SaintBobby

I'm just beginning to lose fiath in Pinnacle. Given a straight chocie between Pinnacle and the (unknown) Swiss, I might now prefer to take a punt on the latter.

I get the sinking feeling that today really is the last chance saloon.

Is this actually true? Are there no legal limits on their discretion?

It's enfuriating. I probably concede we deserve the ten point penalty - but refusing to allow Saints to play in League One unless Pinnacle surrender all rights of apeal is, as others have said, disgraceful. I don't even see why the appeal needs to be dealt with before the kick off at the first game. Points deductions have been made in the course of a season before - including a coupel of occassions last season. Okay, it migth be bad news to see Saints win an appeal after 42 or 43 games, but I don't see why it would be a problem in, say, September or October. What I don't know - and I doubt many posters do - is whether the League's behaviour is illegal in some way. One school of thought seems to be that it's the FL's league, so they can impose whatever rules they want. But there are obviously legal limits to this. I'd doubt that they could apply conditions such as (a) you must write a personal cheque of £10,000to Lord Mawhinney or (b) you must sack all your black players etc. So, the real question is whether rescinding the right to appeal is on the legal or illegal side of the line. I suspect it is illegal and subject to judicial review, but I'm not a lawyer.

Am not confident that the takeover will happen today, but I do hope to hear something from the FL. Even if they are a bunch of old crusties...

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/4451026.Pinnacle_fighting_for_right_of_appeal_against_points_deduction_in_Saints__takeover/ Where's it say that the FL meeting has finished?

Good news and thanks for the update.

The bloke is so completely nuts that I genuinely feel he could unite the fanbase into a "Bring Back Lowe" campaign. For that even to be contemplatable shows just how bad he is.

The evidence seems to point to the view that the legal advice received by Pinnacle, MLT, Fry et al, points to us having a very strong - possibly watertight - case against the ten point penalty. If this is so, then I'd be loathe to see us surrender on the -10 points too easily. I really think it could well end up being the difference between promotion and non-promotion, so a good few million quid ride on it.

Good to see the press as confused and divided as posters on here!

About 80%, but if deal not concluded in next 36 hours, this % starts to tumble fast.

I know most Saints fans are agonising about whether they'd like Matt Le Tissier or Marc Jackson to become the next Chairman of Southampton Football Club. It's one of those evenly balanced, very hard to call, knife edge judgements. Here's some footage to try and help you make your mind up: Le Tissier http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUt5CQPyWzs Jackson http://asf.narrowstep.tv/mcp?psid=86...d=175029&fab=0 I still can't decide between the two of them....:-)

Cos Mark Fry can't prove it either. He can't just turn Jackson away because he reckons he's a bit of a loony. It's not as if the world's billionaires are queueing up to buy the club. A delusional Walter Mitty photocopier salesman - who's willing to bluff - gets a hearing, I'm afraid. I honestly believe that I could have put together a bid with my missus that would have had to have Fry's serious attention. I'd probably only be found out when I had to write a big cheque, but I could quite easily indulge my own insane fantasies (and get some coverage in the Daily Echo) until that time. See the whole AFC Bournemouth embarrassment if you're in any doubt on this. Especially the regional TV interview with Jackson. If you can watch that interview without p*ssing your pants laughing several times, you have an abnormally strong bladder.

as confirmed at the 12.30pm press conference, which was then put back to 2.30pm.

You might as well ask me if I think Bobby Stokes was offside when he "scored" at 4.40pm on May 1st 1976. He was. But, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. This isn't about just desserts, it's about fighting our corner.

Why the hell should he reveal himself now? Just to satisfy the rants of a lunatic, delusional poster like Guided Missile on a web forum? And to Evo - we have more than MLT's word (although I would consider that to be enough). We have the administrator of SLH willing to sell him the football club. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the hitches are beacuse of a dodgy issue surrounding leveraged debt or something similar. Frankly, if I was worth £500m and was involved in a serious attempt to buy Saints, I'd want to stay anonymous until completion of the deal. Because if the deal didn't come off, I wouldn't want either (a) a risk of opprubium from disappointed Saints supporters or (b) to be continually associated with potential purchases of crisis-hit clubs in the tabloid media for the next decade at least.

I can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist. I can't prove that Marc Jackson doesn't have a credible takeover package. But, on the evidence I have seen, I'd rather trust my Great Aunt Hilda to run Saints. And she died twenty years ago. Broke, senile and dribbling into her soup.

He was okay-ish as manager and IMHO is a very decent man. If and when he departs, I wish him the very best.

Jackson is a care in the community case. The bloke is a delusional loony. Generally, I pity him. Occasionally, I laugh at him. Sometimes, I worry about him. But don't get paranoid about him or attack him. That's the moral equivalent of biting the head off an ugly paraplegic kitten.

I think (and hope) that this is a good summary. Fry and Pinnacle would have received very good legal advice on all of this - and probably much better and more extensive legal advice than the FL has seen fit to pay for (after all, this is not a life and death matter for the Football League, but it is for us). Procedurally, I suspect it's the FL who are in a mess - but tactically, we are now days away from extinction and they aren't...

I'm not at all sure this is right. Firstly, it strikes me that Pinnacle may have a case for an injunction. They can argue that their business plan is being held up - or even destroyed - by the Football League. It's not at all clear that SLH are the only plaintiffs here. By way of example, if I'm about the buy up a local restaurant or bar from a compnay in administartion and the municipal authority arbitarily and unreasonably prevents me from doing so at the last minute, I may have a case in law against the local authority. You are right that injunctions requiring "specific performance" are rare. Usually courts would lean against an injunction on these grounds and rely on the matter going to damages. E.g. if I book Elton John to play a gig and at the last minute he says "I can't be bothered to turn up", it is unlikely that I can get an injunction forcing him to perform, I'd have to sue him for damages. BUT... the SLH/SFC/FL situation seems to be case where an injunction requiring specific performance MIGHT be appropriate. This is because (a) the burden on the FL to comply with the specific performance sought is very limited (i.e. they need to allow us to compete in League One and let the -10 issue go to a tribunal, hardly a great burden on their part...probably requires Mawhinney's signature on two pieecs of paper), (b) the damages suffered by Pinnacle/SLH/SFC are both difficult to quantify and potentially enormous (e.g. we were intending to sell season tickets from Monday and anticipated a £2m revenue by the end of July....we believe we could run this outfit at a £1m profit per annum in perpetuity etc etc), and - just possibly - © the public interest is served by specific performance in this instance. The case is therefore very easy to distinguish from your example of seeking an injunction against a golf club on the basis of their treatment of your handicap.

I doubt that. They'd need to show what their losses actually were. Given they ahd no chance of recouping the £30m, the FL would only have cost them whatever the Pinnacle settlement would have been (say, £8m to Norwich Union, £2m to Barclays?) Anyway, am still hoping it doesn't come to that!

Really good analysis. Nail on the head.

Cretin. It doesn't show the danger of anything. That post has had nothing to do with the problems the takeover bid has hit. You are also completely wrong re: your abject misunderstanding of the Football League rules. I'm glad that people can post new threads so easily. It continuely reminds me of how utterly f**kwitted some people are, and makes me feel more secure about my own relatively high IQ. What a moron.

Am hoping these matters can be resolved. Football League being intransigent, but won't let us go to the wall over it in the face of legal advice (if that's what we have)