Frank's cousin

To be fair Wes that is 'speculation and opinion' rather than 'common knowledge'

To be fair, the situation was different at that time when Lowe, Wilde and CRouch rejected teh SISU offer which was rumoured at around 22p a share - a massive 66% loss for Crouch and well over 50% for Wilde so hardly surprizing - without knowing the finer details of the offer and what POSITIVES it had itd difficult to say whether it was in hindsight something we shuld have been more receptive to, but as I recall teh VAST majority on here were against being owned by a hedge fund.

By turning up. ;-) (Well someone had to start this argyument! ;-))

Well originally I guess from Wildes 'investors in the wings' thus santioning the 7mil spend and the subsequent falling out with Wilde - leaving to door open for Wilde +Lowe - seriously its a comedy cript if it were not so bloody tragic --- grown men?

For teh record: I believe alll THREE rejected the SISU offer - there was a joint press release on this as I recall... that is I believe a FACT

They couldn't would probably be more accurate as a starting point - and Leon would have known that - hes not stupid... great PR jesture, but unless he was prepared to put it in unilaterally a hollow one really.

I dont think anyone has teh right to EXPECT leon to have saved us singlehandedly - and loaning 2mil to a failing club might have been a stop gap, but without a long term plan in place would have probally been the same as leon dropping it in a skip and saying goodbye to it... Leon is a wealthy manby average stakes, but I dont think he is likely to have have 2mil in loose change just burning a hole in his pocket - his shareloss will have hit him, perhaps not as hard as Wilde but it will have hurt nonetheless. With Wilde and Lowe, I think its a simple case of neitehr of tehm having the capital to hand even if tehy wanted to match Crouches offer - and I am sure Leon would have know this when he made it - so it could have been a little bit of a PR stunt even if he was prepared to inject the cash. So my opinion is that Leon was quite within his rights not to singlehandedly inject cash - I would not expect him to do so - but it also means that those who advoacte him as some sort of uberfan messiah - who is chums with those other uberfans Lawrie and MC, need to put him more in perspective.

I'll get to your question shortly - Firstly, not agreeing with me is not what makes you ignorant, its the fact that you never provide any support for your opinion, never look to detail or try and differentiate between fact and rumour in forming it. You may well have done so, but you never share that here, so opinion on this is based on what you post, not what you know. I respect everyones right to an opinion, but opinions are formed on the basis of the information to hand - the more you learn the better informed you become and your opinion changes with the evidence - For the record, you assumeyou know my opinion and its that i have a problem with, your constant 'luvvie' or lowe apologist jibes simply highlight that you dont. I come on here to discuss these things because I WANT to know more to either substantiate what I presume already or be educated and maybe CHANGE my perspective on things - but I wont do that based on gossip, rumour or speculation, but only on hard evidence - for me thats all that will change my opinions - yet 95% of what appears on here is gossip - and thats great too because its enteratining and can be fun - but it also needs putting in perspective. If you bothered to read my posts properly you woudl see I dont ofetn agree with every thing UP or Duncan or many of the opther respected posters say - all of whom have been quite strongly opposed to Lowe and the previous regime - But that disagreement and debate is about an attempt to dig deeper and discuss ALL perspectives in an effort to gain a better understanding - sure it has and no doubt again spills over into spats - we all do it when we get wound up - football is an emotive issue no matter how much we know we should avoid that if looking to discuss things in detail and despite waht has been said and what UP may think - I do respect his POV on most things and Duncan is held in uber esteem - because he has genuine knowledge and shares this (mostly ;-)) without too much bias. All you seem to respond with is one line rhetoric - why not join the debate and ADD your perspective and be more open to accepting maybe its not all as balck and white as many make out? So to anwer your question: You are right, i have not 'defended' Crouch from some of the obvious attacks that wer perhaps unfounded or unjust - why? Beacsue to be honest the level of 'abuse' he has recieved has been pretty minor in comparison and yup I am just one of those that feels compelled at tims to defend the underdog more than the populist approach - BUt I have and do acknowledge what CRouch did and his positives - I liek his passion and genuine committments to fans - he has worked hard for fans from his support of the Statue to dipping into his pocket re players... all commenable - but for me these are great things that any rich FAN could do and to date he has not really shown IMHO the strength to make teh harder choices necssary to run a football club in dire financial straits... he could for example as FC chair have vetoed teh 7 mil spend under Burley - an unpopular decison that would ahve been the right one IMHO - we could not afford it and if it as based on waiting for Wildes 'investors in the wings' then it was naive at best - I think thats a fairly balanced view on Leon, and am happy to adjust that view either more pro or against as I learn more about him and what he has done - I do think he also has an ego issue though - he made a big play for holding the balance of power between Lowe and Wilde and was naive in not reconciling the situation with Wilde - someone who obviously jump straight back into bed with Lowe to serve his on interests. NOw if you have further FACTS about Leon that are positive taht should make me more receptive to him, I would love to hear them...but I suspect I will just get another 'oververbsoe, boring drivel' type response that you traditioanlly apply to ANYTHING I say - I would love to be proved wrong.

