Ken Tone

Solent report as described here doesn't make sense ( and btw in 7.50 sports report they didn't even mention Saints). To announce preferred bidder within 48 hours would mean that Fry would have to have received some bids by now. The process in a deal this complicated is: receive initial bids, choose one as 'preferred bidder' that seems best but for some detail(s), then work with that bidder to iron out the wrinkles, then arrive at final deal .. you hope! K.

Most of us know you're right, plus there are deliberate wind up merchants as well as the naive 'ITKs', but we're so desperate for news that we con ourselves. Ever had a hangover and sworn "never again"? Yet somehow you aren't yet teetotal? I react to this forum in much the same way. I'm not addicted, honest. I can handle it. I could stop reading the forum if I really wanted to. No, really I could. Just feed me a small snippet of vaguely plausible gossip. That'll be enough ..... ;-) K.

Very encouraging, but 'end of week' isn't today. Cue more 'Friday is the new black' jokes. K.

That WAS me being optimistic!! ;-) K.

I am NITK, but from normal business practice am pretty sure it won't be this definite. By far the most likely next step is an announcment from Fry to the effect that he has received one or more bids, that at least one of them is acceptable (please!) and that he is now working with one group as the preferred bidder to finalise details with the hope of an actual deal very shortly. He *may* indicate who that bidder is, with their agreement. But in any event if I am right there will still be some doubt and the deal could fall through before being finalised. So if there is indeed a press conference this pm, called by Fry, that is probably very good news, but unlikely to be quite the end of it. Still a few slips between cup and lips. K. PS would be delighted to be proved wrong with an actual final and firm deal being announced today!!!

Just as long as we don't have to buy 'the Sun' to check this out! I'm pretty sure the next thing we will hear is that X is the preferred bidder with just a few details still to sort out and that Fry is working to finalise the deal within a very short time. I have no idea who X will be and no idea when the announcement will come, but the signs are ... soon. So we are all doomed to checking this and other sites at ludicrously frequent intervals, and even listening to those patronising idiots on Radio Solent, one of whom can't even pronounce Le Tiss's name correctly. Ah well. Welcome to the world of a sad sad football fan. K.

A the risk of being a pain in the arse repeating myself, the administrator's duty is to do what is best for the creditors. What we want or need is not material. Looking after the interests of the business is only a secondary concern for him. Looking after the interests of the fans is of no official concern to him at all. In administration is not a pleasant place to be. He will only set a deadline if it suits the creditors' interests. If at any stage he thinks there are bids still to come that might be better than what he has, he will wait. However as I said before I am much more optimistic now than I was before we went into admin. I am not ITK, but going just on the public announcements I think things are going a lot better than they might have done. K.

He could set a deadline, but he doesn't have to. It is for him to judge what is best. He has a considerable amount of freedom and discretion, as long as he can justify that he is doing the best he can for the creditors. If the rumours are correct and he knows of 4 -ish interested parties, he will probably wait until all 4 have made clear if and what they will bid, as long as it doesn't drag on too long. It would not be in the best interests of the creditors to lose out on the potentially best bid just because it was not received by an arbitrary deadline K.

No. Just means there is another creditor in the queue. No doubt Aviva and barclays would make sure this new creditor got a fair share what is more. The little guy always gets a fair deal in business ;-) K.

Surely even if one consortium put in a bid today, we'd hear nothing. Fry will not just accept the first bid if he expects more to come. He will want to see all of them, to see which pays the creditors the most. The best we can hope for in the very near future is for Fry to say that one or more of the interested parties have made a bid and he hopes to progress with a preferred bidder to a firm sale over the next x days or weeks. K.

I think your "2" has various sub-headings. I suspect Fry's contingency plans will be about how to keep the club going whilst still looking for a buyer over the summer, eg by selling players and cancelling other players' contracts, sacking backroom staff, selling staplewood, selling St Mary's to the council, etc . There's a lot of options before we get to the blue square nightmare scenario. I remain cautiously optimisitic. I thought he'd be at the contingency plan stage before now. The fact that he hasn't started a fire sale implies he (and more importantly the creditors) think there is a good chance of selling the club as a going concern that will be able to survive well enough in L1 to generate enough income to cover the ongoing debts. K.

Well let's see. If Reading do buy him as they go up and he is playing 2 divisions above us next year, maybe you will reassess your opinion? An awful lot of professional footballers and managers do seem to rate him as a tackler, and especially as a passer etc, judging by comments you read in papers or hear on radio and TV commentaries. And Coppel has shown he can be a shrewd judge of players. K.

Why do posters on here keep slagging Surman off? Does it ever cross your mind that if successive managers here rate him, that if he was picked for England u-21 and that if other clubs' managers and indeed commentators also apparently rate him, that maybe he is actually a good player and it is your judgement that is wrong? It was the same with Oakley... another good player constantly slagged off on here. I for one would be really sorry to see Drew go. He is a good player and a genuine Saints player ..one of the few who isn't just a mercenary. With the right opportunities he will be a premiership player at some stage in his career. K.

