Johnny Bognor

Simple. Norwich, Forest and Barnsley lose this saturday and a Saints win against Burnley means that we just need to beat Forest to stay up on the last day. It is still very possible - except for the fact I can't see us beating Burnley or Forest.

Monaco is indeed interesting. Will all of those posters who slagged Wilde off as being a tax dodger be happy with another tax dodger?

I was brought up on the premise that the customer is always right. Therefore you have to look at the reasons why they stayed away which will lead you to the root cause.

To the matt le tiss song.... Rupert Lowe, Rupert Lowe, It was time for you to go, When Barclays Bank, Thought you're aload of w***, It was a big fat cheerio

Hey GM, Nice thread. Have you been hanging around with this guy...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqCn2ZUS3r4&feature=related (Stick with it, it's only 2.5 minutes long)

Slight edit.

My first car was a two-seater, mid-engined, Italian sportscar, styled by Bertone (who also styled the Lamorghini Miura, Countach and Diablo in addition to the Ferrari 308 ) ............. ..........OK, OK, it was a 1981 Fiat X1/9 (Oh, and no hairdresser jokes please)

I would have thought that the Vitara would embarass the driver!

Go on admit it, it made you chuckle or at least smile

No, the question that needs answering is why is this thread open when mine got locked?

The natural assumption that because Crouch has more money than Lowe, having put more in, he should have saved us from administration, leads me to this...... Nineteen Canteen continued to support the club over the last few years and therefore put more in than Lowe did, so why did he not save the club?

I don't disagree with what you say. The Police have taken the brunt of the blame, but my point was that the authorities (which includes the Police) were also to blame. I did also mention the organisers and so the FA aren't free from blame either. All of those responsible for the big decisions surrounding that tie and organising the day have to shoulder the majority of the responsibility - that is what they are paid (by us as taxpayers or football fans) to do.

I totally agree with your first original point as I fail to see how we can avoid the points deduction. On your second point, I don't necessarily disagree but some of the detail is spurious to say the least, especially the quoted point above. Can you point me in the direction where I can get commercial finance at the BOE bank rate? I use Lloyds for business banking and whilst the BOE base rate has plummeted, the Lloyds rates have gone up. Try getting a buy to let mortgage sub 5-6% with 20% equity. I am not sure of the equity in the stadium, but I guess at best, one wouldn't get much better than 5% to 6% in the current market - especially as SLH can't afford the mortage. So to draw comparisons between 8.5% and 0.5% is totally unrealistic.

Lets put the ticketless fans point to bed.... Liverpool had far larger support than Forest at the time, so what do the authorities do? Give the larger kop end to Forest and the smaller away terrace to Liverpool. If the authorities had given the larger capacity stand to the larger support, perhaps there wouldn't have been ticketless fans in the first place. The authorities (both the organisers and police) made monumental ****-ups (and they know it!). It was their job to deal with crowd control, that was what they were paid to do and they ****ed up - simple as that. It reminds me of when we had Millwall in the cup in 2003 - too many Millwall fans turned up. What do the authorities do? Place 500 of Millwall's finest in the Itchen corner with about 5 stewards seperating them from us. I was actually glad we did not score in the first half, because if we had, there could have been major problems. Who would be to blame? The authorities that made the decision.

I am slightly confused. Didn't Lowe appoint the administrators after cheques were bounced (by Barclays) so as not to be seen trading whilst insolvent?

I've been through elasticity of demand with GM bfore. Can't be bothered to go through it again, but as he is the master of digging up old posts, no doubt he can find it, read it and learn from it.

Not sure, the only thing I can find is.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2359760/Lowe-shares-round-blame-for-Saints-demise.html Lowe is believed to earn between £300,000 and £400,000 a year as a full-time employee and when asked if he would follow his players and take a pay cut, he said: "I think that's a matter for the board but I think it is fair to say that everybody will accept and shoulder their share of whatever pain we have to take. If that is a cut in my salary then that is something for the board to look at and discuss." So rather than taking the pay cut, he left it to others to decide. There's nothing like leading from the front.

It depends how you spin it. The dividend realting to the FY ending 2005 was paid on the 4th November 2005. Forgive me if I am wrong, but we were relegated in May 2005. The annual report was signed off 1st September 2005, after relegation. Therefore I would suggest that the dividend WAS paid post relegation (albeit relating to the previous financial year) when it was known that revenues would be hit by relegation. Perhaps a more prudent chairman might not recommend such a dividend when it was known that the financials would get worse.

Fair enough (I had missed that), but it doesn't change the fact that businesses HAVE to pay dividends. A well run business pays out dividends off of the back of making profits. Indeed the Articles of Assoication state: (f) Entitlement to Profits (i) The Company may, by ordinary resolution, declare dividends out of the profits of the Company available for distribution but no dividend shall be payable in excess of the amount recommended by the Directors As I said, a small number of people held a substantial amount of the shares and so it wouldn't have been too difficult for the Directors to recommend not take dividends say, for example, post relegation when a substantial loss in revenue was going to occur.

Oracle, one of the worlds largest software companies, has just paid its' first dividend after 23 years of being a listed company. These guys make billions in profits every year and they've not paid out dividends before. http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2238804/oracle-announces-first-dividend Therefore you don't HAVE to pay out dividends if the shareholders chose not to have them. Considering a small number of people owned a large percentage of the shares, they could have easily decided not to pay them.

He's done more live interviews in the last week than he has in the last year. A simple message to the fans to get behind the club is all that is needed - it would show that he cared (even though he quite clearly doesn't). If he would accept / acknowledge that errors were made and stated that he will do what he can to help the club, then he may gain a bit more respect. But we are where we are and instead of trying to help the club, he wants to rake it through the mud. The more he does this, the more glad I am that he's gone.

With the amount of prime time TV coverage he is getting, he could really help the club (that is if he even cares). Whether it's his fault or not, he could try to reach out to the fans, try to rally them and even give a plug for the club to any potential investors. But it is not about the club is it? No it's me, me, me and not my fault. How is this helping? It's not - going quitely would have been more helpful.

If he put as much effort into selling the club / finding investment as he is in his "It's not my fault" PR offensive, perhaps we would never had entered administration.

That's more of a reason to do it - if I want to visit an art gallery, I'll go to London; I don't shop in Ikea and I tend to cruise in the caribbean or med. So take away the club, what other reason do I have to visit Southampton? I spend my money in and around the town every other week. I bet the collective spend of those coming to games (a specific reason to visit the city) will be far greater than the collective spend of those specifically coming to Soton's art gallery.

Now the numbers are there for everyone to see - the argument is settled. Time for the sour grapes brigade to find something else to moan about. ..but like the Murphy's (just in case there is mileage in the Heineken rumour), I'm not bitter.