stevegrant

If you fancy a slightly longer walk/stumble, there's always the Winston on the corner of Hill Lane and Archers Road. And yes, the past in the Park Hotel is best forgotten...

The Standard is independent of the Daily Mail these days - sold to the Russians for the princely sum of £1.

The England band are pretty much universally hated. We're more than capable of creating an atmosphere without adding a band; for that reason, I'm out.

AFC Bournemouth paid a six-figure sum to Begbies Traynor when they were appointed as their administrator last year.

As far as I can tell, the stadium is "owned" by St Mary's Stadium Ltd - the stadium appears on the balance sheet of that subsidiary company, as does the debt associated with it. It receives income direct from Southampton Football Club Ltd, net of VAT, which is for "the provision of football entertainment". This essentially includes all matchday income. The players' wages are paid for by SFC Ltd (NOT by the PLC) in accordance with League rules.

While I can empathise with the sentiment, now is very much NOT the time to be hitting "friendly fire" - everyone needs to be pulling as one right now. That particular argument can wait.

Anyone reckon the Euro Millions will see a massive surge in ticket sales in the SO postcode area in the next three weeks?

Lowe, Wilde and Crouch would initially have got nothing, although SISU did have a separate pot with which they were willing to buy out the major shareholders at the same price as their placing purchase (40p per share, which I think was 10p below the market price at the time) if they didn't want to remain as shareholders with little or no control. Whether they'd have been able to sell their shares to anyone else after SISU took over, who knows.

Their offer would have injected somewhere between £10m and £12m (£12m less various legal fees) directly into the company, in exchange for a "50% + 1 share" shareholding. It would have diluted all existing shareholders' holdings with no opportunity to purchase additional shares to maintain their percentage holding. That, in my opinion, is the main reason why the "big 3" rejected it. I may be wrong, but that's my belief.

Spot on. I'm led to believe that Aviva haven't had any issue with our debt to them. They'll obviously be ****ting themselves now, mind you...

The lot of them have a hell of a lot to answer for. I'm still baffled as to why Lowe, Wilde and Crouch agreed to actually pay their contracts up rather than have them sacked for gross misconduct. I mean, seriously, who in their right mind sanctions spending of £7m on the basis of someone saying "yes, it'll be coming, don't worry"? Particularly the CEO of a public limited company!!

Seems a bit odd given that he dropped two players from the starting lineup for last night's game because they were out drinking!

If he offers more money than anyone else then yes, he does stand a good chance of buying Jackson's Farm. It'll be a number of years before anything can/will happen on that site, so it would require someone with the ready funds to buy it now but with the patience to wait 10 years+ to see a return. In the current economical climate, I can't imagine there are many people who fit that description, and I certainly wouldn't put Lowe in that bracket.

This.

Do we get to play noughts and crosses on Barry's jumper again?

I got a text from Son of Bob this morning who said he saw a car with the number plate K 84 TES heading south on the M3 - it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Ken Bates is going to brief Lowe on "best practice" regarding placing a company into administration and emerging in complete control at the end of it...

I don't understand Barclays' logic on this, to be honest. They seem to be cutting their nose off to spite their face. The overdraft has been reduced by £2m+ in the last 12-18 months, so it's moving in the right direction, and yet they've decided to pull the plug for the sake of what is a relatively small amount of money. Now, it's entirely possible that they'll get back absolutely none of that money - I suspect it's not secured against anything - whereas if they'd continued working with the club, they could have recouped all of it plus interest over the next few years.

You've lived a sheltered life, Minty

I'd received the info on the condition that it was subject to an embargo until 7am today - I felt I should respect my source's request on that.

I never "poured scorn" on what you said, given that I had received what I suspect was identical information. I made a sarcastic post in response to fos1 who seems to only ever post in response to you by saying "yeah, I agree with you, Duncan" - it looks ridiculous and appears as though he can't come up with his own opinions. Knowing the bloke, I know that isn't the case, but as I say, it looks ridiculous, almost as though he's hanging on every word you say like the kid at school who stood behind the bully repeating everything that comes from his mouth.

Yeah, we just end up buying the ground itself

I would think it highly unlikely that Bates would be out-thought by anyone. He's out-thought HMRC for the best part of 50 years, and they're not exactly idiots. If the quotes from a "spokesman" are true, I cannot believe the sheer stupidity of the Football League.

If SLH does go into administration, the Echo reckon the Football League have told them the football club won't be docked points. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/saints/news/4251026.Football_League_says_Saints_will_not_be_deducted_points/ Seems very odd...

Sky Sports News "unconfirmed reports"