Gloucester Saint

SR are like Rupert Lowe circa 2008, they shouldn’t be there and actually they’ve gone even further than he did in staining the club’s and city’s DNA. They are vermin and filth who should have the club on the market 9am tomorrow. Supporting the club actively I realised under Pellegrino was a waste of time, at that stage I’d been a supporter 33 years. Last game was Huddersfield home Dec 2017 so 8.5 years since I last attended. Was home and away under WGS, most of 00s and regularly 09-17. Early-mid 90s most home games until went to Uni. I’ll still look at the results on a Monday from the weekend but not watching live games or highlights even now until SR are long gone. More likely to watch Cheltenham’s home games on Sky but any EFL product makes me want to throw up 🤢 Cricket and Rugby are vastly superior sports.

The modern fanbase is SR’s poodle. 🐩 Take your own action and those around you. If enough follow, the 14k zealots there was under Lowe soon get outnumbered and the bills are more than Dragan is willing to underwrite.

If it gets rid of Ankerson and Solak permanently then a price well worth paying. Confident the club would get a decent buyer but obviously L1 again.

If you persist in funding them, yes.

👋

Depends what they do - debt free at a reasonable price it would be attractive for someone to rehabilitate. But you are tight, they’ve had no intention of behaving properly since Semmens let them in so they won’t start now.

If you want to support them - fine, good on you. If they make you feel uncomfortable and you’ve not been enjoying it for a while, take a break for a few years and try other hobbies during the football. No-one can criticise you or if they do, ignore it. I’ve not enjoyed football for a while now knowing that the Tonda uplift was fake and will be giving the WC a huge swerve too.

They just need to clear all debts as an apology and get the club sold. Nothing else.

I’ve posted this lot over the last few years since they took over but it’s about learning from the past and evolving future behaviour. What got rid of Lowe ultimately? Technically, a bounced cheque with Leon Crouch’s help but a fans boycott did the trick over the whole season. Be a customer on your own terms - make it clear that SR need to go or you won’t be at SMS. Empty seats are the most likely way - this fanbase doesn’t protest unlike the Branfoot years. No-one will take a blind bit of notice of this post and will carry on regardless I’m sure, but it’s you that will get upset and hurt by a one-way relationship with a player trading firm. The only apology they could make which could stop me turning my back to the club and football as a whole for the next few years as I will be doing is a statement from Dragan saying they’ve cleared the club’s debts as a gesture of goodwill and will sell the club to the first appropriate buyer subject to due diligence as soon as possible.

She had zero chance, Parsons already saw to that. What on earth was James Dyson thinking of?

Not even George Carman could have saved the situation after Parsons’ brain fart. Hardly her fault.

Dragan should pay them himself. Take responsibility and be an adult for once.

Exactly, he’s an employee albeit a high profile one who has fucked up. The people around him and above have failed equally dismally with basic supervision and need to be let go. Anyone with a direct link to getting involved in the activities and/or more senior with the opportunity to act and didn’t, is a prime candidate for gross misconduct.

The lack of use of NDAs for voluntary departures is astonishing let alone all of the other incompetence. I wouldn’t employ any of these people from SFC, total morons.

@LeG posted about Dragan and the board being furious, in hindsight that was Parsons but the message was a bit garbled and the fans weren’t ready at that stage to grasp events.

Dragan needs to clear the debts and sell quickly.

Tonda needs to walk on Friday before he is sacked for gross misconduct. The Eastleigh example is far worse than Middlesbrough IMHO. Latter was stupidity in a too-open complex but that’s just unpleasant dragging Eastleigh into it.

Clear the debts by way of apology, get the club on the market by Friday at an attractive price and fuck off quickly. Those are the only acceptable actions from Dragan Solak. It’ll be many years if at all as to whether I engage again but at least it would finally show good faith to the city of my birth.

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I don’t think his reaction would though, nor mine. The smoking gun for me last night which made me turn my back after 43 years was Parsons’ stupidity and the lack of any oversight on what Tonda was up to. Spying on Oxford United as a parachute payment team and them in the bottom three sums up the staggering ineptitude. If any of that had happened in my workplace, as a senior manager I’d be having a call with the CEO and HR Dept to confirm my contract was being terminated. The EFL are a shitshow too, and I don’t think football as a sport is for me any longer. There’s longer-term issues here which have put a lot of distance already between me and the club and this is a final straw - SR, Reed’s arrogance, Higgins, MLT going loopy, Gao being allowed to own it despite failing FAPP, two 9-0s. Further back, a far right political leader today chaired the club in the 90s and 00s and took a picture outside of the stadium. The only thing I have in common with SFC is 1) I was born there and 2) the fans. The only way out for SR is clear the debts in full and get the club on the market debt-free at an attractive price to sell quickly. That’s the only apology they can make to Southampton as a city. They’ve damaged the city’s institutions for many years.

I’m very much on that path I’m afraid. I may watch a few Cheltenham Town games next season if I can bothered as there’s a feel good factor with Steve Cotterill, the local Lawrie, in charge and a new owner. Mike Garlick is also a decent man. Won’t be SFC or the same feeling but I don’t know what that it any longer. This is final straw territory for me - it overlays the Bob Higgins scandal, SR and a succession of dreadful managers/football, Les Reed’s arrogance, and how friends and family who have worked at SFC were treated. I see them like a golf club or a political party that’s gone off the rails long-term - as you say, let’s see what a new ownership can do and in a few years time I may look at them afresh with the current taint faded somewhat and SFC feeling less grubby than it does over the next couple of seasons. But the door is shut for a while.

Don’t give a shit until SR are gone.

He’s not bad per se, but fucking rank incompetent for the supposed leadership role he was supposed to occupy. At those levels, the job is always to protect the organisation first and foremost. I used past tense because he’s a goner.

Cortese rightly got a lot of shit for his behaviour and the Staplewood overspend. But he’d have handled this a fuck sight better. As would 99% of this message board from our different professions and trades.

Embarrassing. Doesn’t reflect well on James Dyson that this moron was on his payroll for some time.