stevegrant

I have no problem in people laying the blame at their feet, although I disagree with parts of that argument. However, I struggle to see the logic in not helping them basically to spite them when their success as SFC shareholders basically live or die by the success of the football club. If they don't manage to sort out the problems (or find someone who can), they'll get a pittance for their shares. If they can stabilise things (which, given the figures, is a massive ask) then credit will be due, albeit with a reasonably large slice due to both Barclays and Norwich Union for their continued support, although of course it is those two entities who are dictating the sale of the likes of Davies for less than we'd like. Driving a hard bargain when another club wants one of our top players is something Lowe has received fairly widespread praise for in the past, so I think it's pretty clear he's not been able to have too much input into proceedings on this occasion. I think the Sheffield United attendance perhaps highlighted more than ever that we have an ever-increasing number of fans who will only turn up to the big games. We averaged 21,000 last season, and yet had 10,500 more than that turn up for a big game. We had similar the season before, averaging 24k until the Southend game where a win would probably seal a play-off place, and surprise surprise, they all came out of the woodwork for that one.

Is it really bailing Lowe and Wilde out? As far as I see it, it's bailing Southampton Football Club out. The characters sat in the board room are a complete irrelevance, and unless they were backed by a significant investor, nobody in their right mind would attempt a takeover as they wouldn't be able to do anything different to the job Lowe and Wilde are doing right now because of the financial constraints. Isn't that pretty much what happened last time? Wilde came in off the back of "Football First", asking for the fans' support, etc, and what happened? Attendances actually fell in both seasons after Lowe's departure. Unfortunately, and I don't necessarily classify you in here as I don't know you or your attendance record, as far as I see it the Lowe situation last time was just a very convenient excuse for those who simply didn't want to watch Championship football. Despite their hollow "thousands, including me and everyone I know (because every single person I know is boycotting SFC because of Lowe), will return to St Mary's as soon as Lowe leaves" promises, they have never returned. I can't see that would change this time around, in all honesty.

That's just the cost of sales. There are other operating costs on top of that which makes a total of £14.4m: http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/search/?mode=movenav&page_id=9954

The makeup of the "lesser" board members is completely irrelevant in both cases. Mostyn and Bates call the shots at both clubs, which is exactly the same as it was pre-administration.

Genius. Chairman at Leeds before administration: Ken Bates. Chairman at Leeds after administration, but with stronger hold on the club: Ken Bates. Chairman at Bournemouth before administration: Jeff Mostyn. Chairman at Bournemouth when they officially come out of administration in the next week or two, with stronger hold on the club: Jeff Mostyn.

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A serious problem we seem to have here is that, as a whole, Saints fans have turned into the most cynical and pessimistic fans in the country. I don't think the most creative minds in the world would be able to reverse that. Whether it's anybody's fault or whether it's just today's society that leads us to be cynical and almost solely interested in "what's in it for me" isn't really my place to say, nor is it really relevant, but I really think the club has a massive struggle on its hands to get people through the turnstiles. The economic downturn is certainly not helping matters, either.

But how do you do that when any "offer" that is launched is generally only applicable to non season ticket holders? I'm personally not bothered about these sort of deals, I'd rather see the stadium full than half-empty, regardless of whether someone's getting in for a tenner for a less attractive game whereas I've paid an average of £16 or whatever it is. However, I'm well aware and totally appreciate the fact that others DO have a problem with that sort of thing, and there really isn't an awful lot the club can do in terms of getting people into the ground that would actually provide any sort of tangible benefit to season ticket holders. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head would be a "if a friend of yours buys tickets to two (or three maybe, depending on how the figures stack up) Championship games, you get a £5 Megastore voucher". That way, the club are getting about £40-50 in revenue for £5 "loss" which is only offsetting against the profit margin on the merchandise anyway.

I think somewhere in the region of £2.5m goes towards the repayment of the mortgage (which I guess includes interest on a "repayment" style mortgage - hardly likely to be an interest-only one!), but that's still the thick end of £15m remaining. I seem to remember a debate a few months ago about the business rates SFC are being charged by Southampton City Council/central Government, and that apparently we might be paying more than we should given clubs with similar-sized properties appear to be paying less. It would be useful if someone could find those figures...

Nobody else was wearing one, I could quite easily have been on either team. 5 people turn up each week having co-ordinated which shirts they wear so they can all be on the same team, and then turn around and whinge that the teams aren't fair, despite having more players. Hmmm indeed.

All in good time, Daniel

Not a lot from the actual cup run because the vast majority of all cup-related revenue (ticket and merchandise sales plus TV revenue) ended up in the players' pockets because of the performance-related bonus scheme that was in place at the time to ensure the basic salaries were kept relatively low. In terms of the overall picture, I think we made a profit of about £3m that year, based on pretty much a whole season of capacity crowds.

"Corner" prices still apply to block 4 in the Itchen North, blocks 10 and 11 in the Itchen South and blocks 34 and 35 in the Kingsland North.

Forgot to add: Given that wages are likely to be between £12m and £14m, what the bloody hell have we spent £17-19m on in the last year?!?!