Thats all fair enough. But are our expectations of the 'hit rate' set appropriately? Sure we can see numerous mistakes made in the way the money was spent - almost at times it seemed a scattergun approach to try an unearth a few Gems - Neimi, Mazza, Killer etc were hardly household names that we could have had any confidence about, yet proved successful, others that didnt we know about - yet this was never a phenomenon unique to saints - most other clubs would consider a 50% transfer success rate a success - afterall even 'arry the footballing genius (tongue firmly in cheek on that one) transferred some 140 players during 4 years at West ham!!! (Tom Bowers)... I think because of the stories of 'interference' and lets be honest a general attitude that was always looking for Lowe to make mistakes to jump upon, we did tend to treat the error perhaps in a harsher way? Yet teh same thing happens at many clubs - Robbie Keane at Liverppol is a recent good example - I am not trying to defend Lowe here, but just put it in perspective against the backdrop of something that is perhaps more common that we realise. The bloated squad - this is well known and yes its without doubt the result of the manager merry-go-round, but if you remove the obvious mistakes of gray, wigley and Redknapp and JP, you could argue that the rest leaving were a combination of circumstances and not all just about Lowe's attitude - I would suggest its alos possible that Lowe probably felt because managers were in his view becomming as disloyal as players, that they should not have that very control they demand - eg they spend 6-8 mil opn players they insist they need and then bugger off, only for the new man wnating to do the same thing - You can see how that must have annoyed the 'prudent' Lowe - Again not defending him (I point this out because too often any kind of attempt at offering teh alternative POV or discussing how it could have looked from another perspective is jumped on as some sort of Luvvie dom - I find it difficult to reconcile how some on here dont want anyone to provide the alternative PoVs or perspectives and shout them down as Luvvies - its almost over defensive - a case of 'protest to much') For my my part its simple - the more we understand about the complexities and reasons why decisions were made, the mistakes made both obvious and only known after the fact, the better informed we are and hopefully the more likely we are to recognise the real dangers and maybe do our bit to prevent the same again - but to understand it all properly, you do need to get away from teh over emotive and irrational 'he was just a ****' oppinion and be open to discussing it ALL. Sure its boring, repetitive and no longer important to some - and thats fair enough, no one is forcing anyone to join a thread - there are plenty of others that dont go near this angle, but those that do join in should at least be prepared to make a valid point rather than just a one line aggressive dismissive.

I agree that 25 say (22 is a bit of a small squad) of a higher standard and also perhap on abetter basic is better trhan 41 on lower, but TBH that was more a result of the vicious circle we got into re the excessive managers all buying their own players - strachan included. But how would we have greated LOwes board if he had said to strachan at the start, OK you have 26 mil a year on wages, but in order to buy new players you have to ship out 15 first up? Its a tricky one and quite common at clubs that have seen more managers than is healthy - for which Lowe rightly gets the blame for some, but also we have to acknowledge the bad luck we had here as well - the influence beyond our control - spometimes it was as if teh Saints managaers job was like the drummer in Spinal Tap! I have no grip with Alps having an opinion, he is entitled to one, I just wish he would base it on accummulated knowledge rather than ignorance now and again. ;-)

I can agree that that is the perception and indeed the reality - you cant argue against facts and yes he chose to use cash on dividends and share buy backs....and yes when you add them up over the 7 or 8 years its a tidy some that could have bought a decent player .... but when looked at on an annual basis are relatively small - But like any club a budget is set and approve by the baord at the satrt of each financial year - in our case it had wages at over 50% of gros turnover, which was above what could be considered an appropriate ceiling - some 26 mil. Some have rightly argued that there should have been more flexibility available in how this was spent - fair enough, but is there not a danger that contract renewals for key players would then have become even more difficult as agents make direct comparisons ? and what happens then is a wage spiral so you can surely see that is some logic in having such a system? The Radio station, iNsurance etc... both of these were designed to generate revenue - and ANY company should look to other revenue sources - in both case these services could be of benefit to fans, but were under utilised or badly marketed etc - so did not generate any revenues... its not the idea, but the execution if you like. I do think its oversimplistic to just assume that had we the will we wouldhave found the way to do as WGS wanted - Sure teh banks may have leant us the money, but that would not have been a wise choice in MHO.

