hughieslastminutegoal

Ok you win. Next time you want to be entertained and impressed, I'll ask him to take you to Fratton Park! So how long do you think it will take him to build an "impressive" replacement? More that two/three years I bet. But it seems as though he doesn't mind waiting, presumably his mates who all watch formula 1 and the Dubai Classic and park their yachts in Monte Carlo, Cannes or St Tropez have said they won't mind slumming it until then.

They know that oil money needs to be reinvested in alternative businesses spread throughout the world. They practically control the whole of the horse racing industry now, it isn't just ego. Owning the great hotels loses them money does it, or are they making a profit? I hadn't appreciated that Pompey FC were such a prestigious jewel for their crown. I wouldn't judge Arab investors using the motivations of an Abramovic as a yardstick.

I didn't miss your point, I just disagree with your idea that Arab billionnaires are playboys only looking for a premiere league toy that gives them instant world attention. They are far more hard-nosed than that. I think you are wrong if you think they do not consider other factors. You are thinking as a football fan, which these guys are not. They are business people, and if he says it was growth potential he wanted, you can bet that was what he considered. Ok, so maybe he didn't look in depth at the whole of Portsmouth, but that is again missing my point - Portsmouth appears very much to be on the up while Southampton sadly is treading water while its best opportunities seem to be being compromised. And Arab buyers no doubt can buy informed British advice pretty easily. All they need is an impression. Someone else has firmly blamed ABP for the city's difficulties, and they may well be right about that, but if you are an Arab investor, who cares whether it's APB or the City Planners? It is still "Southampton". Maybe we don't push our plans firmly enough, maybe we just cave in at the very thought of APB opposition, who knows? Dubai were allegedly sniffing around us a while ago, but disappeared again. They must have known we were CCC then, maybe it was no more than our name was on a list, but why bother even put us on a list if Premiere status was absolutely crucial? I do agree however that League 1 would definately be off the radar for someone like him. A further relegation has completely blown it now.

I didn't miss your point, I just disagree with your idea that Arab billionnaires are playboys only looking for a premiere league toy that gives them instant world attention. They are far more hard-nosed than that. I think you are wrong if you think they do not consider other factors. You are thinking as a football fan, which these guys are not. They are business people, and if he says it was growth potential he wanted, you can bet that was what he considered. Ok, so maybe he didn't look in depth at the whole of Portsmouth, but that is again missing my point - Portsmouth appears very much to be on the up while Southampton sadly is treading water while its best opportunities seem to be being compromised. And Arab buyers no doubt can buy informed British advice pretty easily. All they need is an impression. Someone else has firmly blamed ABP for the city's difficulties, and they may well be right about that, but if you are an Arab investor, who cares whether it's APB or the City Planners? It is still "Southampton". Maybe we don't push our plans firmly enough, maybe we just cave in at the very thought of APB opposition, who knows? Dubai were allegedly sniffing around us a while ago, but disappeared again. They must have known we were CCC then, maybe it was no more than our name was on a list, but why bother even put us on a list if Premiere status was absolutely crucial? I do agree however that League 1 would definately be off the radar for someone like him. A further relegation has completely blown it now.

So let me get this right. An Arab billionnaire is buying a club with no history, that has the worst ground in the Premiere League, in an awful city with no room to expand because this plaything brings him kudos with the only people who matter to him - other Arab billionnaires. If you think Arabs are that stupid with their money, think again.

My post pointed out that GROWTH potential was what prompted him. That's what he said. But you apparently can read his "real mind" and say that he's only doing it for a plaything. How much would you have to spend to "buy" promotion last year? I don't think it is quite the lottery others have suggested, with the right money. Ok, after the latest relegation you'd have to gain successive promotions, so Saints specifically are not so interesting now, but I doubt that Prem status worth 30m is really the deciding factor. Say 18 months ago he'd paid 50m for Saints, spent 30m getting promotion, that's 80m invested. And how much has he paid for Pompey? And he's still got to build a stadium. That's why I don't think Prem status is so crucial, but CCC status at least probably is, along with what I think are important other factors, like "where is this city going?" If only we'd perservered with our Civic Centre clock tower laser lights, we'd have shown that missing vision.

I think you are valliantly holding on to a view of the two towns as they were. Are you really saying that we can ignore what has been done in the last 10 years in Poopy, compared to the rubbish that has gone on here over the same period? Poopy has shown energy, we just want tin boxes. And if I were an Arab buyer, that's exactly the kind of thing I'd be looking at if GROWTH (his word) was my objective.

--I didnt say it was in a worse position, but we've built ours and they haven't built their new one yet. -- but if you were a buyer you'd look at where the city IS GOING, not where it's been. They have a vision, we have none.

But that isn't what he said. The bloke who bought Pompey specifically said he wanted growth potential, not a plaything. That's out of the horses mouth.

Glad to see you at leat maintain a sense of humour.

