stevegrant

Possibly - I still think Carvalho is the better of the two, but Alex was shaky at best and Ivanovic isn't a right-back. The weak link in the Chelsea team at the moment, though, is Petr Cech...

Dunno, took him off on 80 mins, three minutes later they'd scored two goals

Game well and truly on, 4-3 Liverpool on the night, 6-5 on aggregate. Absolutely mental

Turner being out is not a good thing, judging by his "performance" against Bristol City on Saturday where he gifted City both of their goals. Happy with Earnshaw being out, though.

The Saints Trust are co-ordinating a bucket collection at tomorrow's game, taking an "every little helps" attitude. They are looking for a number of volunteers to help with this collection, which will run between approx 1.45 and 2.55 - if you are willing to help, please e-mail Nick Illingsworth at bucketcollection@saintsweb.co.uk (that address forwards to his personal address) with your name and a contact phone number.

Lots of likely new grounds next season, which could prove quite expensive Also hoping Luton somehow stay up as I've not been to Grimsby or Chester so wouldn't be too bothered if they dropped into the Conference - Luton going affects my 92 ground count... currently on 61 (will be 62 with Forest), potentially 12 new grounds next season in League One.

:(

Game will still go ahead - I'll look into either moving people from 45-minute slots to 90-minute ones to fill the spaces or getting other people in.

As a note to Saint dyer, as I can't send you a PM, keep posting advertising spaces in your game and I'll keep deleting them - ultimately, I'll end up deleting you as well.

As far as I'm aware, fans wouldn't "run" the club - they would simply own it and employ a CEO/chairman/whatever to run the club as he/she sees fit.

He may well have done. The list simply states that he is one person who has donated "£1000 or more".

Simply because in this situation the buyer holds all the aces and can pretty much name their price. Pre-administration, any decision lay in the seller's hands, so any potential buyer knows they'll have to make an offer that is acceptable to the seller. That seller is taken out of the equation now, with the ultimate decision taken by the administrator. In theory, as long as someone offers "something" to the creditors, there will be an accepted offer, but I suspect it may not be as simple as that.

So let me get this straight, you have a go at all those who have refused to attend when they disagreed with the way the club was being run by Lowe, and then say that if someone comes in who you disagree with, you'd do the same? :confused: Nothing like a bout of hypocrisy to start the day...

They've apparently announced a hastily-introduced 5% reduction in season ticket prices - I'd heard they'd only sold 700 tickets as of last week, and the sacking of the fairly popular Sousa wouldn't have improved sales too much. I can't see a 5% reduction from £600-odd persuading that many people to part with their cash, particularly when they can see the board making a complete pig's ear of everything when they should really be competing at the top of the division.

The number of people who are yet to pay can be counted on the fingers of one hand, so the money shouldn't be an issue. The payment we make doesn't actually go direct to SFC, it goes to Saints Event Management, which isn't part of SLH - if the worst happens, we'll simply get our money back.

Spot on. I do think a single bid backed by one or two people with sufficient funds will work out better than one backed by 3000 fans, but it's entirely right that we prepare for the potential eventuality where the latter becomes the only viable option.

Except without the cup finals, trophies, etc?

Judging by his performance on Monday night (against his real team's bitter rivals, no less!), it'll be like playing against 10 men if he plays.

Didn't stop Leeds... (although obviously their appeal was rejected, eventually)

Yes. Luton's "holding company" problem wasn't that it was in debt, it was that their directors stupidly put payments to agents through there, presumably as some sort of cover-up. The thing that they're ****ed off about (and with some degree of sympathy from me) is that club officials pointed out the irregularities to the FA when they found out what the directors had done. The FA would probably never have found them had they not been tipped off, and Luton's "reward" for exposing their former directors? A 10-point penalty, which will almost certainly cost them their place in the Football League. The directors' penalty? Nothing.

The problem Luton had with their holding company wasn't that it was in debt, it was that they used it to pay agents, which is strictly against the FA's rules. All fees to agents must go through the football club's accounts. They didn't do that, so got hit with a 10-point penalty from the FA. The Football League then added 20 points to that deduction because they failed to agree a CVA with its creditors when it exited administration, and because they had been in administration three times. It was the football club which held the debts, not the holding company.

He says, while being outraged without knowing all (or indeed any) of the facts...

Fantastic. So you'd rather compromise the very existence of SFC just so you can say "Lowe's gone!"? Just fantastic.

Of course, it had absolutely nothing to do with the massive drop in the price and the "all hands to the pump" rallying call based on the very immediate crisis that had just exploded. All hail Barclays, that responsible lender who allowed SLH to borrow £6.5m after approximately the same level of revenue had instantly disappeared with the end of the parachute payments, and then kicked up a fuss despite the company then spending 15% of its revenue attempting to reduce said borrowing. Christ. :confused:

I'd disagree. If the club decided in January that they were cutting prices for ALL games for the second half of the season to £15, many season ticket holders would have been ****ed off - myself included - as the cost-per-game of a season ticket would then actually have been MORE than buying on a per-game basis (it's currently just over £16 per game based on the March Madness renewal price of £380). While I understand and appreciate the financial position of needing to get as much cash in as possible, there were very few "public" signs of the severity of the situation to the average fan, particularly given that we didn't sell a single player in the transfer window. Perhaps they could have done the £15 deal for a couple more games, but any more than that could have had a longer-term effect, not just in terms of season ticket sales but also with matchday sales as well. Just because tickets are suddenly cheaper every game, that doesn't mean people are automatically going to return in their droves and, more importantly, attend on a regular basis. As a slightly long-winded example: Current price £24, averaging 7k matchday sales = £168k per match x 23 home games per season = £3.864m Club tries to stimulate attendances by dropping the prices for the following season across the board to £15, which brings 17k matchday sales for the first 5 games = £255k per match = £1.275m, but the football on show is crap, people are ****ed off, etc, so despite the price drop, people can't be arsed to pay to watch a crap team, so the attendances fall away again. The next 5 games drops to 13k matchday sales = £195k per match = £975k, and then the remaining 13 matches average 10k matchday sales = £150k per match = £1.95m. While the matchday sales have increased by £400k over the course of a season, the club has had to reduce the cost of a season ticket in line with the matchday price reduction. Therefore instead of getting 10,000 season ticket holders at £350 (£3.5m), they're getting 10,000 at £250 (£2.5m), so they end up losing out overall.