NO one has said Strachan was not told that, but i do find it hard to believe that he believed it. If you review the accounts that year it wa sthe year we made a 1.75 mil profit after teh cup run, so where was the 25-20 mil coming from that we would have needed, thats what no one has yet clearly and rationally defined - that has nothing to do with Lowe. Stachan is perfectly reasonable in saying he took us as far as he could with the resources he had, but why did he go and spend 8 mil on McCann, Cranie the like...these were HIS decisions. Dont get me worng Strachan is a great manager who we should have done everything to hang on to, but he did leave because he did not get cash - and that is the easy option whichever way you look at it. As to 'spending his life apologising and defending lowe' - thats a cheap shot and frankly irrelevent to the point being made about wher the cash was going to come from - not wanting your club to take excessive risk and borrow beyond it means when it had already borrowed heavily for SMS is a POV that is perfectly valid - its purecoincidence that it was also Lowes approach - what you and some dont seem to recognise is that having that POV does not mean you support LOwe, but obviously you share the same POV on that issue - there is a big feckin difference , somthing that Alps cant grasp....

You really are a nasty piece of work - who just does not get it at all - what does your lonely neuron do for a friend?

almost correct, just leave out the love child bit and you get pretty close ;-)

Pure genius, no really, I am astounded as to how you do it... Here in the UK 17 years + of education means we tend to have learned to a)read and b) comprehend. I am sorry that you never had such an opportunity.... Jeez...

Having looked at the proposal slides, what is not given is a calculation of antcipated annual revenues. I appreciated there are hundreds of variables given the numbers potentially contributing varuious amounts, but the £10 a game deal will impact on overall revenues too. What would the group consider a reasonable annual working budget in the CCC or League 1?

Now that is funny...well if it wasn't so sad...

Sorry Ron, but that old chestnut is well past its sell by date - Its pretty obvious that the 'not giving money to our competitors' was a crap smokescreen - afterall who ever heard of that in football? THe ONLY reason we did not get Saha and Malbranque was money - both in the transfer fee itself and more importantntly because lOwe did not want to break the wage structure we had in place - to believe it was some bull about not giving Fulham 11 mil was rubbish. We simply did not have the 20mil or so it would have cost in fees , wages and top ups to existing player contracts at that time... and Bridge wanted to go as soon as he was offered double wages - how can you hang on to that? Strachan may well have stayed, but I did lose some of the respect I had for Strachan that he in effect threw his toys out the pram because of this - the very best managers work with what they have and improve things - he did that, sure, then had a bit of a hissy one when bridge went and spent 7 mil of that on most a load of crap - was that out of spite?

I think this is one of the most interesting points because I do think how we perceived Lowe or his board etc v the other possibles will have been greatly influence by our own thoughts on what consitutes a 'worthwhile risk' - as I mentioned above many Leeds fans to this day still feel the punsihment was worth it because they touched glory, others dont etc. I would suggest that how we felt about LOwe was often governed by his approach to spending - seen as lacking ambition by many, but as prudent by others - two sides of the same coin? I just wonder how we would feel about Lowe had he gone mad spent 40 mil in 2003, finished 4th in 2005, got to the CL quarters at least and then finishing on only 5th under stachan in 2005 menat we had a fire sale and got relegated twice in succession that way? would we hate him as much had he tried to live the dream? ;-)

From all I have read on this, it seems there was an concerted effort by authorities to blame fans for the tragedy and not accept any responsibilty for the it. The morals or ethics in some ways are irrelevent a sthe Police have a duty of care to control and manage these sitautions IRRESPECTIVE of the behaviour of the crowd. Its why the police are there in the fitrst place as indeed stewards - They failed in that duty of care in a number of reasons as gighlighted numerous times by numerous people. The Liverpool fans do deserve an apology from these authorities for that failure. BUt we also have the more tricky and controversial questions remaining: Do fans have a responsibilty as well? If their behaviour had been different, would teh same thing have occured? I dont know, but I do get teh impression that these are questions the fans dont want to ask themselves, and I can understand why, its a tragic set of circumstances that led to this - and no one would want to think they had any part in it, but if there is to be closure and a thorough understanding of these events as tehy unfolded, the questions DO need to be asked. That is not blaming fans or assuming anything.

