stevegrant

Which part of "I want them all to have no further part in SFC" suggests I'm sat on the fence? A "fact" according to that ever-reliable source, Leon Crouch. As he's not got an axe to grind at all, has he? Nobody held a gun to his head and forced him to pay way over the odds to buy those shares. Perhaps if he hadn't alienated himself from both Lowe and Wilde, they might not have felt the need to rock the boat in the summer. I wouldn't have paid a 20% premium on shares in a football club, so it's a fairly moot point. I don't think I've suggested otherwise. All I've suggested is that Crouch, in my personal opinion, is not someone I would want to see replacing him.

The Coventry deal with SISU is structured totally differently to the offer they were making with SFC. As far as I can see, the only reason it was rejected by Lowe, Wilde and Crouch was because it was going to dilute their shareholdings, so none of them would be in control anymore. Since then, the "control" thing isn't even the issue anymore, IMO. It is simply a case of wanting to get one over on at least one of the other two. Lowe and Wilde want to keep putting Crouch down as much as possible, and Crouch wants to exact revenge on the pair of them for forcing him out in the summer. The lot of them are ****ing pathetic.

which the three "wise" men rejected. That £12m could have come in handy, really.

I was there, as you know. I know what I saw. You can twist it to suit your own agenda as much as you like, but I know what I saw. While many others in the room may have agreed with what was being said and applauded accordingly, they weren't standing and cheering. 20-30 people were stood at various points, and they all left when the vote was taken. Sorry, but that's crap. Why didn't the lot of you want to hear what he had to say, particularly if you felt sorry for him/thought he was out of his depth? You could have put Lowe on the spot, but you chose to walk out and not listen, because you'd already made your judgement before even giving the bloke a chance to put his opinions across. That I do agree with, and have said so in the past. That doesn't excuse Crouch's behaviour though.

The management company for my place are complete and utter pillocks. Next door to my place is a B&B, who had already been granted planning permission to build an extension at the rear of the building before I'd bought the place (and I don't/didn't have a problem with it either). When it came round to them actually doing the construction, they realised they'd require the use of the car park for my flat (and the building next door) for access, as there wasn't enough space at the side of their building to get through. This would basically involve knocking down the wall between the two properties and driving a 20-ton HGV in and out for a few months. The neighbours contacted the management company and basically lied, telling them that they'd checked with all the residents of the flats to ensure they didn't have a problem with them using the car park. They'd done no such thing, but the management company - instead of double-checking with us - just said "yeah, ok, fine, but it's only to be used 9-5 Monday to Friday, and you pay for any damage". The first I knew of this permission being given was when I was woken up at 8am on a Sunday morning by the reversing beeps of an HGV coming into the car park, and then a big crash. Apparently, they had brought in a surveyor to check that the car park could carry the weight, and it had been given the all-clear. However, as soon as they brought the lorry into the car park, it sunk, leaving craters more than a foot deep. I complained to the management company, sent them photos, and asked why I hadn't been told/consulted about them using the car park. They said "the neighbour told us they'd asked everyone". "What, and you just took that at face value?!" was my reply I spoke to the owner of the property and he promised that they were going to completely relay the car park, meaning it would be in better condition than when they first went in there. When they eventually finished the building work 3-4 months later, I came home from work to find a ridiculous-looking patch of uber-cheap tarmac in a strange bubble shape, which basically did the bare minimum of covering up the holes. Most of that tarmac has since come loose due to the rain, but because of the weather they now can't fix it until March/April... :mad: In the last service charge budget, they requested money to cover the cost of a gardener, which was fair enough as the grounds were a bit of a state. In May, I noticed that someone was turning up once every couple of weeks and doing a couple of hours of work on tidying everything up, but then he stopped coming, so I asked the management company about it, and they claimed to know nothing about it, and that they'd not actually appointed anyone to do it. So they've taken everyone's money without actually paying for the work to be done. What made this worse was that I raised this again a few months later, when they sent a request for more money. I basically said that until they carried out the work they said they were going to do (which included fitting an intercom to my flat), they weren't getting the second half of the money from me. They then had the audacity to try to claim that they HAD employed a gardener, despite me having e-mail evidence from them which said that they hadn't!! Absolutely unbelievable. I'm still in dispute with them, and I'm also trying to get in contact with the freeholder in an attempt to get them to get a different management company. Fun and games.

