to mid-table Prem establishment, which will make the club worth more, but will also require more investment, specifically in wages, even if we don't sign "big names". And brings with it risk. Selling the idea of mid table establishment to the next owner is the best way to maximise return in my view, rather than risk more money in the pursuit of it oneself. I'm saying Mid-may 2012 is the high water mark for selling up from the Leibherrs point of view but I don't think they will sell this summer.

Maybe so. But it feels like overkill to me. As a club we are not bereft of infrastructure. I'm not convinced that the extra X% this development will give us will deliver any return on investment in real terms. Bale, Walcott and Oxo came out of the peevious system and gave us thirty million back (or so). I can't see significantly more ROI from the new place than that. The old place gave us one or two players every three years. Is the new one going to give us five or six. Unlikely. Especially if we are premier league. Look at Chelsea if you want a case study. Invest in youth, fine. But fifteen million quid doesn't neccessarily make us fifteen times better than before.

I find the idea that we will be sold sometime in the next two or three years far more plausible than all this guff about how 'in love with the club' the Leibherrs are. Developing Staplewood is not to me proof that we will never be sold. Its over extravagent but essentially Cortese is sticking a loft conversion in to make it a more stable and "future proof" football investment. He's basically an Italian Sarah Beeney. Just with smaller norks.

That sounds to me like a ludicrous amount of money, if that number turns out to be accurate. I'm all for investment in infrastructure but this smacks of a vanity project to me. I imagine Matthew Le God is knee deep in his own love juice at the moment.

We'll never play you again. Nice and simple and will hurt them.

In that case it was none of our damned business when Wilde, Lowe and Crouch were in charge. We were listed but if you weren't a shareholder your opinion was equally worthless. Didn't stop you moaning though.

Maybe Sam is talking to his own fanbase? Maybe Sam is sending a message to his own players. Maybe the entire universe doesn't revolve around Southampton football club? Crazy stuff I know.

Correct. This forum is full of utter fannies. We clearly are going to win the division and only the soppiest sods on heee spend their time fretting about us suddenly losing three in a row. It's not going to happen. There are no mind games happening. We're a gazillion points clear of West Ham who know they are fighting for second. Get over yourslves.

So that's that then. Fu ck ing brilliant the old man covered every single possible eventuality in the documentation so no relation ever has to make a decision about Saints ever again. And here's me worrying.

Correct and correct. Which makes even more laughable the witterings of some people on here who have turned Markus Leibherr into the footballing equivalent of Del-Boy's mum. "He said to me on his death bed. He sajd, Del-Boy, make sure you invest in that training ground. And Del-Boy, it's now a ten year plan and never ever sell the club. Or something."

Good for you. So we're in the hands of the Leibherrs forever now on the back of the old man going to the cup final? Maybe his death bed agreement (if you really want to talk of such things) involved "seeing us right" and into the Premier League and then let some other ever-so-lucky soul have the pleasure of "falling in love with us". Or something. I love how Saints to the Leibherrs is, according to you, completely inconsequential and, at the same time really important. So that's all right then.

Laughable thread. Come on people. These people don't love us. They just happen to own us. And one day they will sell us. That's the five year plan in my opinion. Funnily enough Nicola doesn't say this to Radio Solent. No sh it he doesn't.

What evidence have I got? What evidence? Funny, I thought I was giving an opionion on a football internet forum. Let's remember who it was who dismissed all talk of a rift between the club and Pardew as "unproven speculation" because there wasn`t a video interview about it on the OS. So my advice is stick to the computer games you f u c king weirdo.

I would estimate we don't have anywhere near that. It wouldn't surprise me if the family decided to sell the club in the summer, or failing that the summer after if we stay up. I think the Leibherrs have invested the money but entirely on the assumption that they would get the money back and this could happen sooner rather than later. There was lots of talk of a five year plan, and I've always seen this as a finite period - ie the club being sold at the end of that five year period. In business terms its kind of a venture capitalist/turnaround strategy. Buy a business cheap, turn it around and sell on for a profit. I have never had any doubt that this is Cortese's aim, and was how he sold the idea to Markus - let's see if we can get this club from L1 to the Prem, because if we do we can get our money back. I have never really bought into the romance bit. I'd say we are just ahead of schedule so we may well be sold sooner. Saints in admin in league one was a very rare opportunity to genuinely make money out of football - if they got it right and got into the Premier League within 3/4 seasons then they could get a decent return if they could sell the club on. So far, it is working like a dream for them.

Hang on. Is complaining about decisions "graceless" or not then?

Jesus Christ. More ridiculous preciousness over an opposing manager's post match comments. Everything Saunders said sounds fair enough to me. What do you expect people to say? "Well done to the super dooper saints. They are my favourite team ever"

You can overthink that kind of thing any which way. Teams who know they have got nothing but pride left quite often play with freedom and no fear, rather than a team under pressure to make the play offs. Extrapolating tonight's Burnley result into what that means for them when then subsequently face Reading (or WHU, no idea who is playing who) is peeling the onion to almost deranged levels. Hang in there people - we're going up anyway and Ipswich or Coventry's results tonight really won't have any impact on us.

Really don't think any of those clubs are any threat to us whatsoever in what we are trying to achieve. The top two spots are between three clubs, all others are just play off hopefuls. It's possible we may end up in the play offs but there is little point worrying who we would face.

Stop worrying people. We're going up. Let's start getting used to it. This isn't counting chickens, or gloating, or tempting fate. For us to secure going up we need about ten points to hit 85 which is a decent guess of the requirement for second. Ten points in eight games. So not much more than a point a game. Three wins and a draw. 1.25 points a game - basically relegation form. To get promoted. So even if the wheels do come off, we'll probably go up automatically anyway. Good, eh? It makes me laugh there are people who will still say "it's typical saints, we'll mess it up". Really? People still associate "typical Saints" with failure despite us now in our third consecutive season of winning pretty much every game we play. "Typical Saints" means winning. "Typical Saints" means clean sheet, after clean sheet, after clean sheet. "Typical Saints" means goals, goals, goals. "Typical Saints" means we are Southampton, we're top of the league. "Typical Saints" means going to Wembley and lifting a trophy "Typical Saints" relentlessly hounding 300-match unbeaten Huddersfield out of the promotion race. "Typical Saints" means top of the Championship first season back pretty much from day one to March. "Typical Saints" means player of the season and the stand out managerial performance of the year. "Typical Saints" means no megastars apart from our homemade ones, no greedy b astar ds on fat salaries, and brilliant team spirit. "Typical Saints" means we're going to do this thing. Start believing everyone.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Good job I'm not a betting man.