Beer Engine

... and, if so, could this be the source of the terrible luck that has befallen us since we moved from the Dell ...? I'm thinking "Amityville Horror" (even if I can't spell it) ...

No thanks - 5 points from 8 games = 0.625 per game = 24 points over a season. Compared with just under a point per game in the season up to the point where he took over. Shearer has been a disaster - he is the reason for Newcastle's relegation - but blamed the players publicly on Sky. No thanks.

Southpike United

The promise of Champions League + Premiership + Sky Money + Global Branding has given rise to a reckless, over-ambitious "all or nothing" style of club management which in turn has lead to spiralling "superstar" wages being paid to the third/fourth rate journeymen that have taken the pitch in red and white this season. I watched quite a lot of Leeds v Millwall the other night - I don't think our current squad could compete with either - much as we failed to trouble Bristol Rovers in the cup .. Our players are over-paid, over-hyped garbage. They lack pace, touch, movement, intelligence and commitment. It's disgraceful that ***s like these are earning £7,000 a week in the first place - it's unthinkable that people who earn a fraction of that should be voluntarily contributing to their wages. They can all **** off now. I wish I'd ******ed in that collection bucket instead of just muttering "what a ****ing cheek" etc

I for one found that charming ...

.... "invest" in a football club purely for business reasons? I just can't see how anyone can make any sort of return on their capital. The best you can hope for is to break even or, more likely, make a level of loss that isn't going to wipe you out completely. We fans, who seem to expect private investors as well as the likes of Barclays and Aviva to subsidise our sporting preferences to the tune of tens of millions, are a fickle lot. Don't spend recklessly on players and stadiums and we complain of under-investment, lack of vision etc. Do the opposite and we cry gross financial mismanagement. So why bother? Especially for a team that you don't support? Presumably, in return for being parted from their money these (ahem) "investors" get to enjoy a bit of power and are seen to be "important people" as they ponce about in the directors' box? Is that it? Genuine question.

Even in the Premiership, Saints were in the top 10 or 11 for attendances with an average of approx. 32,000. The scale of our subsequent mismanagement is staggering.

The administrator should neither take the credit if a buyer comes forward nor take the blame if there is no buyer. His job is to keep things ticking over for as long as possible and make the numbers available to any prospective purchaser. He can't spirit a buyer out of thin air. If someone with access to funds is interested in owning the Saints and Barclays/Aviva and HMRC are prepared to yield to the extent required for the numbers to make sense then you have a buyer. It's not magic.

.. he could certainly do with something to cheer himself up ...

There are much better teams than Saints playing in League 2 - why on earth would we want to keep Wotte or his bunch of wash-out players? The majority of these players are either just about OKish or just plain not good enough .. and they know it. They're only pledging loyalty to us now because they'd be lucky to find alternative clubs above Blue Square Premiere level ... maybe that's why they might stay ...

87 now!

What makes anyone think that Matthew Le Tissier would have anything to offer to the running of a football club?

I take it you're joking? Mark Fry is just a hired hand, appointed by the Court at the petition of Rupert Lowe and the other SLH Board members. I am not suggesting it to be the case with Fry and Lowe, but it is not altogether unknown for administrators, whose primary duty is owed to the Court and creditors, to nevertheless look favourably on the individuals who appointed them when deciding how to dispose of company assets (in this case, a football club).

Haven't we missed the deadline for lodging an appeal: 12.3.5 A Club may only appeal against an automatic deduction of points on the ground that the insolvency proceedings arose solely as a result of a Force Majeure event (the ‘Appeal’). For the purposes of this Regulation 12, a ‘Force Majeure’ event shall be an event that, having regard to all of the circumstances, is reasonably considered to have been unforeseeable and unavoidable. 12.3.6 Any Appeal must be in writing and be received by the League at its registered office no later than 7 days after The League serves the Notice [setting out points deduction]. The Appeal must contain a statement setting out the grounds of appeal and provide copies of any documentation upon which the Club intends to rely in support of the Appeal. 12.3.7 The Club must also lodge with the Executive, at the same time as the Appeal, a deposit of £5,000 in respect of the costs of the appeal. 12.3.8 Upon receipt of the Appeal the Executive shall refer the matter to a Sporting Sanctions Appeal Panel (the SSAP) by delivering to the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (or such other body as the Board may from time to time determine) five copies of the appeal documents. 12.3.9 The SSAP shall consist of three Arbitrators, one of whom must be a barrister of at least 5 years call who will act as Chairman of the SSAP, each to be appointed by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (or such other body as the Board may from time to time determine). 12.3.10 The League shall, immediately upon receipt of the Appeal, instruct a firm of independent accountants to carry out a review of the Club’s activities for the purposes of preparing an independent report into the circumstances surrounding and leading up to the entering into insolvency proceedings. The Club shall meet the costs of preparation of that report in any event. The report shall be provided to the Club, the SSAP and The League. The SSAP shall take into account the contents of that report when determining whether the insolvency proceedings arose solely as a result of a Force Majeure event. 12.3.11 Both the Club and The League shall be entitled to make representations to the SSAP. The SSAP shall hear any appeal within 21 days of the lodgement of the Appeal. 12.3.12 The SSAP shall have the power to:- a confirm the deduction of ten points; or b set aside the deduction of ten points and substitute a deduction of such lower number of points as it shall deem appropriate; or c order that there shall be no sanction at all. 12.3.13 The decision of the SSAP shall be final and binding. Any costs incurred by any party in proceedings brought before the SSAP shall be met by the Club in any event

If it's Lowe or nothing then it will be Lowe, and there's nothing any of us fans can do to stop it bar threatening an all-out boycott ... I won't be buying tickets while Lowe's involved with the club in any capacity.

