aintforever

Models will never be able to predict the future, I'm not sure what your point is?

Weird choice, ****er of a time to have to get to sunderland by.

We were top during the 1988/89 season.

That statue should serve as a warning to portsmouth - This is what happens when you let a bunch of football fans make executive decisions. The thread should be restored, the funniest thing ever seen on the internet.

We would have had a better chance of staying up with Pearson than trying to play total football with Jan Poortvleit.

We were skint but hiring two dutch morons as manager just made things worse. It's when you have to work on a shoestring (we did have some money to spend on players) that hiring a decent manager is important - Lowe failed miserably.

But if Lowe hadn't had made such a pigs ear of it by appointing the dutch duo the bank might not have pulled the plug. Lowe relegating us to League 1 probably made the banks act.

Redknapp used sports science at pompey and Spurs. I think at Saints he just resented having a rugby coach and his buddies imposed on him by a d!ck-head chairman, if Redknapp was backed and allowed to do things his way we probably would have stuffed Luton. I went to that game and remember saying how all the players, manager, everyone just looked p!ssed off. We had a decent squad that season and would have bounced back straight away if managed properly. All this sport science could have added an extra 0.5% to the players performances, being a happy squad all working together and playing for each other would have added 25%.

City, Arsenal and Chelsea all have big Champions League fixtures on the Tues/Weds after that weekend so there is a chance they won't be as strong as they could be.

He played a sizeable part, firstly in getting us relegated in the first place with the Sturrock/Wigley fiasco, then with his mis-management afterwards twice (the Redknapp/Woodward farce and then the Dutch joke). Would the bank have pulled the plug if we were sat comfortably mid-table in the Championship?

That's just nonsense. Liquidate the football club and the banks would have got next to nothing. The players would all walk away for nothing, St Marys would be worthless. The very worst case scenario would be the club sold for a nominal amount and the banks repossess the ground and rent it back. It would never have made any sense to anyone to liquidate the football club, especially weeks after receiving a firm offer of £15mill+ from a billionaire. Only Fry knows what offers were on the table. In my opinion the Pinnacle thing was just a no lose gamble because he knew he already had Liebherr in the bag and there were others lined up. I expect Pinnacle offered a bit more than Marcus so Fry chanced his arm,.

I have no doubt Corbett, Crouch and McMenemy were led to believe we would fold, that's how Fry got his hands on Crouch's cash. History shows that asset rich, Premier League standard clubs don't get liquidated for the sort of debts we had. Not in a million years. You just have to look at the basket case down the road to know that.

He would be better off going to Chelsea, Utd are in decline.

How do you know there were not other potential buyers lined up? If someone of Liebherr's calibre describes the purchase as "the deal of the century" there must have been other people willing to put an offer in. When you look at the lot down the road I can't believe for one minute we were anywhere near liquidation. I expect Fry fed Crouch n co a bunch of porkies just to get his hands on their cash.

Seriously? I'm Le Tiss' biggest fan but given the option of his Fialka's bid and a multi billionaire it wouldn't even be a choice. I'm not sure why an administrator would choose them. I wonder if Fry told Crouch about Leibherr's interest before he got him to chuck a few hundred grand of his own cash in the bucket? It appears to me that the future of the club was never ever in doubt and Fry just conned Crouch out of his money because he knew he had billionaires to fall back on if it collapsed.

That's one hell of a time-bomb for a League Two club if they havn't ring fenced all the Parachutes. Tick tock

It would be interesting to hear from Fry as to why he ignored the Leibherr's offer to buy the club in the first place. How could he possibly think Fialka would be a better prospect than one of Europe's richest families?

I sometime don't believe what I read on here at times.

A real sh!tty situation for the new chief exec to sort out. Do you get rid and write off millions or do you ride it out and hope they make up?

I hope so, I just think Saints being 3rd highest spenders last summer hints at us living beyond our means. Hopefully we will carry on the same way anyway. Only time will tell.

I'm not sure spending £15mill fees and 60K a week wages on players like Osvaldo is our true level though.

I hope you are right but my gut feeling is that if the money was still there Cortese would still be there.

I expect the only thing they would have cared about is Cortese's ability to get hold of loads of Leibherr's money - that is what success is linked to.

I don't think it matters much about his ability at all, no player is going to be that bothered about the skill set of a CEO. The only reason to worry is WHY he left. In my opinion it is probably down to Liebherr not wanting to finance his little dream. If Cortese has promised the players something that cannot be delivered then he has left us with a big problem.

Impossible to say stuff like this unless you actually know what's gone on. Might have just been a good old fashioned punch up.