stevegrant

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Where has he said that he's "demanded" to speak to all levels of management? As far as I can see, he's sent what I assume to be polite emails (and they would have to be if he wants them to take his complaint seriously, which he clearly does) through the various channels he has available to him at the club. I think he posted on the UI forum that he first contacted David Luker, who would be the most logical place to start as he is - in name at least - in charge of the ticket office, and so should know what's going on. If he's not had a response from him, I don't see why it's an issue to escalate it to more senior members of staff if he knows who to contact. I'm sure we'd all do the same in any business if we had contacts to resolve issues as quickly as possible.

Don't know a Steve Straker at the Echo, heard of Simon Straker though. Always helps your stories to get the names right. Why do you think this discussion wasn't taking place two or three weeks ago then, when the ST refund actually happened? Can't have been looking very hard then, I missed four away games all season and recall seeing him at the vast majority of them. By people in charge before him. £6.5m overdraft, anyone? An overdraft that was the direct cause of administration... Administration twice, don't own their own ground because they sold every single asset in order to get short-term cash injections. Highly likely they'll be in administration again if/when they get relegated. They got promoted because of Eddie Howe working absolute miracles, not because they've run the club well on a tight budget. That club's been run appallingly in the last 20 years. Supporting who? You don't seem to quite know what your argument is, whether it's about Lowe or Nick Illingsworth. I'll always support the right of any Saints fan to go to games, whether I know them, like them, agree with them, etc, assuming they've not broken any relevant laws or ground regulations which would block them from going. It appears rather unlikely that Nick has done so in this instance, would you agree? If this is about censorship, which in my personal opinion it seems to be (and the club already has a recent history of this), then it's an absolute disgrace.

Strange, it seems to me that the majority of "vocal" posters on here don't stick up for him at all. Interestingly, though, nobody seems to ever confront Nick at away games with their concerns. I can't imagine why... Lowe's return was doomed from the start, but not because of Lowe. Do you seriously think HE phones THEM?! Probably because Nick wanted to keep it quiet until he'd actually found out what was going on, so the Echo weren't aware of it. Why would he tell them something he's been trying to keep quiet?

Not true. Someone else mentioned it either yesterday or Monday, and a whole load of assumptions/allegations were made about the whys and wherefores which Nick felt required clarification before it spiralled out of control. See above, he didn't choose for it to come out. I was told about it while I was away in Switzerland, so it's not a new turn of events, but somebody else mentioned it, others posted various inaccuracies and he felt he had to correct those. What "procedures" are they then? Judging by what Nick's said on what he's done to find out any reasoning behind it, which all seems fairly sensible to me, he's taken the following perfectly logical route: Contact people at the ticket office to see what's going on? Check. Get no response. Contact other people within the club who might have the faintest idea what's going on? Check. Get no response. Nick didn't go public with it. Who knows? Certainly not you. No he hasn't To be another sheep because it's the done thing to call into question a long-standing supporter's motives and actions, yet a new kid on the block playing with someone else's money is beyond reproach?

I thought the pitch looked in excellent condition, particularly given its reputation and Barnet's lack of budget. Difficult to read much into the team performance with a number of reserve and academy players getting a run-out, so I looked at a few individually. Carter looked useful but faded in the last 25 minutes or so, unsurprisingly. Ryan Dickson worries me, on a couple of occasions he gave the ball away cheaply, charged forward in an attempt to win it back and then left a massive gap when he didn't win it back. Aaron Martin again looked composed, and did particularly well tonight as he was the "senior" centre-back of the two. Racine looked a good prospect as well.

Cortese was at the last one.

Not really, if it genuinely was a complete irrelevance, nobody would give a toss about it and it wouldn't ever get discussed on here or on other forums.

And yet you have a pop at other people for "talking on behalf of others"... the hypocrisy really is astounding.

I genuinely don't see why this is an issue. David Luker, presumably one of his many contacts within the club, would be the first port of call for many on here with ticketing issues. Why wouldn't Nick use what he perceives to be the most efficient way of resolving (or at least getting some sort of explanation for) his problem?

