dubai_phil

lol beat me to it, was going to suggest he logged in to Amazon.com

Welllllll..... In my case it is a 3,471 mile eachway trip to SMS's ticket office. Trust me though, I am pulling every trick, and every possible business meeting I can at the moment to get a trip back as soon as possible. I'm almost gutted that ericofarabia was at Derby yesterday, I won't hear the end of it:-)

What Lawrie did very well was to mould a style of play around the players that he had, rather than fitting them into a rigid system (Rueben Agboola (eek spelling) as sweeper for example Something that we haven't seen for a while but now JP seems to be fitting the system to the youngsters rather than being Mike Bassett.

NO We did that once before and it got us WHERE exactly? We must now take the RIGHT takeover option. And TBF to the new structure, there IS technically a position vacant IF we had money - DoF, which would be somewhere that Shearer could fit into as a replacement for our current "almost the same title" Director of Football - MW I for one DON'T want to go back to the "old ways" of "Big name manager with hangers on" changing every time a big club comes calling Otherwise I agree with the original post - use any PLANNED investment to improve the culture and squad that we are developing.

Couple of things that have come up in conversations about Saints over the weekend. Necessity is the mother of Invention We had no choice but it looks like we MAY have made the right one. How long Gillet for example will make the previous mangement (and most of us) look "almost numpties" for saying he was too lightweight? Who knows but let's rejoice for another week at least. How would Arsenal fans react IF they were told they would appoint an unknown manager who would repeatedly sell their big stars and replace them with unknown youngsters? OK excluding say Silvestre, and the fact they haven't won anything for a few years, Wenger is building a team of youngsters with pace flair and togetherness and let the likes of Anelka, Viera, Henry et al move on. Not saying it is the right comparison but it is not far away. I said on TSF that I would wait until the LOAN window closed before I would think about making judgement calls on JP or the return of Lowe. I DO think that Lowe firmly believed that the academy WAS the way to go with a level of excellence from the bottom up. I also think that what he has TRIED to do now is to establish a "CULTURE" in the club, (I also think he believed this 5 years too early!) but where the process of bringing the kids through is far more important than (as I think) in his mind "The big name manager". IF it hangs together then I THINK the concept of a MACHINE that new "coaches" fit into is actually superb. A new guy brings in new ideas to improve what we had, rather than the (what is seeming sad) way of bringing in a new "Name" and all his cronies to do it "his way". We (and many other clubs) have only really had one of those that worked in the past years... Maybe, just maybe Lowe has learnt that managers come and go, but a CULTURE and a process and systems may just be the way forward for our future Scary to think that the "no gaffer mentality" may actually be our future... eek

TBF and something that I think is different this time round, I am of the opinion that (finally) Rupert may well have listened to some very wise people who have pointed out that it is probably a lot better for him to sit quietly in the background and to simply get on with doing what needs to be done. In his previous "incarnation" every time he spoke he did as much harm as good, (who will ever forget the Solent interview). So I really don't expect to see any "ask Rupert" sessions for some time. Maybe IF everything works out at the end of the season we MAY as fans allow him to say his piece but until then I actually think that the role he has put MW into is smart. Mike is the mouthpiece now, and the wy the fans view him (as seen in the first set of questions) is something that is an ALMOST smart diversionary tactic. MW's role is to be the mouthpiece by the look of things and to take a great deal of the flack. TBH I think we'd all rather simply "abuse" Mike than have to listen to lectures from Rupert. I hope they can keep the act going as long as JP can keep the team developing. We may just get through the season with a few "WHY's" to MW every week and no lectures from Rupes. But one thing I AM willing to bet on is that the questions will be carefully read FIRST and carefully ANSWERED... Fans need to be able to ask questions and the officials at the club need to answer them, but at the same time we need to be MUCH more careful and professional in our PR these days and let the team do the talking NOT the people behind the scenes.

Yes, but a loan until January getting first team football MAY just help him step up to the level that his promise has. He will get limited chances barring injury at Saints, he isn't really the right size or type of player to be the one man up front as cover for SJ & DMG, so is competing for a slot with on the wing with possibly Dyer, Thomson, Holmes, Skacel, Euell This way we save the wages for 4 months, maybe get a fee and MAYBE get BWP back, ready to go and in form. If he isn't in form we could just extend the loan...

