RinNY

Mills played for Scunny and did extremely well. With him and James we have two good young full backs for this level, to go with older and capable centre backs (2 out of Thomas, Perry and -- if we sign him -- Saeijs). Murty will be a good experienced back up (if we sign him) and there's Lancashire and some promising kids. With Davis in goal, defence is looking good. Up front, assuming we do re-sign John, I'd also re-sign BWP who is quick & should do well in this league, and with the likes of Paterson and White and maybe even Rasiak if he stays, we look good. Midfield is the question mark for me: who will stay and who can fill what roles. Can Lee Holmes cut it at LM? Is Thompson good enough at RM? Will Schneiderlin stay? Does Wotton still have enough left? Will Lallana stay and if so what role can he fill?

Old heads?? Ummm ... you mean like Davis, Perry, Thomas, Wotton, John? Yes, if only we could get older experienced players like that, eh?

He has earned the opportunity by his very professional behavior this summer, standing by the club and going about his business, reassuring the players, and so on. It is very important in football to have reasonable stability and continuity in management and in the team, and to make your changes wisely and after careful evaluation and consideration. Time will tell if Wotte is really up to the job; if he shows that he isn't up to it by the results on the pitch, the new owner will by then have had time to weigh options and make a new appointment, rather than acting in a rush right now.

Lynam's statements have been inconsistent, and that arouses suspicion. There was supposed to be a single client behind his bid, who had a very comfortable wealth of hundreds of millions, but was shy to let his identity be known before the deal was finalised. The deal never was finalised, for reasons that grew more obscure and implausible as time went on, and then the unlikely Fialka was produced as the money man, though it was clear he in fact has nowhere near the sort of wealth needed. So the story changed to the money coming from the "community" in which Fialka has contacts, apparently the old cliche that all Jews are rich and support one another (neither of which is true). And then the bid was suddenly dropped after spinning us along for a whole month of suspense and leaving SFC on the verge of collapse that only selling two players has prevented. If all of that does not explain to you why Lynam is (in my view rightly) seen as a chancer and fantasist (not to use a harsher term like con man), then I'd like to know what construction can be put on all this that will make him look better? As to MLT, with all due respect to the greatest Saints player ever and a man who clearly bleeds red and white, his judgement has to be questioned as a result of his association with this Pinnacle debacle, which is a sad thing to have to conclude, but for me means he is not the right man to run this club.

I gotta say, reading through this entire thread, that Nineteen Canteen made a perfectly reasonable opening post, without insulting anyone and without so much as mentioning Lowe, only to get attacked and insulted immediately by a bunch of people who apparently can't forgive him for whatever things he may have posted in the past. No surprise that he responded with counter insults. To restate his point then, I agree that the club needs a totally new start: no-one from the past 6 or more years should be in any position of power/authority. If Crouch really helped the club by paying wages -- which I'm not convinced of, I fancy the opportune transfers of Dyer, McG, and Surman have provided the funds, along with what Pinnacle paid for its exclusivity -- then he deserves a big thank you, but not a seat on the board. MLT and Big Mac should be honored guests at the club wehenever they want to come, and offered the chance to act in an ambassadorial capacity if they wish, but not put in charge. There are plenty of good football people out there who can run the club, and whoever buys it should find his own business people to keep the football end in line with good business sense. Doesn't seem much point speculating who that might be, I just hope it will indeed be people without any connections to all the recent debacles that have made the club look so pathetic!

