aintforever

All the parties have promised a referendum and not delivered, why is this any different? It's just the Tories way of getting re-elected.

Them and Norwich are getting sucked in.

Football has a habit of making mugs out of successful businessmen.

Am I the only one kinda worried about doing a Pompey and spending all our parachute money before we've even got it? If we keep making signings like this, unless someone is willing to put their hand in their pocket and gift us some money, we are f*cked if we go down.

I don't understand why he comes out and says stuff like this, just making him and his family more of a target.

Agree with this. Frank's cousin is obviously oblivious to football in other countries around the World where there is still some passion and atmosphere.

I doubt they knew anything about any other bids, if you remember at the time the administrator was running around saying we could be liquidated, that was Crouch's main motivation for chucking his hard earned in. The administator definitely didn't mention that one of Europe's richest men were interested in buying the club to us when we were chucking our tenners in the buckets.

I'm pretty sure Crouch wouldn't have stumped up 500k of his own cash to pay the wages if he knew there was a billionaire wanting to buy the club.

Good post, sums up how I feel. Nigel's sacking was particularly hard to take because of the genuine pride we felt after the recent good results. It's easy for us to relate to his situation. I expect we've all been in a position at work where our skills have been put to the test and have come through and proven that we're up to the job. Adkins really looked like he had worked his ass off and proved he could take us forward.

He could buy virtually any sized club he wanted to, it wouldn't need growth potential if he just wanted a club to fall in love with.

It's way way easier to get a Swiss club into the Champions League though.

It was probably a bit of both. A toy to play with but the fun in the project is buying a club for £15mill and turning it into one worth 10 times that. In his own words it was "the bargain of the century".

or 4. The rapid success Adkins brought this club has led to Cortese thinking this football lark is a piece of p!ss and his dicking about with the manager wont matter.

I expect Norwich fans are pretty happy. People who own the club achieve success without acting like complete c*nts.

It's pretty obvious the Leibherrs are taking a back seat and letting Cortese run the show. They will only give a sh!te if Cortese's decisions start costing them money. I dont think they would hesitate in getting shot of Cortese or the club if things go bad.

If Pinochio doesn't change too much I think we have a decent chance of getting something. if he tries to implement too many new ideas using his pigeon English I expect Everton to smash us. I expect the players will be well up for it though, to win it for Nige. Problem is if we have a bad start the atmosphere will sour.

Don't disagree with anything Matt says there. It's good to have someone so high profile saying it from a Southampton fan's point of view.

The players will probably think it's nice that we are showing our support to Nige. I think he was popular with them.

Would be a great move for him, better than some tin pot outfit like Blackpool.

There is a possibility that this guy turns out to be a real deal, it does appear he was up against it somewhat at Espanyol so he could have been a good manager in a bad situation. But he could also be an Argentinian Ian Dowie.

I'm not sure but I think we signed Boruc after the deadline.

Agree with all that except that saying it's supremely unlikely that anything will change with the big 4 is complete nonsense. Rewind 10 years or so and people would be saying you are nuts to include Man City or Chelsea in any sort of big 4. In fact I would say it is a near certainty that one or both of these clubs will end up in financial trouble once their owners have got bored. Football always changes, wether it's us getting stupidly big funding, Chelsea going bankrupt or new rules changing the finances of football or qualification for the CL you can be sure things will change. Thats why it is dumb to say that it's impossible for us to ever get European football.

The club has had many different owners before, it's never been owned and run by the people of Southampton. Lowe was answerable to the plc shareholders, not the fans. If it was up to the fans he would never have got through the door.

Disagree, the football club will always be part of, and belong to the city. The people in charge of the company currently running it will soon be gone once they've made their money. If people want to protest they should IMO.