It is "next" Saturday on the basis that it's after "this" Saturday. The Trust have e-mail addresses on their database, I'm sure they're capable of putting them to use if they deem it necessary. If you think it's so desperate that they have to organise something for yesterday, why not contact Nick?

Given that he is in a position of relative power, he needs to be able to control his temper and emotions in that sort of situation. With the situation the club is in, whoever is in charge needs to keep their emotions intact, and I'm afraid he spectacularly failed to do so there. He was supported by a number of people there, but that's to be expected. He was against Lowe. Anybody who said anything remotely against Lowe got a cheer and a standing ovation from the same 20-30 people. The most notable thing to me from the AGM was that he - and most of the aforementioned 20-30 people, including Lawrie McMenemy - chose not to a) vote, meaning the figures were massively skewed in Lowe's favour, and b) stay and listen to what Jan Poortvliet had to say. To me, that says they were all more interested in just having a go at Lowe than actually caring about what's going on on the pitch and at the training ground.

Depends what you quantify as "success", really. I wouldn't necessarily call going from 13th when Burley left in January to staying up on the final day after other results go our way much of a success, to be honest. I also wouldn't say that that pretty dramatic drop in form is necessarily his fault either, given that he wasn't the one conceding stupid goals and failing to score at the other end, but if Lowe's going to get stick for his appointments, it's only fair that other chairmen who make dubious appointments get treated the same. Pearson may have made a better fist of it this season with the young players, as he seems to be doing at Leicester (although he bloody well should do with the squad at his disposal in that division), but to say he was a "great" manager for us last season is inaccurate.

So Crouch puts our top scorer out on loan and it's fine because he "knew the problems", but Lowe does the same and it's not on? Cracking logic there.

To be fair to him there, he wasn't involved at all until the first one was unveiled. Dodd and Gorman was a schoolboy error - given the mistakes of his predecessor (and successor) on that front with Gray and Wigley, I was stunned that he would follow the same path. I suspect he would probably admit that it was a big mistake. His conduct at the AGM was, to put it bluntly, a complete disgrace. He completely lost the plot and, I suspect, a great deal of potential support in the process.

While it would be great if they could mobilise quicker, would you not agree that next Saturday is probably the time when the highest number of fans/Trust members will be in the area?

Probably best I don't answer that :smt044

Long story short: data files got corrupted, would have taken longer to fix and restore them than to set up the new server, and a move to a new server had always been the plan at some point anyway, so it merely gave us the impetus to do so there and then. If you really want to trawl the old archives, you might find some stuff on the Google cache of the forum (if it's still there) or on archive.org

The only data we still have is what Master Bates has copied from the front page of the forum, which is as from 3rd August 2008, the date Saints Web was launched after the TSF server died a horribly painful death. I think you are right, though, the "most online at once" figure was a bit higher on the previous incarnation. The levels of total traffic are pretty similar, though. In fact, since the New Year, they've actually been higher than the old forum.

Indeed. The largest pinch of salt being taken here...

If you're looking for old threads from TSF, you *might* get lucky with Google's cache, or perhaps archive.org

They had a Saints fan on there on Wednesday last week... bucking a trend, he won by a mile.

