SaintBobby

What on Earth is strange about the Davis family moving house? His salary has probably just doubled. If my salary doubled, I'd move house.

That sounds about right - 7%ish compound interest. Above inflation, but not by miles. Of course, the disposal income of the earning, adult population in Hampshire has gone up massively over last 20-30 years, so you'd expect ticket prices to reflect that. (there's a limited number of seats and more cash chasing them, basically)

Sure, that may apply to him. That's fine. I get that. Similarly, Kelvin would probably prefer to stay at Saints than move to, say, Fulham. Each case is separate, of course. But, overall, on aggregate, we should be able to outbid and outspend Swansea and attract better players. That doesn't mean we should have bought Sigurdsson. Or that he didn't have some particular attraction to Swansea. Maybe we shouldn't. Maybe he did. But - in total - we are able to spend more money and attract better (new) players than Swansea. Anyone who doesn't get that basic point is just wrong, sorry.

Yes, it's very easy to explain that. Their income was higher, but their expenditure was much higher too. Their anticipated budget over the next few years is lower than Saints, most likely. I'm not sure what you mean by "forgetting our owner". The fact that we can risk big losses (by the look of it) enables us to both (a) gamble and (b) plan over a longer time horizon. Once again, if we can't outbid Swansea (which we can) we are in serious, serious trouble. This doesn't mean we can outbid Spurs, Man Utd, Barcelona etc. Just that we can outbid the two or three smallest teams in the top flight.

I'm willing to bet you a VERY, VERY large amount of money they aren't. Everton are nearly broke. They could find £6m for a striker, but only by selling off a present player or two and cutting payroll. They are nowhere near making £6m (net) bids. Absolutely nowhere near.

Simple question (I hope)...with a preface...then a thought Preface: As I understand it administrators are highly skilled, talented people whose job it is to tackle failing businesses and keep them alive/turn them around. This is a very well-paid and privileged position - akin to being a high court judge etc. It's a "closed shop"/registered profession (e.g. I couldn't just stick my hand in the air and say "give me a go") It carries with it severe responsibility and harsh penalties for screwing up (e.g. a high court judge found to take a bribe would be in much deeper sh1t than a juror taking a bribe). The essential principle regarding an administrator is that they must seek to get the best deal for the creditors - but this is often assumed to mean they keep the business operational, and the creditors get a fair-ish % (maybe only 10%, say) rather than conservatively killing the company and the creditors dividing up the remaining paper clips and toilet rollsb(maybe 0.000000001%). However, the administrator is liable personally for any decision to keep the company alive rather than dividing up its assets if an immediate division of the assets would be preferable to the creditors (e.g. creditors can get 2% today or 1% later, therefore I must close the company today or pay the 1% gap myself). Question: If the premise is correct, why hasn't Birch closed the company? What's he waiting for or gambling on? What potential liability does he face? He must be a very bright man, so is he awake every night worried by a potential £5m liability being placed at his door because he didn't shut down the skates weeks ago? This is on him, right? If he isn't worried about this, why isn't he? A lot of the evidence adduced above suggests that the sooner Pompey are toast, the less money is lost to creditors. Why does Mr Birch obviously disagree with this analysis? Especially given that - from his point of view - an immediate closure limits his own liabilities, makes it less likely that he loses his family home and sports car and pension fund etc? Is the man irrational, mad, risk-loving, corrupt? I doubt it - so why behave like this? Thought: Is any pressure being applied other than through this forum? For example, is there some way I can seek to become a creditor to Pompey and then litigate to close them down? What pressure is being applied to the Football League? Are League One teams wholly sanguine about whether Pompey suffer a points penalty next year? Were teams in relegation trouble last season (Bristol City etc) on top of this for their footballing lives? If Portsmouth go bust what would be the consequent reshuffle (e.g. would Cheltenham as play-off losers be promoted?) If so, why aren't these clubs all over it like rash? Not even their fans seem to care much. Can we clarify with some Ombudsman that Mr Birch is liable personally for the debts with every passing day? My thought is we should apply pressure rather than merely observe events.

Err, yes....that's why I said "this may be a one-off and not even a target". My point was a general one - I don't believe Swansea is a typically preferable location for a player, TDD seems to.

Serious question - is this totally unknowable? I mean I can't believe we'd know to the last £, but must be possible to derive what the broad salaries could be. At a broad guess, I'd say we'd pay around £1m pa for a first team player.

