.comsaint

That's the spirit!...whatever the...er...missing letters were!

I we win at Wolves on Friday - I would expect a huge demand for Palace tickets would follow.

Get behind the Indian take-over/buy-out/endless £££££'s rumour ffs!

temporarily - for a day or so anyway! No one else in the bottom half of the table play 'til Saturday. Sure it's top-of-the-table Wolves away...and we're live on Sky...and we'd have to win - but we're Saints and you therefore never know! *cough They (Wolves) are without their 40-goal strike pairing of Chris Iwelumo and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake by the way. We scored from 2 set-pieces at Watford the other night. Perhaps we therefore are going to have to rely on corners/free kicks again as our strikeforce has been pretty dire lately in open play. But...you never really know with Saints. Reading/Preston away anyone?

Poompey lost £16.66m last year - down from £23.45m the year before. Their wages for last year (635 personnel) were £54.6m - up almost £18m on the year before. Poompey owe £44m in loans to Barclays & Standard Bank. If they go down (fingers crossed of course!) - they will basically implode!

"Ambani Army". I like it!

The Saints, the sinners ... and the Lord above Lord Mawhinney and the board of the Football League began the day at 9.30am yesterday with the subject of Southampton’s administration high on the agenda. Not detailed in the minutes, but certainly of eager interest to the chairman was that other burning question: how do we get away with this one? By 1.50pm they had the answer. 'The League Board has instructed its legal advisors to commission an independent forensic accountancy report in order to clarify the legal and financial position of Southampton, as a matter of urgency,' read a statement. 'The board will reconvene once that report is available.' By which time, you never know, Southampton might be relegated and the immediate problem will have as good as gone away. We have travelled this road before. The difficulty for the Football League is simple. If the directors of Southampton manage to avoid a statutory ten-point deduction by placing the holding company, Southampton Leisure Holdings, not the football club, into administration with debts of £27.5m, a lengthy line of aggrieved chairmen will begin beating a path to Mawhinney’s door. He has, after all, clobbered every similarly stricken club with a savage penalty in recent years, leading to relegation, demotion and ambition cut off at the knee. Mawhinney who, like the new breed of football administrators, comes from a political background, is not quite as sharp as he thinks. Indeed, sifting through the wreckage of this train crash, he is not very sharp at all. Rupert Lowe, Southampton’s former chairman and chief executive, may have made a career of getting relegated and pointing fingers, but even he may have got the upper hand this time. Lowe deduced that Mawhinney’s rulebook contained a loophole so large it could lasso an ox and went about exploiting it. His clever use of a technicality — quite possibly the cleverest thing he has done at Southampton, apart from resigning — is what has sent the Football League into this nervous huddle. Bandying about big words like forensic make the Football League seem decisive, but the fact is if their rulebook had allowed them to proceed against Southampton yesterday they would have done so to save face. This is a stalling measure but, even if Southampton are down by the time the board reconvenes, the problem does not go away. In those circumstances, the penalty should be carried over to next season, when a new set of complainants will demand to know why Southampton are not starting bottom of the league, minus ten points. An extensive list of clubs, including Darlington, Luton Town, Leeds United, Rotherham United and Bournemouth, have been deducted points for financial failure during Mawhinney’s tenure, and already other endangered clubs are threatening to avoid censure the Southampton way. It is a huge embarrassment for the Football League because it is their fault. Lowe cannot be blamed for his act of cunning, no more than a speeding motorist is responsible if he walks free due to incorrect police paperwork. It is up to the authorities, those who make the rules, to ensure their system functions. Yet Mawhinney appears to care more for grandstanding than attention to detail; which is why he is in this mess. The ten-point deductions are draconian and unpopular anyway. In times of recession, when many clubs are struggling despite trying to be prudent, they seem horribly unfair. Still, Mawhinney has sailed imperiously on, despite dissent. If it transpires that he did not marry his rulebook to his soapbox, it will infuriate; but it should not surprise. The Football League does not have regulations governing third party interference or ownership, even after the chaos of the Carlos Tevez affair. It has ‘silent rules’ that allowed Jermain Defoe to sign for Tottenham Hotspur midway through the Carling Cup semi-final with Burnley and then play in the second leg. In other words, it makes it up as it goes along. Mawhinney talks a good game but he is passing through football and lacks the diligence to execute his lofty role in a way that is useful. Without this, decisions and sentences become random. Luton Town were flattened by punishments handed out by the Football League and Football Association, while Southampton may now escape on a detail. This is not justice and it is certainly not good for the game. The problem is a man like Mawhinney can make changes that knock on through generations. This could happen to Luton Town, now destined for the Blue Square Premier because they fell on hard times and lousy management in an era that coincided with swingeing penalties. Last month, Karren Brady, chief executive of Birmingham City, revealed that Mawhinney had written to Football League clubs proposing to salary cap all but three players in each squad. ‘It would seriously affect our club,’ she said. ‘Mawhinney sets the cap at £6.4m each year which isn’t even a third of our salary bill. It is also about the average wage of a Chelsea first-team player. He wishes us to enter the Premier League armed with peashooters.’ This was a serious point lightly made. Mawhinney already had the deterrent to reckless spending in place — the 10-point deduction — so why order further restrictions? A salary cap might not have troubled Birmingham City, who should be free of Mawhinney’s clutches by winning promotion this season, but what of promotion hopefuls next year? If Mawhinney’s proposal had become Football League law, the teams that were promoted in 2009-10 would have arrived in the Premier League at a major disadvantage with an under-strength squad that would have necessitated a panicky summer spending spree. And what of the relegated clubs newly arrived in the Football League? They could not have been required to demand wage cuts or jettison players on free transfers merely to comply. They would have had to be given at least one year to reorganise, during which time they would have held a sizable advantage over their competitors, already condemned to the ambition-limiting drudgery of Mawhinney’s salary cap system. To nobody’s surprise, Mawhinney abandoned his scheme yesterday due to lack of club support. Mawhinney seeks a high profile but these are not good ideas. They are poorly conceived, poorly executed and reek of attention seeking, rather than sober forward planning. Under Mawhinney, the Football League, for so long in the shadow of the Premier League, has strived to reinvent itself as the home of real football. ‘The podcast for those who think pre-season in the Far East is a friendly with Norwich City,’ said one teaser on its website. All good nose-tweaking fun: but with this re-branding has come an increasingly pompous desire to be regarded as the soul of the game and guardians of morality. Talk of forensic investigation is meaningless when combined with nonsense such as silent rules. No doubt it sounded impressive in the draft statement, though, and for Lord Mawhinney and the Football League, that is often enough. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1168373/MARTIN-SAMUEL-The-Saints-sinners---Lord-above.html?ITO=1490

