stevegrant

Thanks for the heads-up, consider that thieving loophole "being fixed"

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I knew you'd crack

I reckon Southampton City Council have ballsed up by declaring their interest in this, they could have kept it quiet and waited for the NIMBYs in Portsmouth to reject the idea. Instead, one of the PCC councillors at the meeting last night specifically said "if we don't approve this, they'll go down the road to Southampton", which will probably make them vote in favour now, when they might have been minded to reject it.

I thought he'd handed ownership of the site over to someone else after all that nonsense a year or two ago?

Appointing a manager with trophy-winning pedigree? Who are you and what have you done with the real Southampton FC?

Dubai Phil certainly isn't 25

More than 200 words when he could have just written "just a hunch, Saints to finish in the bottom half, decent odds of 5-4".

Gabi's been outstanding so far.

Shouldn't you have been concentrating on flying the plane rather than banging the cabin crew?

This win was without Carberry or Dawson, two of our key batsmen, as well. Even Joe Gatting got some runs!

You say "definitely" and yet don't provide any evidence of it, Nick. The two highest-profile former players who fell out with Cortese are Le Tiss and Benali. Le Tiss paid his own way whenever he had the opportunity, while Benali was banned from the stadium so didn't have that chance.

No, I meant when did anybody kick off about not receiving free tickets? I've seen people (you, mostly) constantly refer to it over the last few years, and yet I've seen pretty much zero evidence that anybody complained that they weren't given complimentary tickets by the club.

When did this happen?

Liverpool also took quite an amusing approach when it came to the £40m buyout clause that Suarez had in his contract - their attitude was "well, players don't seem to be too keen to honour contracts they sign these days, so why should we bother honouring this one?". Ballsy, legally dubious, and could easily have blown up in their faces if Suarez had dug his heels in, but it ultimately had the desired effect.

He will almost certainly have signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of his departure. That said, NDA's are nigh on impossible to enforce.

As subtle as a sledgehammer.

When did I say that employment law doesn't apply? Of course it does, it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

Unlikely, IMO. The way contracts tend to work on the football side of things is that you either have a fixed-term contract or a rolling contract, as opposed to being a "permanent" employee. Suspect Dodd's is an annual rolling contract, but in order to terminate that contract, the club must pay compensation (in the same way as if they sacked the first team manager). The legal situation will more than likely just be negotiating that compensation.

The club probably can't say anything yet until whatever legal stuff is in progress has been completed.

But that's the point, everything falling apart in the six months to a year immediately after his departure only accentuates his own standing. "If only that nasty Katharina Liebherr had let the genius have full control of her money, they could have avoided all of this and embarked on a period of world domination", etc. Yep, absolutely true.

Make no mistake, those in charge at the club are well aware of what's going on and aren't happy, but realistically what can they do?

I'm guessing he probably doesn't, to be honest.

We're an easy target, especially with a disgruntled former employee providing them with bitesized chunks of bull**** that they can churn out in the name of "inside information" at regular intervals.

I doubt Ashton's ever been to St Mary's, to be honest. The Mail tends to send one of their rank and file sports journos (I think Sam Cunningham's been their main reporter down here this season), or even sometimes not even bother and just use Simon Peach's PA reports.