I was listening to a business journo close to the new Dubai owner of Pompey who said he was buying them because they had much better scope for growth, and that he’d been looking around for a club for quite some time. He apparently was prepared to buy Newcastle for 200m some time ago but Ashley wanted 400m. This begs the question, why were Saints not on his horizon. Last year with the right buyer we were a season away from the Premiere League, and he was looking to buy a club then. He’d have got us for 50m tops, probably a lot less. And we have a stadium, not a word you could use to describe Fratton Park. So why pay quite a sizeable sum for Portsmouth now when he could have got us for much, much less, still liquid, a year ago? 1) We were CCC not Prem – but he could have pretty well bought promotion 2) We weren’t high profile enough – Pompey can’t really be described as high profile, and we had a 30 year recent history of top division football Turning back to growth potential, what have Pompey got that we haven’t? Is our stadium in the wrong place? – Probably. Far from good transport links, and stuck in a dead-looking area with no scope for quality non-industrial development. Is Portsmouth a more attractive place than Southampton? – Definitely yes. Up to say 10 years ago I’d always have said Southampton over Pompey, but not any longer. Portsmouth has had a vision for the development of the harbour area far beyond what our planners have managed to come up with for Southampton. They built a forward-looking Spinnaker Tower, placed to attract attention as part of an integrated harbour development, marina and shopping. We on the other hand can’t seem to get past a tin-foil mock up of a spitfire stuck on the end of a jetty separated from just about everything, the closest shopping being West Quay with it’s special view over roads, surface car parks and tin boxes. If you are lucky you might be able to see a cruise liner funnel. Portsmouth as a city attracts far more attention than Southampton, which has no focus, no integrated development plan, and has pretty much thrown away the chance it once had to come up with a coherent strategy for linking the retail areas with the waterfront. We have great central parks, but they are increasingly becoming isolated, with the town centre increasingly turning its back towards them. The City Council are still coming up with plans that do things like put a heritage centre in the Civic Centre, when clearly that would be far better to build one where it can help integrate the waterfront (where our heritage lies) with the shopping area. We still want the arts centre where Tyrell& Green was, maintaining and accentuating the strung-out shape of the town. We have done little to expose and highlight the town walls, or integrate our old buildings into developments easily visible to the visitor. The wider West Quay area is just a visual mess. John Lewis our flagship store has its restaurant view murdered by an enormous blue box. That’s why Southampton Football Club isn’t an investment opportunity for the big players. It’s tainted by the lack of ambition and short sightedness of the entire city.

We wouldn't have had a Wilde if we hadn't had a Lowe. All roads lead to Rome.

Just after his last ankle op, I saw him getting petrol for his landrover-y thing. He still had his leg /ankle/foot in plaster and his foot was totally immobile, but he was still driving. I think the guy is a pillock.

It's not because they have no shame in their part of the demise. Jonah has told us why. They haven't made any gift or loan because they are trying to help Fry sell the club more quickly at a lower price, and Leon is just getting in the way of that that strategy. If only Crouch were to get out of the way the course of action so obvious to Jonah could be brought to a successful conclusion (without further points deductions) at the snap of Fry's fingers.

It's the inexorable concentration of money in the hands of a few clubs. In the interests of making them competitive in Europe, Rangers and Celtic will inevitably be led to eventually joining the PL at the expense of a couple of English minnows. Once they have established themselves there, the PL will be made even smaller to suit a concurrent Euro League, paid for largely by TV. We already have football fixture lists organised to suit tv schedules, not the paying/travelling fans. The big teams are just choc-a-block with foreign players, so there is nothing "local" to support. Even the owners are increasingly foreign. What will a supporter of a local premiership club actually be "supporting"? About the only local thing about it will be paying Council tax on the ground.

Ah,that must be why we had them all queuing up to buy us when we were in the prem when Lowe only wanted 60m.

And that still didn't stop Lowe wanting a shoppig centre and multiplex there as well. It all just proves he NEVER really had football as a priority. He believed the reverse takeover bought him into into a golden goose. In my view, though his 2 years away possibly accellerated our decline, Lowe's approach would always have ended up in failure, albeit maybe slightly slower.

Did he do that well at Palace and Brighton? I seem to recall they were decidedly mixed.

Bad footballing decisions? Who was it that paid 2m fo Rasiak on a 4 year deal? And at the start of this season who gave Wotton a 3 year deal? The signing of half a dozen or so players who were utterly unable to make a contribution playing-wise (and pay them to do nothing) - were they just bad footballing decisions?

Didn't you mean "..engineered the reverse take over..." ?

No, Lowe learned his trade from the bloke who decided to cut costs by fitting only 3/4 height bulkheads.

And there's me thinking that since his arrival at the club, it has been one long period of him doing things with himself...

Maybe he was trying to get something out of Lowe knowing there was diddly squat likely to come out of Wilde. Ever heard of negotiation? Don't you go in with your first offer expecting a counter offer, and the haggling continues until a deal is struck? Or does that only happen in other businesses, not at SLH/SFC? But then if you know you're the only one willing to put any real money in at all, the only thing left is to try and embarrass the others into at least doing something, isn't it?

So exactly what do you think a chancer has to gain by buying the club out of administation - surely if he doesn't have/isn't representing much dosh and there are no assets to strip, then what on earth would be the point? Easiest way to lose more money I'd have thought.