CB Fry

Correct. The self aggrandising "some of us have a club to save" bucketeers are just getting in the way, as is Crouch. The sooner we get to the eleventh hour brink, the sooner we get taken over. Crouch coming in paying the bills all the time just removes the urgency so any negotiator worth their salt will just drag it out for longer. Why pile in when Ted Rogers is going to pay the wage bill anyway? Just wait another month. Put the buckets away and lets get to the eleventh hour asap.

What the ****? Mickey Mouse just means "shambolic" or "inconsequential" whatever its applied to, there is no special definition to be "applied to football clubs". Anyway, I came on this thread simply to say: The Toon have no relegation clauses in their players contracts. Arf.

So you are completely disregarding his excellent record with the Welsh National Team and his even better record with Blackburn over several seasons, then?

This is why businessmen will continue to make huge sums from football fans. They are, by and large, idiots. I'd quite like our new regime to be reasonable, rational, honourable businessmen with some kind of track record of genuine success behind them. Just any old bloke, oh I don't care. Rapist you say? Fair enough, up the saints. And I wouldn't be so bothered about this "anyone will do" attitude but the precise same people will be droning on about the "spirit of Southampton" and "honour" and "loyalty" and "fans taken for granted" and "the true meaning of football" within six months of the new regime taking over.

It is only ten games a season live. Annoying really because you'd think we'd probably have been on once. And I think its only the Carling Cup semis and final. But the highlights will be good - I bet they put the CCC goals on a loop on the red button every Sunday like they used to with the FA Cup, as well as a proper highlights prog. Shame I couldn't give two ****s about the CCC next season.

Correct. Sick to death of posters sticking up nonsense about "we're in Division three, deal with it" and making out that our relegation has turned us into Weymouth. Being manager of Southampton Football Club is still a cracking job, and being a hero at SMS would be a brilliant opportunity to an experienced manager out of work for a while (hello Steve Cotterill) or for a lower league boss thinking they can take on a big club (hello Alan Knill, Paul Tisdale). It is a job managers would jump at. Can people stop overplaying this "we're so pathetic" routine.

How was it "hidden" from him? Every single fan knew about the Derby and Sunderland interest long before he went on strike. Saints were trying to get the best price for him. Jones going on strike made him look like a **** but that's because he is one.

But we are talking about Southampton. See what we did there?

I couldn't disagree more. Madjeski is the last man I can think of to go "balls out" for promotion. His next manager will have a strict budget to work to and promotion will happen if it happens. He won't buy it.

Sorry, I think the irony was lost on you. My original post about South Today clearly states I had made it up, so when I said "There is absolutley no question of the validity of the statement I made earlier regarding Matt Le Tissier and tonight's South Today" it was because I had made it up. Never mind..... I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail too*.

Seems quite odd - its not like none of those players can't do a pretty decent job in the CCC. And odd that they've done this before the manager is appointed, too.

I resent that. There is absolutley no question of the validity of the statement I made earlier regarding Matt Le Tissier and tonight's South Today.

I take it you are working on a takeover yourself as we speak then? Because it seems to me you're aimlessly chatting on a message board as well. Don't you realise we're about to go bust? Bust, I tells ya, buuuuussst!

If this thread is ever featured on Football Focus, my post will be strategically removed to make it look worse than it is.

You do realise this is a fans forum on the internet? This thread not being started would not have resulted in us being taking over any quicker, you know. Get over it. Back on topic - the slate grey kit is ruddy awful. Yellow and blue, or two tone blue is fine for us.

Bet we don't.

We were never going to have "no bids at all" and it was never going to be "the only way of saving the club". That is a point a lot of people did try to make. We were not, are not, and never will be Weymouth, or Grays Athletic or some tin pot nothing club maintained by fans having a whip round. And that £90k was just people on the forum saying yeah, I'm in. Which isn't money in the bank as reality would see you realise a fraction of that. And either way, £90k wouldn't be much of a top up of anything. Anyway, fairly pointless having this debate again as the deal will be officially sealed and announced on South Today this evening. MLT has just popped into the odd bins round the corner from me for three bottles of champagne*.

God, yawn. People missing the point of a thread by a mile for only the 457th time this week.

What he said. Sorry Frank, All the neighsaying was deserved because it was never going to work.