If we can't compete with Swansea for transfers, we're in serious trouble. This may be a one-off and not even a target, but if the strong view of most players is "Swansea is a much better club to play for than Saints", we're screwed.

tee hee hee comedy gold sigh

Am happy with Cortese only giving one or two set piece interviews per year. He's the overall organiser not the front man. Disagree with comments on Whelan though, think he's doing Wigan fans a favour by being very honest and direct about the situation re Martinez.

Nobody does it better....Carly Simon So bad it's good.

Oh please. Adam Lallana has a zillion more followers than me, and I get death threats and abuse regularly. Don't be so precious. Or, in the alternative, ask the Saints Comms team how they advise you operate this. Jordan Sibley is - after all - widely considered to be a genius in PR sports management.

One argument I totally don't get is that Cortese doesn't like season tickets because the club makes more on a match-by-match basis. In that case, just alter the price. Make it dearer to buy a season ticket than 19 individual match tickets. Fair enough, I guess. My sense is that the marketing/sales side of the operation is just a bit crap. Not the worst thing in the world, I can live with it. But it's not some brilliant co-ordinated strategy about narrowing a slaes window to sell more ticktes. It's just a bit crap.

We're likely to be in a relegation battle - along with about half the rest of the Premier League teams. I'll say 16th - but so hard to predict until we know who we sign and sell.

Gees...some people are really obsessed by this stadium expansion thing. We will jack up prices for the present capacity by quite a lot before we expand. If we can fill 32,500 regularly at c. £45 a ticket, then it's worth expanding. But not until then really.

Best example is Brighton away last season..went from 0-1 to winning 2-1 in last five or six minutes. Or were you watching the Champions League on Sky Sports at the time?

Z-list...that bloke who runs the IEA and is on the TV and radio a lot on economics etc. Mark Littleton?

I'm presently feeling we wil be around 12th-14th-ish. So, I reckon we will avoid the bottom three with room to spare. But the most important thing is staying up, not my random guess that we should stay up with a few places to spare. So, yes, I'd take 17th right now, no question.

I don't think anyone with even half a brain will listen to your precition other than to laugh at it and you. You were predicting a bottom third finish even when it was close to mathematically impossible. Word of advice? A period of silence would be an advisable step....

Having just watched the live post-match BBC coverage of the Coventry game and the Football League Show, it struck me how terrible our media management was. Obv, at the time I wasn't much bothered. And I wasnt much bothered when I watched the stuff half-cut on Saturday night. But seeing it again, Adkins has a live camera in his face at the final whistle and simply doesnt want it there. I imagine that the rather odd remarks that led some to belive he might not be Saints manager for too much longer were also made under similar pressure and with no press office present. It's a good example of how not managing the media well can cause stress for the spokesman (in this case, Adkins) or confusion in your intended story (n this case, a semi-rumour, referred to by the BBC, that Adkins might go). It's not very important in comparison to actually winning 4-0, but it is the sort of thing a half-competent £20K pa press officer wouldn't let happen.

I'm being dumb here. Is this a poll of who we want to go up or who we think will? I want anyone but West Ham (prob Birmingham if really had to decide) But I think it will probably be West bloody Ham.

I do like it when folk dig up these old threads. It does expose the loons for who they are.

We're going to come under much, much greater scrutiny in the Premier League. The club's approach to communications in the last couple of years has been pretty much the only area of Southampton's operations I've been worried about. It seems slapdash, haphazard and amateur. There will be negative consequences if there isn't a more constructive, engaging approach next season. Anything that "goes wrong" - player gets into a fight; player in court; player in "romp" with girl who isn't his missus etc - will come under much more scrutiny. These things being reported with the maximum amount of negativity will not be helpful - it can disrupt players' lives, mess with their pyschology/morale etc. The media will be much pushier on trying to discover the truth about injuries/lay-offs. It's probably not credible to keep insisting "no comment" - journalists will seek any info they can get and will offer cash for it if need be. Jordan Sibley's mobile continually going to voicemail might just about amount to a media strategy in League One. Not in the Premier League. I really hope the club seeks to appoint someone to overhaul and professionalise its communciations - just media but with fans too. I don't claim to have much first hand experiecne of Jordan Sibley, but I think there's some reasonably good evidence to suggest the task is probably beyond him (although he might be a good numebr two/number three).

1-0. 90th minute winner from Sharp. Those who haven't realised Hull are 6-0 up at Upton Park will go mental. So, in fairness, will the rest of us.