What is needed in the lower leagues is 4-4-2, a lot of hard graft and a kick up the backside ... having said that Barcelona might just make the play-offs ...

Morally, the League have got the decision right even though, from a legalistic viewpoint, their rules don't adequately address the holding company situation. Speaking for myself, I think we ought to accept the deduction and move on.

Section 12.3.1 (b) of the League Rules states that any Club which becomes the subject of an Administration order will be deducted 10 points. In Section 1 "Club" is defined as any football club that is a member of the League. The League report accompanying the decision to deduct 10 points concluded that: "The three entities (the Holding Company, SFC and the stadium company) comprise the football club and they are inextricably linked as one economic entity." The League have taken the view that a "football club" is a separate legal entity from the company or companies that own the club's assets and/or take responsibility for discharging the club's liabilities (eg paying the players and repaying the mortgage on the stadium). This view is at odds with other provisions of the League Rules which are consistently formulated on the assumption that Clubs ARE companies (as opposed to being owned by companies). See for example Appendix IV concerning the "Fit and Proper Persons Test" which refers to "Directors" as persons "registered as a director or secretary of the Club with the Registrar of Companies". If the entity registered as a Member of the Football League and which holds a Share in the Football League Limited is Southampton Football Club Limited then: (a) Section 12.3.1 of the League Rules does not apply to Southampton Football Club Limited because it is not in Administration; and, (b) the Football League Rules do not apply to Southampton Leisure Holdings plc because SLH is not a Member of the Football League. Appeal Section 12.3.5 of the League Rules provides that a Club may only appeal against an automatic deduction of points on the grounds that the Club went into Administration owing to an event that was both unforeseeable and unavoidable. This would seem to rule out the possibility of an appeal even if we contend that the League's decision is perverse. In any event, who could lodge the appeal? None of SFC Limited, SHL plc or the company that owns the stadium can lodge an appeal on their own because none of those entities comprise the whole of a "Club" as that term has been interpreted by the Football League. At the core of this problem is the question: "What is Southampton Football Club?". Assuming that SFC Limited holds the League Share then the best bet would be for SFC Limited to ask the High Court to to review the decision of the Football League and set it aside - on the grounds that (a) it is not a reasonable decision that any governing sports body could reasonably have taken and (b) the involvement in the decision of influential figures at other clubs interested in the relegation battle (Norwich) is a breach of the principles of Natural Justice. It is commonly believed that the High Court has little if any jurisdiction to review the decisions of sports' governing bodies - but that may not apply in cases where the aggrieved party (SFC) has no other avenue of redress.

I thought the staff and students at Porterhouse College Oxford were granted a Royal Charter allowing them to eat Roast Swan stuffed with Wigeon .. or am I confusing fact with fiction ...

Is that the Begbie in Trainspotting played by Robert Carlyle - he was scary ...

Agree 100% - let's face facts and move on rather than clinging to these worn out fantasies.

I just think that the whole Saints Trust thing is about propelling Illingsworth into a position of power that he cannot otherwise afford ...

The point of the League's Insolvency Policy is to ensure that no club can gain a competitive advantage by living beyond its means and then walking away from the debt. The obvious scenario would be where a club (SFC for example) gambled huge sums of money it doesn't have in trying to gain promotion to the Premiership. The theory is that clubs would be encouraged to do this if they thought that they could avoid having to pay their debts by going into administration and subsequently selling the good bits to a Phoenix company that would take the League share and other assets free of debt and at a knock-down price. Unfortunately, we gambled £7.5 million that we don't have on a team whose only achievement has been to stay ahead of Charlton. Had we been near the top of the Championship at the time we went into administration, then we might have understood the sanction better on an emotional level. How pathetic is that. We can't even cheat properly!

then he should leave the running of it to someone who is not ...

The question here is what do we mean by the term "club"? The assets and liabilities of the organisation that calls itself Sothampton Football Club are attached to various legal entities, such as SFC Limited - and all these entities are held together in the shape of SLH plc. The League statement suggests that debts owed by SFC Limited were shunted out on paper to SLH plc - so we're the ones bending the rules - our defence is a sham based on a technicality based on Lowe's assumption that the FL is naive ... the FL have enough in their armoury to make the points deduction stick even if the matter ends up in Court. Let's just take the penalty and move on. The administrator must have been downright obstructive to be censured by the FL as being uncooperative. I assume that the forensic examination revealed other matters that the FL wished to investigate but were denied access to. I suspect that further points deductions may be brewing up.