What you may be missing is that Aviva will not expect to get all their money straight away. If someone comes in with proven funds/sensible business plan/acumen/credibility they could buy SLH for £1, so sharehoders get nothing, then do a deal (CVA) with those owed money. So actually they may only need to pay off some or all of the overdraft immediately, and convince Aviva they will be able to take over paying back the mortgage. The credit crunch may have changed this a bit but even so i'd have thought Aviva would prefer the mortgage being paid (at a decent interest rate) to the prospect of closing down Saints and trying to recover their money by selling the ground etc. K.

I found the interview encouraging ..speaking as someone who always said administration would be nasty He actually says 4 parties *have been through due diligence*, not 'begun' as written article says. Sorry if this is patronising but some posters seem not to understand what DD means. They have to show they have the funds they claim to the administrator, then THEY do DD on us. This is the financial equivalent to having a survey done on a house you are considering buying. You may or may not then make an offer depending on what the surveyor says about the roof leak you hadn't been aware of. These interested parties may or may not make an offer for saints depending on what skeletons their solicitors find in our cupboard that they weren't aware of. But not many people would bother with DD unless they were at least seriously considering offering, in the same way as you wouldn't waste time and money on a survey on a house you weren't at least seriously interested in. By saying 'timescale tight but hope to have sorted within a month' he is surely also effectively saying we aren't going completely bust a day or two after the Forest game. K.

They always say 'at least x' minutes, but the reality is not consistent with that. If they really meant 'at least' then logically some matches with only seconds to add on, would end with a board saying 'at least 0' minutes, allowing for up to 1 min. As for saturday, it was not clear to me when the game had ended, but I was aware of it *before* the idiots ran on. The pitch invasion annoyed me though, quite apart from the stupidity of confronting the burnley fans, because it meant there was no chance to properly finish the home season by clapping the players. Before some smart arse says they didn't deserve clapping -- some of them did! K.

When you look at the really wealthy owners in this country, few of them spend much of their money on the club. For example QPR fans waving fivers at chelsea fans is looking a bit thin now isn't it? They may have the wealthiest owners but that doesn't make them the wealthiest club in reality. Abramovitch caused (forced in effect) chelsea to spend a fortune, but as I understand it all the money he's put into the club is technically on loan. There is a view that he did this to ensure that if things got nasty in Russia and he had to leave in a hurry, he would have funds already safely transferred into in the uk, ie he could recall his loans if he needed them. If so chelsea's wealth is insecure, and their spending could backfire on them one day. All in all, I'd most like a wealthy owner who is a lifelong saints fan ..cf Blackburn and jack walker ..but surely if there were such a person he'd have shown up by now. Next best though is a sensible owner(s) who cares about the club and runs it within reasonable spending limits as a going concern, rather than an ultra-rich foreign wild card making us live above our means, who might dump us at a later date with even bigger debts.... cf Portsmouth's future? K.

Never mind if Shearer or if not Shearer, the good bits of this rumour are 'wealthy' and 'transfer kitty', and maybe 'no boardroom interference'. K.

We knew that already also I'm afraid. The solicitors would be involved at the due diligence stage. But anyway, it has to be good-ish that at least one bidder is serious. K.

Yes , but I was keeping quiet about it. K.

But will it be on CCC wages or L1 wages? And can we really expect him to take a pay cut if other clubs offer him more? K.

Good on you for that, but it is worth remembering that all the away ticket money goes to the away club (another big club rule change carve up a few years back), so going to forest does nothing for saints financially. Not knocking you; no doubt you have good reasons for not going to the home game, but if anyone else is wavering.... K.

Well I for one do rate him .. ok not yet as premiership standard .. but he is a good player and he is a local lad who seems to care about the club, unlike most of our mercenaries, so personally I want to se him here next season ------ assuming there is a 'here' to be at. K.

I don't know Crouch, but my impression of him has always been that his heart is in the right place but he hasn't got much brain. So I see him as on the side of the angels, but not a lot of help, and maybe even accidentally doing a bit of harm. There must be something there or he'd not have made the money he apparently has, but ..... K.

I can't see anyone completing today, or even very soon if we are only in early stage of due diligence. 'Due diligence' is however a somewhat elastic term. Quite often big flash City law firms are employed to do this. They can do a good job or a rushed job, or a very expensive, fairly good, rushed job! Normally takes a couple of weeks or so. Can be done in a few days, depending on how diligent you want to be and how much you want to spend. An administrator is presumably required to be very diligent to ensure that the creditors will get what the buyer promises. From the buyer's side, it is up to him, and how fussy his backers are .... how visible our skeletons in the cupboard already are. K.