Can you spell "obsession"?? Lowe is history, as far as SFC is concerned. Part of that history was good (SMS, Cup Final), part obviously not so good (relegation, administration, relegation). But it's done with, and you're crazy to think he'll be back. Of the whole crowd of folk associated with the debacle that is Saints' history of the past 5 years, the only one who seems at all likely to play a future role at the club is Crouch, and with all due respect to him as a fan who has been willing to put his hand in his pocket for the club, I'd rather see a totally new broom. No Lowe, Crouch, Wilde, Askham, Cowen, Richards, Jones (the finance director): in short nobody who has held a position of responsibility at the club over the past 5 or 6 years, and I think that's what'll happen. At most I coulsd see Crouch and Jones hanging on in some capacity, but Lowe?? Not in a million years. For what it's worth, I hope we don't get any re-tread manager either, not even if it's WGS. Second time around rarely works well, in my view; let's leave the past, the past. A fresh new SFC under new ownership, directorship, management. That's my desire, and what I see coming out of this process if indeed Saints do get taken over and so survive.

Oh well, fair enough, that wasn't seriously meant. It was more my reflection on the staggering incompetence of those who have wasted so much of a once great club's time and substance on people with grandiose ambitions and neither the money nor the business acumen to see those ambitions through! Even though an abrasive and sarcastic internet fan forum poster could see through these people ... What is it about Saints? Why do we attract these figures of fun while other clubs get taken over by people with real money and real management skills every year?? It staggers me ...

As Delldays has already said, most of us (myself included) were taken in by Wilde's "revolution"; GM saw it for what it was. Most of us (myself included) were ready to believe in Lynam's claims about a super rich backer and of minor technical hitches holding things up; GM saw Lynam for the chancer and fantasist he clearly is. He saw this even though folk like MLT, Fry, and Crouch were taken in. I think we must all be impressed by that. He may be abrasive and over sarcastic at times, but he does see things more clearly than most. His record speaks for itself in that regard

I don't see how one can find good news here. There can be only one piece of good news: someone with the money to keep the club going has bought the club, the deal is done and dusted, the FL have accepted it, everything is final and irreversible. Anything less than that is just more empty rumour and speculation in my view: not good news but empty talk. Since Wilde first showed up, I have had enough empty talk about Saints to fill several lifetimes. Each time people who seem "well informed" tell us what we want hear, and each time they turn out to be fantasizing or misinformed or both. When even the likes of MLT and Crouch and Fry turn out not really to have a clue what is going on; when even they are led to believe that a bid has substance when it is in fact nothing but talk backed by more talk, then how can one possibly trust any other talk about good news?? I've seen more incompetence at SFC, more sheer irrationality, than I could ever have imagined. Only one person seems to come out of all this with any credit: the chap who uses the name Guided Missile on this forum. Someone should kick Fry out, tell Crouch to back the hell off, and put the businessman who calls himself GM in charge of finding a solution for SFC: he's the only one who seems to know what is real and what isn't!

J H C!!! Are we really going to have this BS of who is/is not a "so-and-so luvvie" around here again? I think I need to barf! For that reason alone, I may need to hope the Pinnacle deal does not go through, and we have instead a Swiss consortium full of men with enormously long and utterly unpronouncable names such that no-one will be tempted to dismiss those who try to give them a fair chance to save the club as "Schnerzelwerdergrueber luvvies" ... saint-stevo: can you really think of nothing better to say than that??? Please at least make an attempt not to be moronic!

How is it cheating to take out a mortgage to build a new stadium, and then get relegated and find you have trouble making the payments because of lower revenues? How is it cheating to have players on Premiership contracts whom you have trouble paying after you get relegated because of lower revenues? How is it cheating to have an overdraft facility (which most businesses have), and due to a massive economic downturn & crisis in banking and real estate, have the bank which has lent you the money call it in and tip you into administration? Yes, we pushed the boat out a bit in our last year of parachute payments in a bid for promotion, just missed promotion, and found ourselves in fiscal hot water afterwards; but we went through massive cost-cutting to deal with that and played a whole season with essentially the youth team. Some cheating; some advantage! There was NO F*CKING CHEATING!! Clubs who get relegated from the Prem and fail to go straight back up find themselves in crisis: we are not the first, nor will we be the last, and the FL's draconian attitude and unwillingness to distinguish between clubs behaving reasonably and having bad luck, and clubs (like Leeds & Luton) that genuinely behave utterly irresponisibly or borderline illegally, will only exacerbate the problem. It will probably end in the Prem severing itself from the FL entirely, because the fiscal damage done both to clubs that get relegated, and to clubs which get promoted and (usually) cannot stay up for more than a season or two but still have to switch to a Prem cost basis in order to try to survive, is unsustainable.

