sandwichsaint

Never going to happen; the big clubs have debts that make Saints' problems look like my overdraft. The big clubs have the money and the power and they will not reform themselves, nor have the outside bodies the will to reform them or upset them. Football has become the ultimate free market, brands (they used to be called 'clubs') will do anything and everything to stay at the top, some will lose their houses 'chasing the dream' (no names necessary here), some will operate more prudently at a level they can afford (Reading have transfer listed 6 of their better players, they CAN'T AFFORD to keep them, irrespective of their potential contribution on the pitch). Unless you have a sugar daddy (Blackburn / Wolves) value-added can only come from a mad, mad gamble, or from steady accumulation of a club's capital (playing staff, diversified income, fan base, attendances etc). Key to building the club and adding value is ultimately having the right manager; in very large part the single biggest factor that's contributed to our demise is a 10-year managerial merry-go round? Football won't change itself, it will only react to the opinions and the money of millions of individual consumers (used to be called 'fans'). Don't like it? Don't buy it! That certainly worked out well for us didn't it? 'Live football at 3 o'clock on a Saturday' you say? It never went away, it's called non-league football and it's great, perhaps a few more will be trying it next season?

Ajax academy 15 years ago were recruiting on TIPP - Technique / Intelligence / Pace / Personality; don't know the ideal proportions but would seem to be sound fundamentals for the modern game. Would suggest 30/20/30/20 would be somewhere near. Be very surprised if our academy players and scholars weren't recruited on similar criteria but obviously each player's individual components will be different.

Posted on the 01st April and still stands today. Surely there are only four possible scenarios from here: 1 the new owners take over the club and strike a deal with Aviva to take over the mortgage payments (best option) 2 the new owners don't want to (or can't afford to!) take over the mortgage and Aviva sell or rent the stadium to a third party who then lease it to Saints to play in (bad option and loss of all non-football related income streams) OR Aviva sell the stadium as above to a third party who are making a better offer than new-Saints (quite possible). 3 somebody takes on the football club (as per my post above) WITHOUT SMS, and ground shares or starts a new mini ground someplace else (v bad option!) 4 zero option; no Saints! Nothing in today's announcement is 'new'; was I right on April 1st? Am I right now? It seems that without a money-bags takeover Option 2 is now the best that we are going to get.

It’s all ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ now isn’t it Brian? Stoneham would have made sense on a ‘diversification’ basis and clearly would have provided substantial non-football related income. But would almost certainly have been less of a ‘total football’ experience, think of the Ricoh for an example, fantastic stadium but nil ‘match-day atmosphere’. Likely to have attracted more ‘modern’ fans (families, women, etc) and the type of people who would be able and prepared to pay for a ‘leisure experience’, hence higher prices and less ‘traditional fans’. Under that model we certainly wouldn’t have had the intimidating atmosphere that people so miss from the Dell and which some blame the absence of at SMS for our decline. ‘If’ we had gone to Stoneham there is a completely hypothetical argument to say we wouldn’t be where we are now (2 divisions down, and skint). As for SMS not being very good, where do you start? Good enough for me on dozens of occasions, good enough for us to play solidly in the Prem for a number of seasons, good enough for us to reach an FA Cup final, good enough for us to play in Europe, good enough for England to play there, good enough to win groundsman’s awards, good enough to generate plenty of hospitality income (at least for Prem football). It was sold as a ‘traditional inner-city location’ and on that basis it more than does the job, a beer in town and the walk-to-the-ground is a big part of the match day experience for a lot of people, you don’t get that at a Middlesborough or a Coventry do you? Concourses a bit tatty? Yes they are but that doesn’t actually detract from going to watch a game of football does it? Is your match day experience ™ ‘better’ at Arsenal and Chelsea than it is at Wolves or West Brom? Personally mine’s not, but each to their own. No atmosphere in new grounds? You obviously didn’t go to the play off game at Derby then? The single best football match I’ve ever been to. Moaning about SMS is rather like pulling Lucy Pinder for the night and then moaning to your mates next day that she did most things you wanted but she didn’t do absolutely ‘everything’ you wanted. The underlying ‘problem’ with SMS was that it was built on a 100% mortgage, and that ‘mortgage’ was only ever sustainable with Prem football: no Plan ‘B’ beyond giving a hopeless drunk GBP 7m to **** up the wall. LOL at people on here who were posting up to the 11th hour that we 'wouldn't go into admin' and that 'if we get shot of the big earners' we could 'comfortably cover our costs playing Div 3 football with crowds of 12k'. Hard though it is to say, ‘our-ground’s-too-big-for-us’ (and we can’t afford it either). Maybe sometime fairly soon we will be playing much nearer to Eastleigh town centre than any of us would have wanted?

