sandwichsaint

Where the fck has this come from? I'm ****ed, it's 12.30 in the morning, and yesterday I thought we had KK comin' as manager! Oh to be a Saints fan (and never get out of it).

'The FL have a duty to the club ... it's supporters ... blah blah blah' Do they fck! They would love to break the SFC butterfly on their greedy corparate wheel ... pour encourager les autres.

Bring it on ... we would definitely be the Newcastle-of-the-South if this comes off! 30k for the first game at SMS baying 'Kee-gan, Kee-gan, Kee-gan' for 90 mins, (obviously interspresed with Le Tiss, Le Tiss, Matty Matt Le Tiss ... etc). Colly wobbles at the thought!

Where have all the midweek games gone? I probably get to see up to 8 midweeks H and A in a season, as I can't get to see many Saturdays in Oct-March. Presumably there are more Saturday games in that we play on international Sats and from R3 of the FA Cup onwards.... bit of a ****er for any other midweek-ers out there ... I can't see the Johnson's having quite the same appeal as regular league games. I was thinking of an ST if they were the right price but I don't think I can justify it for the amount of home games I can access... pity!

Get a decent manager Keep the players that want to stay, get rid of the want-aways, add to the squad with solid experienced lower-lge pro's Sell 20,000 STs at £200 a throw Get behind the new board/manager/team/players Get crowds of c23k to every game Take a decent away turn out to every game Act (in the nicest possible way!) like the 'biggest' club in Div 3 (ignore the Damned Utd) Let's see where 3 seasons of that gets us ... I would say that top half of the CCC is perfectly possible in 3 seasons time with the right manager and with the fans uniting behind the team.

Shirley it's Brighton v Palace? Unfortunately relegation hasn't moved my home trip from a rather inconvinient 151 miles (2hrs 51 mins) as measured on google maps. We do seem to be playing in Div 3 South though ... I'll be hoping for midweek aways at any of: Gillingham (!), Brighton, Orient, Charlton, Brentford, Southend, Colchester, MK or as far as Walsall. Agree that the 'derby' is probably Brighton but tickets will obviously be a problem. If you want somebody with a bit of size and a bit of previous I'm surprised nobody has suggested Charlton?

fantastic news, thanks for all you have done! COYRs !!!!

Pathetic; I saw your post this morning and couldn't quite believe what I was looking at .. glad you've cleared it up though .. next time I want to see what someone who has been decapitated by a rotor blade looks like I'll know where to come ... that was completely innapropriate and out of order... no infraction points? I can't believe you haven't been bombed straight out of this forum.

I think most people accept this will go 'to the wire', it's just that most people are very concerned about where (when) exactly 'the wire' is .... My understanding is that the holding company is in admin and the football club is still trading... Therefore is there any circumstance in which at the moment we won't be entered into the L1 fixture list? Do we still have our 'golden share'? Is our participation in L1 dependent on some sort of 'bond/deposit' or 'assurances' (from who? from Fry? from 'the club'? ...) Again only my understanding but teams have played through whole seasons while technically in admin ... Presumably in terms of playing on through admin we are beyond the point where this is possible; LC may have paid one wage bill, presumably he won't be able to do this too many times. So when exaxctly does Fry have to accept what ever is on the table if we are to play in Div 1 next season? The reality of course is that he doesn't ... if the best deal (eg liquidation) lies somewhere beyond 'the wire' that is the one he will persue... So to re-phrase the question ... when is the latest a buyer can come to an agreement with Fry that ensures we start in Div 1 next season?

I've got it now, feeder club to Man City.... For the price of a Craig Bellamy they can have a whole shadow club to park their foreign youngsters and their spare squad players and the players they buy so-no-one-else-can-have-them.... Fry, get on the phone now; I'm sure the paperwork on joint ownership will be a mere bagatelle to the super-rich?

