CB Fry

Come on, I can't be the only one who had a little shudder reading that line? All he had to do was put COYR at the end and I would have been suicidal. Seriously, that read really well and I am very chuffed with how that all sounds. Maybe the comeback starts today.

Because bankrupt football clubs in 1976 we running at the same kind of losses that we were/are, were they? 8,000 gates season in, season out in the second tier LOL, we'll **** all over that in League One.

Delighted to say I have never so much as looked at a Portsmouth web forum, let alone post on one like you seem to do obsessively. You're in the Premier League onto your third multimillionaire and we're up ****street. And you're still bloody obsessed with us. When you were nowhere I didn't give your club a second thought. Bitter, bitter ****s.

This would be the same Kanu match days after the greatest day in your history to celebrate one of your best players in your recent history and how many bothered to turn up? The save our saints game was a load of cobbled together nonsense where the fans were being fleeced again once too often, and everyone knew raising piddly amounts of money wasn't going to make a blind bit of difference. I am proud of Saints fans for turning their backs on it. Good luck with your sheikh but don't forget Sunderland, Villa, Everton, Man City and Spurs are all keen on being the next big thing too. And who had the fifth biggest wage bill last season? And where did it get them.

Sorry, its not "my politics". It's your dopey logic pulling to completely seperate elements: 1) Barclays Marketing Budget and 2) the same bank dealing with a business in administration. There is no relationship between the two things and you making out there is one is just lunacy. More relevant would be two elements that are related ie a) how Barclays deals with businesses in administration and b) how Barclays deals with Southampton Leisure Holdings. Sorry, these two things should be the same and you saying SLH should get preferential treatment is a slap in the face to all the ordinary people out there working for companies that don't happen to be football clubs. That's my politics - it's about being fair.

you're a slow learner, but welcome aboard at last

Not sure about Europe but my guess is Saints games should be available online next season through Solent in the UK. Most BBC local stations do broadcast games online, it was the SaintsTV deal that blocked it before. I've not renewed yet, so saves me a few quid anyway.

Err - I've already said, the same thing has happened to me. Of course the ordinary people working at Saints have my sympathy. But it isn't Barclays fault, certainly not their fault primarily, so suggesting a boycott of Barclays is just ludicrous. If your values dictate that the millions pumped into the Premier League is so wrong, lets hope I never catch you moaning about the fact we're not in it anymore.

Apparently, people with "values" would chose (2). Spend, spend, spend, spend then cry poverty when the day to pay comes. That's "values".

I've got more sympathy for ordinary people getting their homes repossessed, their small businesses shut down, their pension schemes closing and being made redundant up and down the country through no fault of their own, but at the hands of lots of rich people making bets with everyone else's money. Don't lecture me about "values" when you're bleating about a business currently paying nine or ten employees upwards of five thousand pounds every single week.

What a ridiculous thread. Southampton Football Club is not a bloody rural post office. It's a sizable business who owe money they can't afford to pay back and, well, the cheek of it, the creditors want some of that money back. What a disgrace. Seems to me people want businesses to run up massive debts left right and centre and then use their staff having families to feed as some kind of human shield. Sorry, it does happen. SFC is not the first, or last business to go through something like that. I was made redundant three years ago, I bet at least half the working adults on this forum have been, or know someone that has been too. Sorry, it happens. I can't see anything Barclays has done specifically that is so wrong here (beyond the wider context of lending too much to everyone over the last decade, of course.)

How much did we spend on it, though? Unlikely it would have freed us up to buy Steed Malbranque.

Quite. Interesting the Echo talks about "breathing space". I can't see us being taken over until the last, last moment so this just seems like a prolonging of the agony. If I was either party my sense of urgency has just gone right out of the window with this news.

Presumably some people have already been, or are about to be, laid off following this move?