Wotte's to stop the club selling pieces of paper for £300 that read; 'This piece of paper is worthless, but in the event of Southampton FC being in a position to sell season tickets for season 2008-09 the bearer shall be entitled to a refund of (£325) on the face value of said season tickets' With suitable small print that places the liability entirely on the buyer as to the fact that the 'bond' carries no consumer rights or guarantees. Got to be better than bucket collections surely?

**** I don't buy that, it was Lowe's way or nothing, and we ended up with 'nothing'. No evidence at all that RL sought or would have taken outside finance, one word SISU.

Ialways thought it was Frank Worthington (Saints legend!) who claimed to have spent his money on, 'birds, booze and betting, the rest I just wasted'.

Surman will do absolutely fine at Reading. He's more than competent at CCC level in a range of positions, playing with better players, in a better team, with better coaches and in a team that's competetive I think he will thrive. He's probably gone as far as he can with Saints (L1!) and owes it to himself and his career to get out at the best level he can. I would love to keep him in L1 but it seems most fans (on here at least) regard him as a busted flush. If we can get £500,000+ for him I guess everybody will be happy, but don't expect us to be able to buy a like-for-like player for that money, nor attract recent u21 internationals into L1.

I can't believe we're having this debate (ie that there are people on here prepared to defend RL's presence at the game on Sunday and who think he is in some way just a private citizen enjoying a private invite into the oppo directors' box). How many away games has he been to this season? This is a complete and utter ****take and shows the contempt he holds for the ordinary fan. He might be there as a 'buyer' or as part of a consortium (I don't believe he is). He could be there 'to watch the footie with his mates'. He could be there, like an arsonist returning to watch the fire brigade, to take some perverse pride in witnessing the last throes of the club. He could be there as a calculated 2 fingers to 'the fans'. I don't find any of those reasons acceptable in the current climate and knowing that it was his Dutch-non-league experiment that put us here makes it all a little hard to stomach. I'm not going on Sunday (would love to be but couldn't get tickets) but to all those that are going.... party like it's 1976, (and make sure he gets the message loud and clear, DUCK OFF!)

Yosser Souness? Bring it on.... A wonderful deterrent to the slackers and malingerers who have inhabited the SFC treatment room for too long. Your choice players, a gentle kick-about with ol' Rupes, or being kicked about in a 5-a-side by the new chairman? He'd empty the place in a fortnight. Slight downside being we could end up with the original chocolate drop and Wotte under the same roof; perhaps they could eat each other?

Agree about Prem 2. Looks increasingly like it will happen; if Saints can get themselves stabilised/sorted very quickly there is no reason why they couldn't be invited in, if presumably it's going to be done by invitation. If for any reason we ever fall below that cut-off line we would be condemned to a life as a permanent Millwall or Gillingham.

Not really interested TBH; good luck to anyone who started it, I'd look out for their results and prob buy a shirt too, but I wouldn't make a 300 mile round trip to watch a non-league side. I've got my exit strategy nicey covered; the mighty Dover have just achieved their second back-to-back promotion in front of average home crowds of well over a 1,000 in the Ryman South and are back in the Conference South. Decent ground, good crowds, brilliant manager (Hesentaler, HCDAJFU), some funding; I expect them to go well next year and either gain or come very near to another promotion. All hypothetical of course, all indications are that Saints will be taken over this week and in a perverse sort of way I'm quite looking forward to L1; even considering my first-ever ST if the new owners come up with the right package of rescue/manager/pricing!