Dude. You have my respect. You came on and posted and gave the source. That makes you about 1,000,000 times better than most of the ITK'ers. There is something going on in the background, but as you have noted it isn't simply about having a money guy, even if the group did it can still go wrong. Trust me, in 15 years of building companies in the ME, Pakistan & Africa, I am ONLY too aware of 1) what seemed done wasn't and 2) ok so where's the money. In fact these days I make a living out of telling new comers the bleedin obvious here.. So chill, we don't shoot you, we shoot the despair of hope not being fulfilled each week. Many learnt lessons last year, there are many more snippets that trundle around, but you were in a strong enough location to give more hope. Oh and btw there ain't no cronies, just a bunch of more careful sceptics than this time last year. My ONLY worry with the information you released was that it could have been timed to cause unrest or undermine the new regime rather than move the "project" forward and I did say that at the time.

If he's stupid enough to want BWP then he should be stupid enough to pay a nice loan fee as well. Bring it on....

I not only have read it but have also sent most of them around the planet. The Google Georgia and George Bush are absolute gems:-) Some of the most accurate information posted on this and it's predecessor site for years

WTF?? We're being taken over by some STUDENTS now? What!!! we have fallen that low we've become a project for first year business studies kids?? Where'd I put that noose I borrowed from Alpine? :-)

Yeah I bet Glen ****erill gets really fed up, every time we remember his contribution to the club he comes out as ****erill

I'll take issue with Alpine on his opinion re communication about "the squad" simply based on my analysis of things that were said right at the beginning of the appointment and my own business experience. First of all, JP himself stated his desire in an early interview to have a basic first team squad of 24 players. "The most you could hope to keep motivated" and then to have cover from the likes of the reserves/better youth players. (Wish I could find it BTW) Secondly, from my gut feeling, I am willing to actually believe that when RL & JP originally spoke at no time would it have been about the "players" but spoke more in terms of "budgets" The meetings with the Bank were held very early on, and a Bank Manager really doesn't care if Skacel may one day have more than two good games in a row. He only wants to know what the BUDGET is for the football side in the same way as the planned income and non-football budgets. IF you take the basic concept that JP was told his budget then the whole decision making and comments from SMS lose much of the conspiracy theory. The budget is x then JP would know on day one how much OVER budget he was and what he would have to do to bring it into target. He knows full well what keeping the likes of Euell et al means and he then has an understanding of the impact when players actually CHOOSE to leave. My only bug with most of the "same" arguments is that 1) 90% of them assume that the people at the club have no common sense or brains and 2) they are actually about the same thing. It then comes down to whether personally you believe that RL or JP have an IQ of 10 or 110 as to how you reply on posts or view what goes on. We are ALL very worried by the mess we are in and the squad we have. We all agree there is not much else that can be done until "outside influences" come in to play. BUT at the same time, we are all actually excited by having the players wanting to play for us. That is not (as Alp's sometimes indicates) because we have lost our collective marbles, more that we are in a state of SHOCK to finally see players WANTING to play for us.

Relax. Birmingham are a "Premier League Operation". They have decided that they will walk this league. They have decided to concentrate on winning the CCC. (Sound familiar?) As a result they'll do what we used to do - give their squad's cover players some competitive action. (guess well get walloped then)

Interesting, although it is Friday and things are normally shut here, the guy who washes cars in the car park at my local Spinneys Supermarket saw the Saints badge on my Jeep and said - hmm I heard that a local operation that is very big and failed in a bid to buy a club may be looking in your direction. Personally I still prefer JP's mistaken use of English saying the first team squad is worth 50mil and we sell the lot and buy ourselves back as more likely but hey ho. Now you know as much as I do. Ain't that absolutely sod all again!

tee hee - you can tell it is an older photo - look at all the cars in the car park with glass sunroofs, don't see that so much nowadays. Whatever happened to that "retrofit" glass roof industry after in car a/c's were invented!

Well, thanks to the wonders of time zones, it's Friday here. Nothing happened yet then?

