Fan The Flames

I agree, it will result in three clubs, two new clubs that represent their cities and a new plastic club that means **** all to anyone other that those who are embarressed to support a team outside of the prem. I would give the new club five years before it folded and five years before Southampton 1885 were back in the league. It may be quite good fun racing the Portsmouth 1898 back to the league. I worked with a bloke who was ****ed of about the merger that formed Dagenham & Redbridge, so I can only imagine the aggro that the plastic club would cause.

Yes Jesus pack it in.

Only the last team to be relegated to Div 1 and the last team to be relegated to the BS prem, as they would be reinstated to the higher divisions. Southampton will still exist in the BS prem and we would all just follow them.

My sympathy with Dean's family and friends

I think Coppell is the perfect choice, he has a track record at this level and with small budgets. With Southampton he has a blank canvass to set up what he wants and a club that is bigger than Reading and Palace so should be able to survive more easily in the top flight. He has mentioned his win ratio recently and said it would have been better but for the cash strapped clubs he has worked in, is this an indication that he doesn't want that again or does moving a struggling on still tick his boxes. If it does any new buyer should do everything possible to get him.

Leyton Orient has PCT facilities in their stadium. Shows you that football and civic can mix.

If his analysis of the points deduction is as simple as his analysis of our post prem spending then we may not have that good an agrument.

Boston didn't need to say anything, the timing rule didn't apply then. They went in to admin the last 5mins of the season when they were definately down. It just show you the lack of thinking that went on when the rules were written, it didn't occur to the powers that be that a club struggling in football teams may also be struggling financially and could settle for the points loss when it didn't matter. So you can only think that the amount of forethought to the correcting of the rules was equally minimal.

I don't think that is the issue, the issue as I see it is that the rule is badly drafted. They were brought in as a reaction and changed as a reaction, with out anyone really thinking them through. As someone else said it's a one size fits all rule for a set of circumstances that are completly different in each case. I think the football league is right to apply some sought of sanction, but this is rule is badly drafted and not working. I think Stockport didn't have a hand in the timing but good luck to them if they did. Every team should do everything to try and get around this rule and I hope the new owners of our club appeal the discision.

Great lunchtime read, as I have stated before I believe it is all the fault of the northerners. If there was a more equitable merging of the football league and southern league and not one up one down. We would have been in the top flight a lot earlier, we would have moved from The Dell earlier (or expanded properly) and therefore clear of the St Marys debt that has weighed us down the past two years.

Only if you call paying for a health service, pension, education, defence etc 'lost'

I read your term 'people' to mean fans not board members. So I wasn't twisting your post to fit my agrument, maybe transfer your thought's a bit more clearly next time. You havn't got a problem with Lowe, you never did. Clearly a lot of people have and will have for a long time so just accept it. Have you put the tenner in the post yet.

Out of interest how much did Lowe buy his shares for, is it more than the £3m he got in wages and dividends. He is not there today because he is a fan he is there because he knows his presence is troublesom.

Caring about the future of the club and believing that Lowe was instrumental in its down fall are not mutually exclusive you know. You can love and hate at the same time. It does make me laugh that to hate the man that has almost ruined our club is classed as petty and to be cross at his appearance today is small minded.

Clearly the lack of division in the board room has in part resulted in our position today but it is far too late for the old warring parties to unite for the sake of SFC. So with that in mind the presence of the most divisive man in SFC history is not welcomed by many people for the reasons I outlined in my post. Just because you don't agree doesn't make it mock outrage. Your way of dealing with the Lowe issue is to just draw a line under things and move on and for others it requires Lowe to get out and stay out. They are both equally valid. I am clearly in the get out and stay out camp because like you I believe a club divided is half defeated.

Whats the venue

I don't remember having a good half of the season, it was **** all the way through.

I don't think we do deserve the punishment, we have basically got into money worries building a new ground (which benefits the whole footballing community) and being relegated from the prem at same time. It takes time to go from running a premiership outfit to a non prem one and it is financial shock. Ours wasn't frivalous spending. Charlton, Norwich, Southampton all going down. Says a lot about the structure of our leagues.

Yes they may be able to reduce the totally effect of the point deduction but you would have to be mathematically relegated with quite a few games to go for my way not to have an effect no effect like Stockport’s punishment has. In reality teams are only really mathematically relegated or safe within the last few games of the season and they are unlikely to win the whole ten points in that season. So they will be affected the next season as well. This just highlights how badly the rules have been drafted, the rules are a sporting punishment to counteract a sporting advantage. So you can gain a sporting advantage by overspending going for promotion paying big wages etc, fail and then go into administration and because you have amassed enough points (due to the sporting advantage you got from the overspending) the punishment wont really affect you, because in reality finishing 14th instead of 8th is no real punishment at all. Against a club who is struggling to get their finances under control, they cut their wage bill, get’s no sporting advantage and so struggles in footballing terms, ends up in a relegation position, loses their battle with the finances and is hit with the punishment of -10 points the following season. Teams go into admin for different reasons and a blunt rule like this does not work.

No. He aligned himself to close to Lowe, so he only has himself to blame. **** him.

The rules are a crock of ****, if there really must be this blunt point loss then its simple, it should just be the next ten points you win.

I agree its peanuts and it seems Flybe try and spin it that they are sticking by us in a hour of need. ******** they are getting a good deal to be on the shirts of one of the biggest teams in Div 1.

whaaaahoooooooo

I'm also offering ten pound (to charity of their choice) for the first person to spot a Lowe apologist saying 'draw a line underneath Lowe's tenure and move on'. Even though we are going down to the thrid tier for the first time in 49 years with -10 points and possibly further point deductions, with the ownership of the club still unsure, with a slim possibility of liquidation and the bloke still sniffing about. People want to move on or can't believe Lowe is still being harped on about.

Lowe has ceased to be involved with the club for about three weeks, so can you please tell us when did it become poor form to mention his name. After two weeks, ten days, five working days, two matches, please tell as we on here are obviously confused.