If Gunwharf Quay is your example of "culture" (err - it's a factory outlet village, much like you get in Swindon and Bicester) then god elp us all. Hardly the Louvre, is it? Portsmouth have got more culture, with the Navy shipyard, but its hardly a new development. HMS Victory has been there a while. The suggestion that Southampton is broke is an interesting one, but your suggestion it gets fixed by redeveloping Ocean Village (what, again) is a bit odd and leaves me baffled by what you mean by culture.

If you think that people saying we'll get promoted from League One, the third tier of English Football, some time in the next three seasons is "overly high expectations" then **** me you must be a riot at dinner parties.

I think I posted that just as the Sky Sports News ticker tape man was finishing his sentence. Who knew?!

Sorry, the difference is minimal and semantics. I think it is possible we'll go up in the next three years and I expect we will as well. It's the same thing. It's possible we could go up twice and win the FA Cup in the third season, but I don't expect that. "Expect" is actually the more useful word here. "Possible" just means anything and is utterly meaningless in your usage. Yeah, and we probably will. To use your phrase, it's "possible" isn't it? Funny that no-one has said "when we get promoted" on this forum, at all, in recent times. Being that was your smart-arse thread title, it kind of p*sses on your chips somewhat. Funny I can't see anyone on this thread saying we'll walk the league either. Funny, eh? Where are these people again?

Sorry, if anyone is talking rubbish its you, being you have based your entire argument on the wafer thin difference between what is "possible" (or what you're allowed to think, and is perfectly fine) against what is "expected" (which is what you think everyone else thinks, and is therefore wrong). It's a pointless semantic debate you are having about a difference of opinion that frankly is not there. Err - just to remind you, you're the one who started the "piece of p*ss" thing. As someone else has already said, no one is saying anything of the sort. Find something that anyone has said on this forum in the last month, or refer me to a real person that thinks promotion from League One is a "piece of ****". No one thinks it, you are wrong. If anything, the prevalent extreme view is the view that we are doomed to L2 and worse, and/or going out of business. How many people at SaintsAid thought promotion from L1 was going to be a piece of p*ss?

We do not need "loads of cash" to get promoted from League One. And we barely need a "really good manager" unless you describe Nigel Adkins, or Colin Calderwood as "really good managers". We need a good manager. Er. That's it. What are you people on. We're not trying to win the Champions League.

Shut up you pointless troll.

Indeed it is, combined with your point about the right (different) manager in place. I'm sure this is the view held by almost all Saints fans, which is why the original poster's point is so baffling. I don't know anyone that thinks it's going to be "a piece of ****", especially not next season.

No one is saying its a foregone conclusion, but it seems to me anyone that even suggests that getting promoted within three years is a possibility gets slaughted by the doom mongers. In reasonable memory, lets say from 1980 onwards, Leicester, Sheff Weds have not won more "glittering prizes" than we have, and Forest's double European Cup win did not actually help them get promoted from League One last season, some twenty years later. But those clubs in size stature and fanbase are like us. They are more like us than Oxford, Swindon or Oldham. Is it possible for us to be in L1 for the next fifty years, or twenty years, or ten years. Yes, its possible. Is it possible for us to promoted from L1 in the next three years. Yes, it is possible. I'm sorry but the second of those is far more likely than the first, and it is ridiculous that a view point like that is described by some (not you) as people thinking it will be a "piece of ****".

Sheffield Wednesday and Forest were in tip-top shape when they went down were they? Leeds were minus 15 points at the start of last season and fuc ked. Anyway, you are supporting my argument - because I take it you don't think it's going to be a "piece of ****". Does anyone here?

Yeah, that's right we've got so much more in common with Swindon (that'll be one season in the top division in their entire history) and Notts County (one season in Div One 1991-2 and bugger all before and since) and Brighton (top division mid eighties for a couple of seasons) than Sheffield Wednesday and Leicester. Right you are then. By the way you forgot Bradford and "Separated at birth from Saints" Oxford United too. The clubs I have named are comparable to Saints. The clubs you've named, and I've expanded on, aren't.