stevegrant

I play on itsagoal - absolute bloody nightmare trying to keep the finances in check; nobody ever wants to buy any of your players!

I'll be amazed if Lita drops down to League One.

It also just made me laugh to think that we're all getting excited because we've brought a 34-year-old Reading reject in on trial - talk about having been starved of any sort of positive news for ages

Would be a very good signing, IMO.

A fair point. I would be very surprised if anyone managed to go through with a leveraged buyout on a club of our size, mind you - they've struggled to get it to add up at Man United and Liverpool and they've got resources we can only dream of. Without any sort of guarantee of promotion (which you'll never get), I don't see how something like that could ever work - unless the idea is a leveraged buy-out and then a quick sale in a year or two when it's recovered some semblance of stability and respectability; essentially "flipping" the football club - I guess that could work, but again it's a fairly high-risk strategy.

Not as far as I'm aware, as long as you don't use it after the end of August you shouldn't be charged, but I'd check the T&Cs before signing up if you're unsure. I got about halfway through reading them and just got bored

How? The only doubts that linger are about whether they've actually got the money to buy the club in the first place. If they do go through with a purchase, that clearly means they were able to (eventually) get the money together to buy the club. Whether they invest any further money into the club from that point onwards is a bit of a red herring, for me. Last season, about a third of our total revenue was spent on servicing the debt - without that debt, which would almost certainly be cleared upon a completed purchase, that frees up somewhere in the region of £4-5m extra per year. In League One, that's a massive amount of money.

Don't forget that anyone who has a (legitimate) Sky Sports subscription can get free access to SkyPlayer during July and August, so you can still watch the Ashes while you're at work I'm sat here watching the England Lions match against the Aussies on one monitor with my work on the other http://www.skyplayer.com/ashes for details etc.

Well now Lowe's gone, surely that's irrelevant now? Removing my tongue from my cheek, I don't see why not - Norwich have sold nearly 19,000 season tickets for this season, and they're not in the situation where they need people to rally behind them to ensure the club is able to continue to function, let alone actually be successful. Given the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in, I would think it would be a good barometer of how many people actually give a toss about SFC to put season tickets on sale in this manner. If the club folds before a takeover goes through, they'd get their money back anyway.

There would be plenty to stop the administrator taking that revenue, because it's held in escrow and managed by completely independent groups, the administrator has absolutely no access or right over that money, and it wouldn't be handed over to the club until after the takeover goes through. Bournemouth did exactly that last season, and I believe most (if not all) of the clubs who have been in administration over the course of a summer have done the same.

As far as I'm aware, from the various snippets that have been floating around, is that the initial down payment from Swansea (somewhere in the region of £150k) was used as part-payment for the deposit, although clearly not strictly paid by Pinnacle - I would suggest that Fry was getting a bit edgy that nobody seemed willing to pay this deposit, and knew he had this lump sum from Swansea coming in and said "right, the price for the deposit has dropped to (£500k - cash from Swansea)", Pinnacle/Crouch then wrote the cheque for the remainder. I'm not convinced Crouch was any part of the Pinnacle deal until very shortly before that deposit was paid.

It's been mentioned by a number of different people on here and on other forums with nobody seemingly willing or able to suggest otherwise - Lynam's released more than enough statements in the last few weeks to have denied it there, but chose not to. Leon Crouch refused to comment when the Echo asked him about his involvement, which - given Leon's usual tendency to talk - suggests there's something in it.

The theory behind the exclusivity was that someone paying that non-refundable deposit was demonstrating that their intentions were serious - they weren't going to be getting that money back. Unfortunately, it appears as though Pinnacle themselves didn't actually pay a penny of that deposit, so a fat lot of good that did... I think Fry said something about being in discussions with "an overseas party", but I don't think he's disclosed any nationality.

They will have done so through an Escrow account, rather than via the main business. I'm absolutely stunned that SFC hasn't done this already, they could potentially have sold 10k season tickets at £300 each and they'd have £3m ready and waiting for the new owners to use, and it would have made the club more desirable if prospective buyers saw that there was already a captive support base.

Looks like Sol Campbell's leaving, as he wants to play for a "stable" club. Shame really, as he's a spent force these days and a bloody expensive one at that.

I seem to remember Mikkel Beck equalised for them in the 96th minute or something ridiculous like that - wasn't happy! A couple of other 3-3 draws spring to mind, actually - the comeback from 3-0 down against Liverpool and, almost certainly more importantly, the comeback from 3-1 down against Blackburn in the Great Escape season. Games against Newcastle tended to be pretty good as well, that 4-2 game where Stuart Ripley tore them to bits and Mark Hughes actually scored (25-yard volley into the top corner!) The Man City League Cup game (4-3 after extra time) was a cracker as well.

Dunno if you've spotted, but we don't get UEFA international breaks off in League One either. Not sure if there's still a ruling where you can postpone games if you get a certain number of international call-ups...

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=14356

I just asked them. It's also now on their Twitter feed

No press conference according to the Echo

The Echo believes it's £1.2m initially, rising to a possible £2m.

Fine by me

I actually think the FL statement is pretty ambiguous, and you only need to look at the stark difference in the interpretations on this thread already to prove it. They say that no other conditions other than a waiver in regard to sporting sanctions has ever been raised with them as a major issue. However, while it could mean that the only obstacle was appealing against the 10-point deduction that we have already been given, it could also mean a waiver which prevents us appealing any additional deductions they may or may not have planned. While I'm not in any particular hurry to defend Lynam over this whole debacle, the Football League have clearly worded their statement such that it doesn't actually say whether the issue is just to do with the 10 points or whether they gave any information as to whether they were likely to impose further "sporting sanctions" even if the Pinnacle deal went through smoothly from that point.