+1 Wotte was is and always will be complete and utter garbage; the events of the last 24 hours just compound the sheer ineptitude of the 'performances' which he over-saw against Charlton, Wolves, and Sheff Weds. If (the magic word) we had taken 3/4/5/6 points from those fixtures then we would now be halfway safe from starting next season on -10. Can't believe anyone on here thinks HCDAJFU next season .... Clean sweep on the playing side from top to bottom; new manager / new coaches / pick which players he wants to keep and then add his own. LOL that SFC would be 'too big' for Tisdale!

Southampton will be relegated from the Championship after being docked 10 points by the Football League. The penalty comes after the club's parent company went into administration at the start of April. Southampton are currently four points off safety with two games to go and, even if they beat the drop, they will be deducted 10 points. If they do not avoid finishing in the bottom three then the points penalty will take effect next season. The south coast outfit had hoped to avoid the punishment as they argued that their parent company Southampton Leisure Holdings plc had gone into administration. But a League investigation by "independent forensic accountants" found that the club and the holding company were "inextricably linked as one economic entity" and applied their mandatory penalty. The League also found that: "The holding company has no income of its own; all revenue and expenditure is derived from the operation of Southampton Football Club and the associated stadium company "The holding company is solvent in its own right. It only becomes insolvent when account is taken of the position of Southampton football club and the other group companies." The statement added that there was no alternative other than to invoke the 10-point penalty. It was also revealed that the company commissioned to look into the matter reported that co-operation with them was withdrawn towards the end of their enquiries. Southampton are the fifth Football League team to be deducted points this season - Darlington entered administration, while Luton, Bournemouth and Rotherham were all penalised for coming out of administration without a Company Voluntary Agreement in place, as per the League's insolvency guidelines. From BBC Football; seems Lowe's little ruse was easily seen through , SLH and SFC 'inextricably linked', whoever thought otherwise? Surely Barclay's should have pulled the plug before the deadline? They could presumably have re-called their OD 'on demand' at any time; why wait till we're in minus points territory?

Down with a whimper, we're going down with a whimper, down with a whimper. We're goin' down with a whimper ........ ssssshhhhhhhhhh! This should have been sung (quietly) at the Charlton and Sheff Weds games. I hope people are going to give the players some grief on Saturday; it's six days on I'm still not over the pitiful surrender I saw at Hillsborough last week. Fecking players Fecking manager Fecking Burley Fecking Lowe Feck everybody! Another relegation struggle next season as well then .....

Personally I never want to hear from, see, or read anything about RL/MW ever again! I have not followed or read any of RL's media debriefings; I didn't believe in him when he was here and I'm certainly not now going to throw good time after bad times trolling him around the media .... if we haven't heard anything from RL that is A GOOD THING and long may it continue. In the interests of fairness/balance I'm not overly convinced that LC is the answer either. My abiding wish is that we are taken over by someone I've never heard of, who appoints a competent team of people I've never heard of, and that they then rinse the place clean from top to bottom and make a complete fresh start on and off the pitch.

Other results aren't going our way!!! Since beating Ipswich we have won just one game in the last 9, and have failed to record a win in any of the following 'winnable' 6 games: we couldn't beat Derby, QPR or Charlton (FFS!) at home, and we failed to win at Blackpool, Watford, or Wednesday. For how long do you rely on 'other teams' results? We have won 4 home games all season! That's relegation form in anybody's book. As for Wotte not deserving vilification? He trains the team, he picks the team, he selects the tactics; his results and the performances of 'his' team speak for themselves. He hasn't got the first clue about our club, this League or English football. Diamond formation with these players, in this league? LMFAO! If we had a chairman I would have expected him to have been out the door at 10.00 this morning following the debacle of Saturday. It really doesn't matter who picks the team and runs the bench for these last 2 games; nobody could do worse than Wotte did on Saturday.