Option 3 and 4 won't happen. If no-one wants to buy the stadium as an ongoing football stadium, no one would want it for anything else. No one is going to buy the stadium to not play football in it and no one is going to knock it down. And by the same token no one is going to buy SFC only and then try and find a new ground or share with Eastleigh etc. Not ever going to happen. Option 2 is perfectly possible but would not be a great situation. Likely buyers here would be the council but yeah, you could get a property speculator wanting the ground but not the club. A bit like when Goldberg bought Palace off Noades but stupidly let Noades keep the stadium.

Correct. It's a shame so many people take this view as "you don't care about the club I supported as a boy through thick and thin where's the passion gone everyone is so spineless blah blah blah etc etc etc etc"

First post made me poo my pants. Then reading on, it all made sense and I am fine now. True story. Anyway, no one on earth is going to buy the stadium and try and knock it down. There is plenty of unused land about, no one is building anyway and can you imagine the grief of trying to bulldoze SMS - the council are never, ever going to allow it.

I think my point is a pledge of three grand is a waste of time. Sorry, it is. It is a tin of fifty pences. If it makes you feel better, great. But it is a waste of time. I still don't understand what you don't get about my using BWP as reference point. I have no problem with the market deciding what he earns, and have no problem in what he earns. I don't have a problem buying tickets and shirts to fund that salary*. I have a problem with people shaking tins to fund that salary, especially as those people have already ploughed fortunes into the club through tickets and merchandise for decades. Small acorns is not what is needed, again, my point all along. It's not about "every little bit can help". It really isn't. It's about "can a consortium of businessmen take advantage of Aviva giving up on the majority of the stadium debt and taking the club forward from there". Yes, they can. It's not little acorns, it's new buyers and the administrator screwing Aviva down for as little as possible and then cracking on from there. And no, it's not luck, its business. Someone picking up SMS and SLH for £7m odd is a pretty decent opportunity. A business opportunity. That is my pragmatic, considered sensible view. Let's not get carried away with the emotion of it all and who cares the most and who is "spineless" or whatever. And in a fortnight's time, maximum, we will be taken over, we will be selling STs for next season and we will put together some kind of battle to sneak into sixth place.

What a load of old toss from OooohTerry Hurlock. Exactly where do I say don't go to games and don't support the team?. Trying to win the argument by making out I am saying "don't waste your time supporting Saints" is just pathetic - I say nothing of the sort. And then you try and lecture me about "the economies of football" and it being a "market driven industry" - errr THAT. HAS. BEEN. MY. POINT. ALL. ALONG. I have no problem whatsoever with BWP earning whatever he earns - it is a market driven industry. My point, ALL ALONG is the "market driven" problem we are in is going to be solved by THE MARKET. ie A group of businessmen. It is not going to be sold by you wandering around with a Quality Street tin full of fifty pences pompously telling us that "some of us have a club to save". BWP could just about spend your little tins worth on a pair of trainers. So that's my point and has always been so. Don't try and score the cheapest of cheap points by making out I don't love Saints and don't have the club coursing through my veins. I have done since I went to my first game in 1988 well timed as it was Shearers debut Hattrick against Arsenal and I've been hooked since. It's not about only you care and only you are the real fan - it's about wasted energy and wasted time. The market/business should take on business debt. Not ordinary fans on ordinary money. That's a fan friendly policy that I'm sticking to.

Oh is it, really. Yeah, well sorry about that appointment of Jan Poortvilet, that was a mistake on my part. As was the years of financial mismanagement, I really should have held back on that Contract for Jason Euell. Sorry and everything. Yes, yes, I will. It's called getting the big picture. I think lots of fans give a ****. Just not enough to chuck good money after bad, when we are going to get saved, we will continue trading and we didn't need a million and one charity dos to get there. You seem to be powered by your own self satisfied smugness. As I was saying over and over, we're not Aldershot or Weymouth and we don't need keeno bucket shakers. We're going to get taken over: we were on the day we went into admin and we still will. And I don't get your "better the devil you know" routine: you've already proved that you'll chuck your own savings unquestionably at anything with a red and white stripe tacked on. The reason businessmen keep coming back and back is because they have cash cows like you to draw on. What a classy response that is. I don't call being prepared to chuck your mortgage payments in the direction of players on £5,000 a week as evidence of "backbone". But whatever floats your boat son. I can hear the new owners rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of cashing in on your "backbone" already. PS - your backbone has delivered nothing for our imminent takeover. You were nothing to do with it. Nothing. at. all. Understand?