If it had no credibility at all, do you think so many people would have an opinion on it?

Actually, I would say those who can't determine that the actual picture is a shade of grey rather than the black or white they're being fed with are the more "simple and suggestible" ones.

I would assume this is on the basis that the Premier League is a global brand which markets itself worldwide and has the majority of its consumers abroad. It's an angle I hadn't considered before, and worryingly, he may actually have a point... one hell of a can of worms, that one

I've been to pubs, clubs, etc in the past which have seemed great with half a litre of vodka inside me but then turn out to be utter shíte when I'm sober - I'm sure most of us have had similar experiences No argument that it was a shambles, no spirits available at all, seemingly very little beer or cider on draught, and then charging the same amount for a can as they were for a pint of draught earlier was a complete sham. However, while Nick and co were promoters, and will ultimately take responsibility as the "point of sale", I find it difficult to levy blame on him for the venue's inability to have enough stock or staff behind the bar.

If I were you, I wouldn't be getting too cócky about it just yet - there hasn't been a fans forum yet, after all...

Clearly I can't answer as to why they didn't reply, you'd have to ask Nick himself. I think there was an apology of sorts on the UI site, although can fully understand if people thought that wasn't sufficient.

Of course, everything people write on the internet is true, and not part of a macho internet character building exercise From what Nick told me both before and after the event, he and a couple of others were merely acting as promoters for the event. The venue took the majority of the money, with some sort of middleman (presumably this Pompey connection?) taking a cut. Nick then paid commission to the people he had selling tickets. Doesn't seem to leave an awful lot left over, really. As I said to him the day after, it probably wasn't worth the hassle, really. A decent enough idea badly and somewhat naively executed, sadly.

And did he?

Not really, what you're suggesting is that, despite being debt-free (to external finance providers, at least, ML will rightly want a return on his initial investment over time), if ML gets fed up and sells the club, we're up **** creek again. The simple fact is that, unless we go on a Pompey-esque spending bender between now and that point, we wouldn't be.

If ML did take that route and sells up, he's got to find a buyer. Alternatively, he could give it away. Either way, I don't see how that situation would require a "Saints Aid II" that you're suggesting

Yep, if they're too much in the middle-ground all the time then I would assume nobody would buy the paper as it would be a bit boring. I don't think they've been particularly starved of good stories in the last year, the fallout from the takeover and Wembley events alone probably filled a month's worth of copy between them. They've also had plenty of ammunition to print a hell of a lot more negative stories than they have done - obviously there was the Pardew situation at the end of the season which ran for a while, but aside from the Echo ban, that's the only negative story they've run with as far as I can remember.

That's not quite true when you look at more local media stories, particularly sport-related ones. Certainly in the nationals, scandal sells many more copies, but at a local level, success sells more. I would imagine the editions featuring the Liebherr takeover and the Wembley win were the Echo's biggest-selling editions in the last year or so, by some distance.

Without wishing to fight Stu's corner (or anyone else's for that matter), I'm pretty sure he said at the time (and has repeated enough times since) that he had 15 peoples' season tickets and therefore got two each, as every season ticket holder was entitled to...

Well they should concentrate on releasing a product that is as bug-free as is practical on the day of launch, like every other software house, first and foremost. While I appreciate the relatively time-sensitive nature of this particular game, any other product's release would be held back until it was actually ready. The next one's called Football Manager 2011, so what's the big deal with actually releasing it in 2011 if it enables the developers enough time to iron out all the problems? And then, even if it's essentially last year's game with updated data, but near-enough bug-free, they'll still shift enough copies just on the strength of the brand name alone. They don't tend to implement a "big" new feature every year anyway, the 3D match engine probably took at least 3 or 4 years of development in a separate project before it was even put forward as a new feature for FM09, so they don't need to concentrate on a "headline" new feature, just get the game working out of the box.

They've always done so before with no issue... why not now?