I think the biggest irony is that what probably killed us financially is the the very thing that helped on the pitch get a few better results - the inability to loan out or sell on those high earners that returned during the Januray period - It has been speculated that the OD was reduced prior to this and then has seen a gradual increase as these players returned to the books and gates reduced do to poor results. The only thing that could have really prevented it was probably 25000-28000 every home game, but that was never going to happen in the CCC, as we never got that even in the playoff season.....

Hi Duncan I think for me the main issue, and ultimately the reason why I end up with the label I have is its things like 'distaste' and 'hate' and all the other emotions that follow LOwe like a bad smell that I cant get my head around. The reason being that I dont believe the mistakes, errors of judgement and often risky appiointments were done with malice or in some deluded way to ruin the club, and the way some folk do go on its as if he was caught in the swing park with his trousers around his ankles! I confess that never having met or spoken to him I cant vouch fro his personality and as you have and are not known for hysteria, vcan quite believe he is probably not someone I would particularly like given his reactions to qyuite genuine fan concerns or comments - but for me it was never relevent, provided he did what was necessary - and was IMHO prepared to make the difficult decisons - I was always and will continue to be an advocate of clubs liviung within their means and being prudent with spending - so from that perspective he was preferable to Wilde's risky strategy which Crouch really could have stopped as FC Chair had he recognised the dangers of failure - So it was never about personality, or about one being better than another but about what was being done - I guess those like me who have tried to be supportive of this, do so because we are of the opinion that in this modern age of perilous financial tightrope walking that football has become, we always put that ahead of the 'ambition' approach seen at many other clubs of borrowings for potential success - which perhaps the majority of fans feel is more important - as someone said - many Leeds fans still think their CL run was worh the risk and their current pain - but for how many years? I think wher we stand on that 'risk' v 'ambition' v prudence goes along way to how we viewed Lowes approach. The football stuff, eg manager choices is another matter - thats just good old fashioned debate about strategies, pros and cons of various approaches etc - cant argue that Lowes **** ups here have seriously outweighed his successes, but I also simply enjoyed looking into 'why' certain strategies may have been adopted and what the pros and cons were - as you know, i have alwyas been a fan of doing things a bit differently - maybe going against the 'traditional' grain so that was always going to influence my opinion. As a result of all this, I find it very difficult to understand why there has been and is SUCH a strong emotional dislike for one man, given that the club is what matters, that some have put this ahead of anything else, and were even prepared to risk the clubs very existence - Lowe would have gone eventually anyway - walking into retirement to reflect on his tenure, but advocating administration and the risk associated with it to the clubs existence seems odd and bizzare to me even with what has befallen teh club these last 5 years. Now as time runs out, everything is up in the air, relegation battle against a backdrop of administration against a Football league points deduction that could make any last grasp survival miracle irrelevent anyway... sorry, but i just cant see how anyone could want this. So will someone come in and sort this out? The longer it goes without a clear front runner, it suggests to me we dont have any clear winner with proof of funds significant enough for teh administrator to seriously - OK perhaps they are waiting for teh FL decison and also the outcome of teh relegation battle, but positive news on that front NOW woudl surely be a big boost for fans and the squad - so genuine fans interested would surely step up to the plate now for the sake of a couple of mil?

I am not usually one for scaremongering either, there have been many who have 'underplayed teh consequences of administration to justify using it as a way for isolving the board with the hope of a better future - admirable, yes but is that not really naive given the odds? Is the risk/reward ratio worth it given the dire consequences of liquidation? I simply dont want to be forced to supporting an AFC Saints - it will be a different club - and so for me the risks associated with admin outway this irrational hatred towards one man....

...and because we love him, dont forget that! ;-) (huge irony alert)

The other aspect to consider is that of the so called 34 interested parties - its clear from the recent 'council to buy SMS' thread that quite a few of these will be parties interested in one part of the company only eg how many others out there are interestyed in the stadium only or Jacksons farm only or even Staplewood only? The administrator will be entertaining the best bids for each of these to maximise the returns, not remotely interested in whether thsi is good long term for SFC Ltd which will be considered a seperate assest - eg we could get sold and have no venue if the ground went to someone else for development (not likely given location and/or current economic climate/planning consent etc) but an illustrated extreme case I am usually very positive, and happy clappy, but even though Lowe has gone, we are IMHO in a far worse state now than we were before as the consequences if we dont find buyers dont bare thinking about - thats why I cant get Alpines POV.