As I said, I doubt the FL will be sued, pretty certainly not by Pinnacle/SFC anyway. But even members clubs are subject to some binding legal rules: they cannot discriminate, and they must operate by the rules and regulations they set for themselves. The FL is quite simply making up the rules as they go along, and ignoring their own written and established regulations to do so. I think you'll find that opens them up, potentially, to very damaging litigation if it's ever in anyone's interesat to pursue such litigation. I am just flabberghasted, actually, at what the FL is doing and getting away with, not just in our case but in several other recent cases where they just seem to do whatever they feel like and f*ck the rules as written!

How exactly, in your estimation, does it "appear that the deal has collapsed"? You see you start with that assumption which you take, without argument, to be true, and draw conslusions from there. This is a well known logical fallacy: the straw man argument. Because, you see, according to the evidence that is out there (and by this I don't mean the rumourings and agonizings on fan fora like this one), the deal has merely been held up by an issue that requires resolving, and that it is hoped will be resolved on Monday. Apparently (and by this I mean there is actuall published evidence to suggest this) the FL governing body will be holding an emergency meeting on Monday to clear up the precise status of the new owners of SFC and the club's membership of the FL, plus (possibly) the right to appeal the 10 point deduction. They would not likely be bothering to do so if the deal had collapsed. They are doing so because the deal is very much still on the table and for it to either go forward or be rejected the issue or issues that have arisen need to be settled. You seem to be a person who in general is sensible and thoughtful, and on certain topics well informeed. In this instance, however, you are talking nonsense!

Bull! The very idea of clubs that get into financial difficulties being hit by additional penalties by the FL is crap! No club should have to face that, it distorts fair competition. When there are clubs which deliberately engage in financial shenanigans, which is not the case here, the FL could be justified in sanctioning them, but it should be through limits on transfer activities, playing budgets, that sort of thing, not point deductions that twist the proper competition between teams. As to Saints, all we did was build a new stadium to replace one that was utterly out of date, and then have the misfortune to get relegated. Take away the stadium debt, and we'd still be solvent. But take away the new stadium and we're hopelessly uncompetitive! In other words, it was a case of f*cked if you do & f*cked if you don't. And if you are the sort who thinks football clubs should get point deductions, and is gleeful about it, then you are imo no true football fan!

Then put it another way: why would two guys "without a pot to **** in" (TL & MLT) put up several hundred thousand pounds -- non-refundable -- in order to get a 3 week exclusivity period at the end of wghich, lacking a rich backer with the funds and determination to close the deal, they will walk away poorer by those several hundred thousand and looking like a pair of prats??? Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn't to me! The only way I can see Lynam & LeTiss going as far as they have is if they really and truly do have a rich investor behind them with the money to finish things. The alternative is that they are self-destructive idiotic posers, which I suppose Lynam may be (I know nothing about him), but Le Tiss certainly is not. So that is two ways now in which I find GM's skepticism incomprehensible. We'll find out tomorrow, anyway.

I'm a bit puzzled by the nature of your skepticism. Surely Fry cannot have given the Pinnacle bid its 21 day exclusivity period without first seeing proof of funds, that is, proof that there really is a mega-rich backer and that he really is preparted to put up the kind of money being promised? If Fry has accepted the Pinnacle bid without that, he will have been seriously delinquent in his duty as administrator of SLH, and would surely face unpleasant professional repercussions! Or do you know something different about the rules governing administration than my understanding of them as expressed above??

Strange to say, I'm aware of that: hence my response to your very queenish reaction to my post. I say again, since the cap clearly fits you, you'd best wear it.