Can we knock one thing straight on the head here, and I've seen it loads of places on here in the last 24 hours, 'Sheff Weds weren't even any good'. Ridiculous comment and one of the reasons we lose so many games! The same comment made over and over again, I can only assume by people that don't watch (m)any games, or only 'watch' Saints when they do go to a game? Get real people! The League table doesn't lie! SW are comfortably mid-table after a difficult season last year and a wobbly first half of this season. They have an excellent manager who they have stuck by for a couple of seasons, and a very workable mix of 'journeymen', young pro's, and the odd foreign import. They play a no-nonesense, high-tempo 'British' game and are quite good at it, relying heavily on fitness/work rate/physical strength and pace (if you still don't get it, that's not Saints I'm talking about there). When they have that platform they then play their 'football' and their attacks have pace and precision. They have a decent spine of a solid GK, 2 decent CBs, and hard-tackling midfielders. Yesterday 24k fans turned out for a meaningless end-of-season match and supported their team for 90 minutes and were rewarded with the most one-sided 2-0 win they will ever see. We are 3 or 4 years away even from this scenario and will have to go down, and hopefully up again, to even get to that level. In the meantime we need a buyer, funds, and fans, before we even consider finding our own next manager/saviour. Time for some to get real; we are cr8p as cr8p can be. We fielded six players yesterday with Prem experience, Weds had 3 or 4. 'These players should be higher in the League ...', which players? Which league? Yesterday we/they made not-very-good-Sheffield-Wednesday look like fecking Brazil, just like two weeks ago when we made Charlton look like Chelsea. Why didn't we win yesterday? How long have you got? Losing mentality from top to bottom; team doesn't 'expect' to win games, we are effectively 'beaten before we've started'. Players are mentally drained; from losing, from 'politics', from worrying about their jobs/futures. Players' fitness levels are apalling, frankly unbelievable in this day and age. Surman,Skacel,Wotton,McG all blowing out their ar5es after 15 minutes. Warm-up and prep is school-boy standard (if that's not insulting to school boys' and their coaches). No progression, no intensity, no team-building routines. It's cursory, superficial, unproffessional. I was astonished by what I saw at Wolves pre-match, and yesterday's was equally poor. Tactics and team selection are poor and inflexible. The narrow diamond has been shi7 for weeks but we don't change it. Mrs Sandwich came to her first game of the season on Sat and she picked it up in the first five minutes, we are playing with a lack of natural width and any shape for the centre players to pass to, consequently we continually give the ball away (or hoof it straight and long which amounts to the same thing really). Manager/coaches don't react to the game situation. Saints have an extremely limited Plan A and no Plan B. Too many players have given up, they can get a new club next season, we can't! We concede goals for fun, two howlers yesterday, and without Perry they might easily have had five. We play very negatively, constantly passing square and backwards. No pace, creativity, or one-on-one ability means we create very few chances in open play (we should be playing Llallana in the hole, yesterday that would have drawn their clumping CBs fd away from the top of their D, rather than kicking it onto their heads for 90 minutes). We are poor at converting the chances we do get (no natural goal scorer if Saga doesn't score). Set pieces/corners are shocking. That's some of the reasons we didn't win yesterday.... and unless we make some real changes we will carry on reading 'Millwall weren't even that good...' type comments, all the way into Division 4. I visited the Stadium of Light on Saturday morning (after cycling the C-2-C route from Whitehaven to Sunderland on Wed-Fri last week) and was very moved by the 'fans' statue if any of you have seen it. Words which resonated for me in our current plight: 'All generations come together at the Stadium of Light. A love of "The Lads" has bonded together supporters for more than 125 years and will for many more years in the future. At Sunderland it is this statue to the fans that has pride of place. Supporters who have passed away have their support carried on by today's fans, just as the supporters of today will have their support continued through families and friends. We share this vision and bond as one because Sunderland AFC is For Us All' Maybe something for our 'players' to reflect on even though it's probably too late now, and for us as fans to hope we will one day rise again.

TBF, if some people on here thought 'he was rubbish and not good enough for us' he is some pretty illustrious company. Not good enough for Saints: Prutton Kevin Davies Delap Oakley Higinbotham Telfer Dean Richards Jermaine Wright Brett Ormerod Blackstock Fuller (!) Not sure if that lot would have served up the complete debacle I witnessed yesterday and be on a one-way ticket to Div 3?