The interim report stated that player and coach wages accounted for £6.1m of £14.4m operating expenses for the 6 months to 31 December 2007. Extrapolating that out to the end of June, that's roughly £12m of £31m on wages (although it's possible that wage costs for the second half of the season were even higher due to the loan players we brought in, Richard Wright in particular). As a percentage of costs, that's actually perfectly manageable. Unfortunately, the costs themselves are more than twice the revenue. Deloitte & Touche recommend that player salaries should not exceed 60% of the club's revenue. At the moment, we're pushing 85%. That's simply ridiculous. 60% of revenue is £8.4m, so that's got to be the target. The following players have left (guesstimate wage figures in brackets): Safri (£8k) Wright (£5k) Ostlund (£7k) Lundekvam (£15k) Licka (£4k) Makin (£7k) Idiakez (£10k) Powell (£10k) Also, Rasiak (£20k) and Saganowski (£10k) are off the wage bill for the forseeable future, so we're clearly taking a step in the right direction on that front. If my guesstimates are anywhere near accurate, that's £96k per week (nearly £5m per year) removed from the wage bill, which would bring it right in line with the recommended wages:turnover ratio. Of course there have been additions, but I don't expect Holmes, Schneiderlin, Perry, Wotton or Forecast to be on big basic salaries. I'd expect them to have decent bonus schemes which reward them for their own performances and that of the team, which I think is the right way to go, particularly for a middling-sized club like ours. The reason for still requiring player sales is, in my opinion, two-fold: 1. Short-term cashflow to keep the bank happy - I'm sure they're satisfied with the salary cutbacks made to date, but even with those, we're still spending about £25m from £14m revenue; 2. Get a bit of cash in for a couple of players who could be replaced with a number of slightly lesser but "decent" players on smaller salaries, thereby ensuring we've still got cover for key positions but so that we're not keeping too many high earners.

The operating loss for the year is around £17m, offset by a £12m profit on player trading, resulting in an overall loss of about £5m. Quite how we managed to spend £31m (revenue of circa £14m) in the 12 months from July 07 to June 08 is beyond me. Absolutely staggering figures.

If the same people didn't all turn up wearing the same colours, we might get a bit of variation.

If you're a shareholder, I believe you are entitled to inspect the company directors' contracts at the registered office, i.e. St Mary's.

Sorry, what?!?!

Totally agree. Some of the abuse he received from his own supporters was absolutely shocking and I don't blame him for a second for being more than happy to move to Stoke where the fans might at least give him a chance. It wasn't his fault Redknapp wanted to sign him from Pompey, and it wasn't his fault that Redknapp insisted on playing him for 90 minutes every game despite very very clearly not being anywhere near match fit.

Given Hone's brash style, it makes it all the more surprising that he didn't attempt to exercise some sort of control over what was being spent. I do think that we probably paid over the odds for *most* of Burley's buys, but I guess some of that comes from us still being perceived as a big fish in the Championship at the time. However, I've just looked down the list of players we signed under Burley, and there aren't many who haven't contributed: 05/06: Bartosz Bialkowski (nominal) Jim Brennan (free) Alexander Ostlund (free) Grzegorz Rasiak (£2m) Darren Potter (loan) Peter Madsen (loan) Jermaine Wright (loan) Richard Chaplow (loan) Marcelo Sarmiento (loan) Of those, only Sarmiento didn't contribute. 06/07: Bradley Wright-Phillips (£750k) Jermaine Wright (free) Pele (£850k) Kelvin Davis (£1m) Rudi Skacel (£1.6m) Jhon Viafara (£800k) Chris Makin (free) Inigo Idiakez (£250k) Marek Saganowski (loan) Danny Guthrie (loan) Of those, Idiakez didn't contribute much that season (but was very influential after Burley had gone, perversely), and Skacel hasn't come close to living up to his reputation and price tag. Other than that, no real issues, particularly considering we somehow made a profit on Pele. 07/08: Marek Saganowski (£650k) Youssef Safri (£200k) Wayne Thomas (£1m) Jason Euell (free) Stern John (free) Andrew Davies (£1m) Adam Hammill (loan) Gregory Vignal (loan) Alan Bennett (loan) Christian Dailly (loan) Phil Ifil (loan) Stephen O'Halloran (loan) Since signing permanently, Saganowski hasn't done much, and Thomas was at least £500k too expensive. Other than that, the only gripe is with Euell's wages and his early performances. He was another, like Idiakez, who pulled his finger out under Pearson and finally showed that he was worth a place in the team. Yeah, we got robbed there, but in the club's defence we were at the point of desperation in our search for a centre back as it was a week before the season started. I guess we'll never know whether that position was made a priority at the end of the previous season (when Baird was sold), but it certainly looked from the outside as though we weren't really looking very hard during that summer. That'll be the only goal he scores this season, I suspect. He scored on his home debut for Pompey in the Premier League and then failed to score in 20-odd games after that. I'm not too sure what the reasons for letting Fuller go were, he'd finally found his feet for us at the end of the previous season and it seemed as though the fans were finally off his back, so to get rid of him then seemed very odd.

SoccerBase are saying he's on loan at Brentford again.

I didn't think the teams were *that* unbalanced. The main difference was that we had a slight bit of organisation and were happy to pass to everyone on our team, yet the opposition would only pass to their mates most of the time.

I personally think it actually reflects more on the complete lack of intelligence of supporters that someone with a win ratio of 21% can be hailed a "fantastic manager" and yet someone with a win ratio of 41% is "utterly clueless" and a "complete disaster"... In my opinion, the main "crime" of the Burley era wasn't the "legacy" he's left us with - after all, Burley wouldn't have been the one who negotiated fees and wages with the selling clubs and the players - it was those above him who didn't think to ask "yes, these players may contribute, but are they REALLY worth £Xm and £Yk per week?". It was all "very good, sir". How many boards of directors at multi-million pound turnover companies would allow such massive expenditure without it being discussed and approved at board level?

I think in the context of the overall situation, i.e. Derby without a league win in 34 games, us looking for a bit of revenge for the play-off defeat, etc, it's a "must not lose" game rather than a "must win" one. Given the strength of the respective squads, I think a draw would be a creditable result and one we can build on.