Drama queen?? *blink* *blink* If the cap fits, my dear fellow, then you will simply have to wear it. What on earth has fried your bacon? I did two things: pointed out that there was no contradiction at all where you claimed to see one. Sorry, old chap, but picky, small, or whatever other qualification you choose to put in, there was no contradiction. That is a simple matter of fact. Now, I then went on to reflect about the process in general and how some folk are reacting to it. Not about your post any more, because guess what? Not everything is about you! Can you imagine??? I will say, thanks for the chuckle you just gave me though. Drama queen indeed!

Why hasn't the prospective new owner revealed his dentity? Quite simple really: he doesn't have to and doesn't want to. I'm surprised anyone needed to ask this question, or that it could generate a thread running to several pages!

Nope. no contradiction. If it goes to the wire, it gets completed minutes or hours before the exclusivity period ends, but still BEFORE the exclusivity period ends. Going past the ire would be AFTER. Now, they're saying they hope to complete the deal earlier, i.e. days before the exclusivity period ends; but that they cannot be sure and it may go to the wire. How you find any contradiction there confounds me. From all the agonizing about the length of time it's taking, I can only conclude that many people on this forum have never bought a house. Up until a year ago, I'd maybe have been saying the same sort of thing, but having been through that process and seen how much useless paperwork and regulation the lawyers have created even around the relatively simple transaction of buying a house from its previous outright owners, I know that the legal side of this business deal is simply bound to drag out for weeks and weeks. So the fact that it is taking weeks means nothing other than that the lawyers are doing their thing and "earning" their fat fees. Bunch of vultures, but there, the cost of living in a society of laws.

I hope MLT does not become manager; I'd prefer him to stay "above the fray". I would just hate to see MLT subjected to the kind of carping criticism from the more negative section of Saints fans that inevitably (and to some degree understandably) goes with the role of manager. I tend to think that it wouldn't be a bad thing to keep Wotte for now and see what he can do after a proper pre-season. On the other hand, new blood wouldn't be a bad idea. In that case, give me a younger manager with passion and something to prove, someone like Tisdale or Ince. In the end though, I think the most important thing is for the whole fan base to just get behind whoever the new regime appoint as manager and give him at least 6 months to "have a go" before starting to question and criticise!!

Far as I know, we have two left backs: Joseph "Fish" Mills and Lee Molyneux. Now admittedly, Molyneux did not impress that much last season, but that isn't to say he won't impress in L1. And Mills did very well in L1, on loan with Scunny, if I remember rightly. Either way, no we do not need a left back at present: centre back, maybe ... unless we can sign Saeijs.

Just readin the statements by Fry and Lynam, and the published details so far, you will find the following: 1. the finances of the deal are set, that is, the creditors know what they are being offered and have accepted 2. due diligence has already been done, Lynam stated so explicitly 3. the current process is about legalities: SLH is being delisted and wound up, and its assets (i.e. SFC and SMS) are being transferred to a new holding company being set up; and the legal structure and personnel of the new holding company and of SFC as its main asset are being sorted In other words, the deal is in the process of going through, if Lynam and Fry are to be trusted ... and why not? It is no longer a matter of going through the books to see whether to do the deal, but of going through the books and the legalities to work out how to do it. Of course, whenever lawyers are involved, there is the possibility of things going tits up. But barring some unpleasant and unforeseen legal wrangling, all indications are that this is a done deal apart from the final wrapping up.

Don't really see why we couldn't win promotion with or current squad. Davis, Perry, and Wotton, assuming we keep them all, would make an excellent, experienced "spine" of the team, and we have some good younger players who got valuable experience last season -- James, Mills, Holmes, Lallana, McGoldrick for example -- who should be capable of shining in League 1. It'd be great if we could get Saeijs in, and keep Schneiderlin & BWP, & perhaps even Euell; but there is the core of a very strong squad I think, by L1 standards.