trousers

Totally agree. Once again, an institution comes up with a sledgehammer rule to crack a nut, tarring everyone with the same brush in the process.

Won't we have a rich new owner by next Thursday?

Is this for an orange wedge?

I can't get any sound out of the www.radiohampshire.com 'listen live' link.....and, yes, my PC volume is up and the speakers on....and have tried various music players (real player, media player, itunes etc).....any secret in getting the sound to work off their site? Thanks

Bugger. You're right. Too much water.

Pictures of flowing water it is then.....

No, it's the only stream I could find

Porto 1 up

Think yourself lucky it's only coffee....

I'm not that excited yet

Come on SLH....ooops, sorry.....Come on SFC....

Here it is: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=246093#post246093 Empathy from an unexpected source......... Rams fan in peace. Your situation is indeed very similar to the one we were in a few years back. We were £24M in debt and the Coop bank pulled the plug on the holding company. This is a replica of your current situation. Three men, later to be branded the 3 amigos by Rams fans bought the club for the princely sum of 3 pounds. They secured a £15M mortgage on Pride Park (the ground was all bought and paid for long before that), ostensibly to reduce the debts and to satisfy the Coop Bank. The "mortgage" was from the Panamanian ABC Corporation (who also lent cash to QPR and nearly bankrupted them too). The 3 Amigos ruled the roost for some two and a half years, permanently telling us that the debt was declining and that the club was trading at break even. In that time we were forced to sell Huddlestone and Rasiak for paltry sums in order to pay interest on time and the debt rose from £24M to around £54M. Again we were on the brink of extinction. Seven lifelong Derby fans who are also successful businessmen ploughed some £30M into buying out the 3 A´s and reducing the debt slightly. That consortium took the club back to the PL but couldnt (or wouldnt) finance the buying of the 6 to 8 genuine PL class players we needed to make a fight of it. Consequently we had the disaster that was known as the 2007/2008 season. Just over 18 months ago we got a new Chairman of Football, Adam Pearson, who had been responsible for getting Hull into shape. He came in and negotiated with the GSE group to take the club over. It is a consortium of many American and Canadian businessmen, most with a successful background in American Sports as well as in other business ventures, one of them was one of the founders of Yahoo. They took over and we are doing OK. We now have Nigel Clough at the helm who has got us playing proper football again and what looked like a disaster season looks like being saved and we can build from there. The debt will, in June, be down to £15M, the mortgage on the ground, and that debt is manageable. In my lifetime (and I'm mid 50's) I've seen the Rams on the brink in the early 80's, early 90's and again for the past 5 seasons...... it's not nice having to face the prospect of your club going to the wall. Boards come and go but we Rams, and you Saints, were always there before them and will be there when they have long gone. I know some of what you are feeling, I empathise with you. I hope the club survives to fight another day and would love to see you stay up by by getting all 3 points at the Tree Huggers on the last day of the season to send them down in your stead. As one of you said earlier, we are a precedent but...... after the 3 amigo deal there was Leeds and Boston who went into Admin once they knew they were already down. That caused the Football League to plug that particular loophole and to add the caveat that they held the right to scrutinise anything not covered by the rules and still take action against a club if the League thought it was warranted. What happened at Derby hasn't been "outlawed" by the League but they do now have the legal right to act differently should they so choose. I hope they don't break the precedent. Good luck.

Someone claiming to be a Derby fan posted the history behind he Derby situation a few days ago. Can't recall the user name. Will have a trawl.

Would you rather be "proud" and in league one or not proud and in the CCC? I don't think anyone is seeking any pride out of this mess.

....and BEFORE the Football League made a hash of NOT closing the 'holding company' loophole

So did mid-to-late 80s pop and R&B legends '5-Star'.....

BTW....This Notts County MB has more regular users than the one you've got a link to. http://boards.footymad.net/forum.php?tno=402& Cheers

Nice one....much more user friendly than one or two of the other Forum Links sites out there

Agree. I can't believe the Administrator will entertain any offers that assume we're staying in the CCC...?

Some fag packet maths... The band-C council tax for Southampton City Council is £1,074. The population (unitary and city) of Southampton is 228,600. Let's assume this equates to 76,200 households (average 3 people per house??). So, rough averaging, it receives £81,838,800 in Council Tax revenue. The outstanding mortgage on the stadium is somewhere around £25m. At 8.35% p.a. interest this gives an annual mortgage bill of c.£2,087,500 (interest only). So, for the City Council to service the mortgage, it would need to divert 'only' 2.55% of it's annual budget to 'takeover' SMS. If we assume that 2.55% of the 228,600 people living in the City of Southampton (i.e. 5,829 people) would be happy for a percentage of their council tax to be used in this way then everyone's a winner? Over to less tinpot mathematicians to blow my calculations out of the water....

Was just about to post the same. Could actually be a serious suggestion....

Doesn't every club have a vested interest in the predicament of another in the same or adjacent leagues? I don't see how an inquiry can ever be badged 'independent' when it is made up of people from rival clubs, regardless of league position.

I'd be worried if I were you....you're starting to repeat my 'logic'!