Haven't a clue about the "position" of it, to be honest. I speak to Nick and a few of the other board members occasionally, but I'm not aware of anything major in the pipeline, although I have vague recollections of them being quite happy with the membership recruitment drive they did before Christmas. I would expect them to be formulating some sort of plan or statement on the current situation, but I really don't know. I don't think it's ever been that, to be honest, although I can see why that may be the perception. Nick is probably the only "recognised" name on the board now, so I guess it's inevitable that it all leads back to him, but he's been chairman for quite a while now. It's only a hindrance if people want to make it one. The Trust is the perfect vehicle for supporters who want their voice to be heard within the club, its structure ensures that the majority viewpoint is always taken, so any policies will always be reflective of the majority of the membership. Of course, unless every supporter joined, it won't be entirely reflective of the fanbase, but given a bit of support it could easily represent a significant cross-section. I think a lot more was made of the "fan on the board" stuff than was necessary - it certainly wasn't the single policy that many people seemed to think it was, and the original idea was a 5-year plan to get to that stage. Unfortunately those in control at the club at the time decided that they'd try to rush it through before the Trust had gained the kudos and reputation it required in order to make it work, and I made my reservations (particularly surrounding the idea of combining the Trust's membership figures with those of the regional supporters groups to get to the "magical" 1600 figure) known at the time, but others felt it was too good an opportunity to turn down (for the Trust, not for them personally - I don't think any of those on the board at the time would have actually been the fan who got voted onto the SFC board) and one the Trust might not get again, which was their choice and one that I accepted on the democratic basis. It's still there, and the board has decent people working on it, but in order for it to do anything it requires people to support it and to buy into the idea. I'd like to think that having Nick as chairman wouldn't put people off, but I can also appreciate that he's not everyone's cup of tea. I think his experience of supporter initiatives could prove very useful in these troubled times, though. Whether people are willing to give him and the others a chance is another matter. Edit to add: of course, if Nick isn't leading it or acting as spokesman, as I said in the other thread it still requires somebody to step up to the plate and be ready to assist the media at no notice. I don't envisage many people being willing or able to do so.

Just now you were saying that Robin's articles were more like a personal blog rather than the views of the organisation which he represents... make your mind up, either it's "only a personal blog" or it's a Trust statement of policy - it can't really be both.

It also needs a receptive audience. Unfortunately, while a lot of fans will agree with most of the voted-on policies of the Trust, most of them will also use the one policy - whatever it may be - they don't agree with to beat it with and refuse to join or get involved solely because of that. It would be nigh-on impossible to have a series of policies that every single supporter agreed on, and for some reason there seems to be a complete lack of any willing on the part of anybody to compromise.

It's entirely possible that that's the case - I've seen posts on here in the past which have basically been along those lines. However, it's a catch-22 situation really. People don't want to get involved if it's the "same old faces", but it usually ends up being predominantly the "same old faces" who are willing to put in the effort to get organisations such as the Trust off the ground. Any "outsider" who does get involved tends to very quickly get fed up and disheartened from the numerous cynical posts on forums which slag off every single thing they do or say, regardless of whether there are merits to them or not, and then you're back to the "same old faces" again...

So you recognise here that they are his views, rather than those of the Trust, and yet have a go at him because he gets asked his opinion by the media? As far as I'm aware, unless he's been given mandate to do so on the basis of a members' vote, Nick hasn't ever come out and said "The Saints Trust thinks ". He gets quoted by the press as "Nick Illingsworth, chairman of the Saints Trust" because the press like to use "credible" sources as much as possible, as it gives weight to their story. That doesn't mean to say that it's the opinion of that particular organisation. He's stated his opinion. What's the big deal? In what way?

I guess that would then depend on whether Duncan has made himself available. I know that Nick's job allows him the time to do it at pretty much immediate notice - I don't know if Duncan (or anyone else, for that matter) would have the same flexibility.

At the end of the day, the media always go to him when they want a quote or an interview. That's not his fault - as the chairman of the supporters group with the largest membership, you would expect him to be the first port of call, but - having spoken to a few people I know in local media circles - he's pretty much the only fan who a) has made himself available to the various media outlets, b) is almost always available during the day when said media outlets want interviews, quotes, etc, and c) also has a "position" within a supporters' organisation which (believe it or not) does give credence to the views he expresses. If there were more options who tick those boxes available, there would be a much more varied take on matters. Journalists, by their very nature, are lazy. If they know that 99 times out of 100 an individual will be available to help them fill column inches or TV space, they'll use that individual, because he/she is reliable. Until other fans put themselves forward for it, the media will continue to go to Nick for Saints-related opinions, whether you or I like it or not.

If Lowe wanted to commit corporate suicide on a Ratners scale, he'd consider it. The likelihood is slim to none, I imagine.