Day by day we inch nearer to the position I foresaw immediately it was announced that RL had split SLH from the football side, placed SLH in admin (complete with the mortgage on SMS), and was trying to wing it for SFC to be reborn avoiding a points reduction (and walking away from a lot of the debt). Many people welcomed that at the time; some had been actively seeking it. My first reaction was that we had put ourselves in a position where we stood a very real possibility of losing the ground. Is this not still the case? Number 1 is everyone's preffered option: the club is bought out (for 14m?) and carries on much as before 'debt free'. Why is everyone 'assuming' Aviva will take a one-off payment of c6m and effectively give the new owners the freehold of SMS? Is there any evidence there is anybody out there willing to pay 14m cash upfront, with presumably plenty more needed to fund 'rebuilding'? Number 2 might now be the best we can hope for? If nobody wants or can afford to buy the whole lot then Aviva can either sell the stadium to a third party (possibly the council/possibly private/possibly GM!) and turn it into a mixed 'events' venue with concerts/rugby/whatever and Saints being tenants in their own stadium. This model does not deliver a debt-free club and we would be double-whammied by paying rent and be hit by the loss of external revenue. Aviva could of course keep the freehold in the medium term till the economic conditions improve (and possibly the football club too!) and just rent the stadium to a third party. Number 3: somebody buys 'Saints' (very cheaply) and walks away from SMS, we then ground share (either in Div 1) or in the Blue Square and have to start again from ground zero. Number 4: club liquidated, assetts sold, players released, no football club. IMHO all 4 of these outcomes are still runners but I wouldn't like to say in which proportions: 1, at the moment looks unlikely, people keep telling me (themselves!) that 3 and 4 won't happen; by a process of elimination does that leave 2 as the likeliest outcome? I knew we should never have left the Antelope ground ....

Why do you think it 'will get worse' and why do you think it will take us '5 years' to be in a position to push on? IF we get taken over then surely there is a new start for 'everyone'. If someone is going to buy the club for today's figure (now rumoured to be 14m) what interest will they have in running us further backwards? If they are buying us for their own ends then they will need to go forward from day 1. If they are buying as a stop-gap interim to try and stabilise/rescue us and then make money by re-selling somewhere further down the line then again they will not be able to do this unless they take us forwards. IF you are suggesting we get taken over at a very low level by a local butcher, baker and candlestick-maker combo, who have no money to invest, and the internal divisions continue, and the mighty fans continue to wage internicine civil war complete with 'boycotts', then there will be no 'going backwards' or 'getting-worse-before-it-gets-before' scenario; we will be toast in one season if that comes to pass. I cannot foresee any 'mainstream' solution whereby Saints could go even further backwards than where they are now, continue to trade for another 5 years, then start recovering. For me, if we are to continue as a league club next season and actually start the season then 'the only way is up' (even if 'up' means stabilising in the middle of Div 3 and balancing the books) we simply do not have the opton of floundering about for another 5 years; we go forward from here or we perish!

Cool! Let's hope Fry and Pinacle are playing poker and not tiddlywinks.

Saints are only a 'bargain' (at whatever price) if anyone will buy them, and at the moment that ain't happening. No doubt you or I, if we had the money, would love nothing more than spunking GBP15m on the mighty Saints, unfortunately it's not you or I that's involved. What does the £15m buy you? A team, a fixture list, a stadium, a training facility, a farm, a house, some fairly non-descript players (and a few OK ones) ... then what? 15m is only to get your foot in the door, any 'potential' is a long way (and a lot of hard cash) in the distance .... say £50m and 5 years to get us back in the Prem? That's probably an under-estimate .... where's the return on the £15m coming from, you or I would pay that, not sure whether a 'neutral' would? I'm not understanding the Brighton thing either (haven't read it so that might explain it!): £93m! Is this the price of the stadium? The price to re-build the whole club playing-wise? The price over a 5-year plan? Who's putting this money up? It must be a private individual/backer(?), there can surely be no case for an 'economic' return on £93m? A 5% return would equate to Brighton turning a £4.5m every year ... how can they do that? Footie .... gone mad ..... gone bad!

Coffee on keyboard and monitor!

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?