Just when you thought you had seen everything, Wotte a shocker! KD 4, HIS KICKING IS COMPLETELY SHOT!!! LJ 5, TAKE A BOW SON SIZE 3, HOWLER FOR THE FIRST GOAL PERRY 5, TWO GOAL-SAVING INTERCEPTIONS IN THE FIRST-HALF RUDI 2, GAVE UP WEEKS AGO WOTTON 5, SHI7E BUT AT LEAST HE TRIES LLALANA 2, SHOULD BE SUEING SFC FOR LOSS OF HIS CAREER DMG 4, DECENT FIRST HALF, WENT MISSING 2ND HALF SURMAN 2, INVISIBLE MAN FIRST HALF, QUITE GOOD (AGAIN) AT LB BWP 4.5, LOOKED INTERESTED BUT FECKALL SERVICE JE 2, I'M A FAN BUT HE HAD ONE TODAY SAGA 4, SHOULD HAVE COME ON AT HT SMITH '0' NIL POINTS, UNMITIGATED SHY7E (someone come back and defend his 'performance' today?) MORGAN 0. WHAT WAS THE POINT? DID HE TOUCH THE BALL! Absolute gash from first minute to last.... I'm embarressed and hurting tonight.... is anybody on here defending Wotte after that!?

Plannning to go. Anbody know if you can pay on the gate? Thnx.

That'll be Charlton all over again then? Have we ever kept a clean sheet with Wotton at holding mid? What's not to get that the 'diamond' doesn't work with these players? Lallana will be shy7e in a free role on the RM and will leave LJ horribly exposed. Palace will score 2, Saints will score something between 0 and 3!

''The scandinavian Pine trees of Netley Victoria Park'' ... takes me back to my yoof, jumpers-for-goalposts, three-and-in; who will we be today? Channon? Stokes? Osgood? David Peach if we had a penalty. Kids with heroes, running free on a bed of pine needles, thanks for brightening up the end of a long day!

McClaggon (sp?) was excellent away at Norwich, then got injured. Smith was shi7 in that game too, tho only for 45 minutes that time.

Can't add much more; schit selection, schit preperation, schit tactics. When we had 10-12 games left nobody would have had this game down for any points but failing to beat Charlton made this game massive and we threw it away inside the first 5 minutes. Unbelievable! Hard to give anybody a mark above a 2, all eleven players AND THE MANAGER are culpable for being 3 down in 20 minutes, ****-poor preparation at team and individual level. Who played 'well' after that is irrevelent, tho in fact nobody played very well and there is no MOM award available for this game. Davis 5, leaking goals and his distribution looks nervy James 5, defended manfully but didn't get fd to any great effect Perry/Size 4/4, must command the box better, particularly at set pieces Skacel 3, rubbish LB, move him to LM for last 4 games Smith 2, total shy7e, how he has stayed on the pitch for 180 minutes this week is beyond me Wotton 5, actually one of his better games! (completed 20% of his passes rather than the usual 10%) Morgan 2, joke selection in the context of the game, predictably he had nil impact Surman 4, no impact in midfield, did a passable impression of a LB in the second half DMG 5, didn’t do a lot right or a lot wrong, not sure why he was taken off? Saga 2, huffed and puffed but nil impact BWP 6, looked some sort of a threat and created two scoring chances for himself Euell 2, should have started but little impact when he did come on Lallana (6), not on long but had several good touches, needs to start last 4 games Wotte 0/10 .... go now, you are an embarrassment to the club. Last four games it’s shi7 or bust (or possibly both); my team to win three of the last four, .......................... KD ........................ JAMES ................ CP..........JPS ............SURMAN BWP .....EUELL .............DMG.........SKACEL ...................LALLANA................................ .......................SAGA.................................. For me we have to win 3 of the last 4, WOTTON must go, we can neither attack nor defend with him sitting in ‘holding’ midfield. Play a proper 4-4-2 with BWP and SKACEL to give the width. Don’t let SMITH within a mile of the first team. Withdraw SURMAN from midfield to full back (a la the end of last season). Restore LALLANA in his best position. Thoroughly depressing day today, Wolverhampton is a total dump, ‘away fans’ effectively barred from all town centre pubs, officious stewards and a police presence like a G20 protest (18 plod lined up across the outside of the away section turnstiles, ‘welcome to Molineux lads’). Fair play to their fans, they were rocking both ends of the stadium whereas ours, much like the team never really turned up.