:-) Here's an even better one So, we sell a player who we got because Middlesborough didn't want to keep him even though he was a CCC club's player of the season last year And replace him with a player that Chelsea WANT to keep who was a CCC club's player of the season. And yes I know he's only on loan but hey it's a positive way to think. Personally I wouldn't take the positive happy clappy view, more I would take the view that our Management team are not quite as thick as many posters like to believe they are. Rabbits, hat, one hand tied behind the back nice trick, keep it up is my view not a yee-haw we'll get promotion now view!

This is a good move. (As long as he is a Guthrie quality loan not a Hammill) We get cover in the back but also it means that Lancashire & Racine get more time to develop with less pressure to bring them into the first team in emergency. Now to sell Euell BWP & Thomas and we can get a couple more quality motivated players in.

Yes but. How many games LAST season before we won? And we have actually WON a competitive game this season. May not be THAT big a team but it WAS a better result than our PL quality based squad managed against similar level teams for the last few years. The current negativity is almost a mirror image of the positivity back in early January. We were appalling over the Christmas period and anyone could see we were in freefall, but TSF, Leon and others kept on about pushing for the playoffs. It is WAY too early to start slitting wrists. There's even rumours of EXPERIENCED players coming to the club FFS

Ah ha so not the Mail, just the same site that says we are signing Pulis http://www.tribalfootball.com/article.php?id=107798

So is there like an actual article in the Mail today? As there isn't anything I can find in the Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?searchPhrase=jack+cork or was this an ITK post about something that is being published tomorrow insh'allah. Or is it a Friday thing?

OK so it is now tomorrow over here so here is todays NEW blame game post It's all Jeff Mostyn's fault. You see all last summer and early parts of the season we had a veritable procession of Tyre Kickers being dragged screaming to the front door of SMS by "uber-salesman" LLS. Day in and day out there was nothing but bidders fighting bidders to buy the dream of the global Saints Brand and the David Beckham schools of excellence. Each day a new hope burned bright, allowing our Directors to realise that THE deal was just around the corner so spend spend spend and keep the fans happy and GB in the de Vere Bar Bills (allegedly) But then the evil Mostyn lured LLS to bring his brand of excellence in takeover deals to Bournemouth and lo and behold, the flood dried up. LLS was happily installed as the man to take Bournemouth into the PL, his tyre kickers flooded after him, leaving us with only Leon and his dreams of Salz. Yep we went from spending money because so many people wanted to buy us to oh sh*t we're skint in a matter of weeks. So ladies and gentlemen, our current mess is all due to Mostyn if he hadn't diverted the uber-takeover expert... Curtains for Bournemouth and maybe just some roller blinds for us to cover the corners. Who's turn is it on Friday? Oh that's an easy one then:-)

Now THERE'S an IDEA. JP just said that someone can have the WHOLE first team for 50mil. Brilliant - that's the exact figure we've been harking on about on here for a takeover. Let's sell the lot, buy ourselves and invest the money back into the team.............

If I am honest, I truly hope that this works, whilst doubting it will. Analysing it sensibly, survival this season will be difficult but with a lot of ups and downs we have enough technical quality in the squad to do it, the X factor will be the intelligence of the players and coaches to learn quickly. I hope to heck that we do not actually go up this year, we aren't ready as a squad, fans or as a business and we would have to mortgage our one season of TV money and parachute payments to try and be better than Derby were last year by bringing in experienced PL players. BUT and it's a BIG BUT. I think that IF the concept can hold together and we can survive this season we will have a solid base for next year - sure there will be ins and outs but as a "culture" throughout the club and a core of youngsters growing and learning together then I think we could do something special and go up and what is more the nucleus would be there to actually give it a go to stay there. (Damn - it's almost like our "uber capitalist" is installing a "communist" system into our club - yikes never thought of it that way???!!???) So no haven't given up. I said on day one that Rupert was taking an incredible gamble deciding to fight SO many battles on so many fronts and I so far it is exactly what I expected - up and down emotionally already. This season is a RollerCoaster ride that lasts for almost 9 months, we've paid in hearts and minds and we cannot get off. Let's stop worrying if there is a Monster Coming Over The Hill and enjoy the view