If we do get away with no points deduction AND escape relegation - we're gonna need a new song for next season. may I suggest - to the tune of the Millwall faithful: "We're Southampton We're Southampton No one likes us we don't care..."

Not sure trousers. I only know that he's on the Sport's Breakfast sometime in the morning. I guess Alan Brazil will give the approximate time shortly after the show starts?

Bumped - to remind you all that Lowe is on TalkSport Wednesday morning - Alan Brazil's breakfast show.

Get in you beauty!

Updated tuesday night following the 2-2 draw at Watford.

I think we'll escape a points deduction although the Football League won't be happy about it. We've found a loophole (of sorts) and although we haven't "technically" done anything wrong - it goes against the spirit of things. The FL will close the loophole/amend the rules - as it were. Other clubs scrapping down the bottom with us won't be happy of course - but I personally couldn't care what they think - it's MY friggin' club that's at stake ffs! Anyway - I reckon that after saturday's pathetic display - we're going down anyway...and so no-one else will give a toss at the end of the season.

He's on the Sports Breakfast with Alan Brazil this coming Wednesday morning...for those that give a toss! Wonder what he'll have to say for himself?

Incredibly 'strange' that all those bottom 6 clubs play each other on the final day of the season: Plymouth v Barnsley Charlton v Norwich N Forest v Saints Weird. You couldn't make it up!

6 games left - and 4 of those are away. Maybe (...just maybe) that's not such a bad thing as we are completely sheite at home and have been all season. I'm hoping that playing away from SMS means less pressure (of sorts) on the kids & that we'll grab a couple of "unexpected" wins here or there. We're gonna need to win at Sheffield Wednesday I think and pick something up at either Watford or Wolves beforehand. We simply must win both our remaining home games (hoho) against Palace & Burnley too - which is a big ask considering we're pants at our own place. I hope - at the very least - that by the time we go to Forest on the final day of the season - our destiny is still in our own hands. It's not looking good granted - but needing a win on the final day to definitely stay up...I'd take that right now! http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=11151

Can someone...anyone! - please tell me exactly WHAT Lallana brings to the side? I know he's young, he's "raw", he's yadda yadda yadda - but every week he flatters to decieve. It's not as if he creates many chances for the frontmen either ffs. Lallana? Don't believe the hype!

Updated Saturday 4th April following the day's results & our pizz-poor home defeat to Charlton. Updated for those that still care that is...

The Doomed v The Debt-ridden...with what was probably the day's most predictable outcome really. The fans were well up for it. Shame the players & the gaffer weren't. If we had one foot in League 1 before today - we've now stepped into it - up to our waist. In a season of sooooooo many let-downs & failures - what's another one? Another weekend of misery, disappointment & deflation. I'm used to it all by now. Promise so much. Deliver so little. Watford away on Tuesday now seems almost insignificant.

I think Cunard should buy us - considering their historic links to the City/Port of Southampton.

Something obviously me & you know f*ck-all about!?!?

You can add Havant & Waterlooville to that list. They are currently hovering just above the relegation zone of the Conference South.

Yeah - a shrink!

Good spot! So the final day of the season will certainly see many tears for some & much joy for others. I only hope we're safe come our visit to The City Ground...but I somehow doubt it.

I guess he's just saying that - taking our last 7 consecutive games in a row - we have won 3, drawn 3 and lost just 1. We have been pretty sheite this season in general - and Wotte knows this. He's just saying that for a side battling for their lives - we're not doing too bad lately...which we're not...for a side down in the doldrums! Our "form" is keeping us in touch with the other stragglers. Nothing more. Nothing less.