hughieslastminutegoal

Surely the point is that it was pretty obvious Donny was going to be a real crunch game which could easily lead to the manager resigning and/or a major bit of crisis management was likely to be called for, so it wasn't a good time for him to be away. I think you are being a bit disingenous to say that anyone wanted him here to deal with playing matters.

Someone tell Hockaday he can now stop the gardening - we already have a swede as coach. Ah, but maybe he overheard Rupert telling Wilde that we needed a carrot to dangle before potential investors, so is still digging furiously away... And with the dismal failures of his recommended signings, he is frantically trying to prove he does know his onions.

Sounds to me as if your main concern is the value of shares. Presumably you have some. Buy why on earth would Crouch pour money into the club to support it, to keep up the value of the Lowe cabal's shares? Would you use your money in that way? Crouch is a fan, Wilde thinks he's a fan, Lowe was just someone who had spare cash and thought he could make a mint out of Stoneham but was frustrated there and now finds his investment has come utterly unstuck. Crouch must know the other two HAVE TO and WILL to go before he chucks any more of his money at the problem that is SFC. And he also knows that the club needs a lot more investment after that, in which case his holding would be diluted. So Crouch would be taking a big risk by investing more money in Saints, and would only do it A) if he were feeling philanthropic, not caring about the money at all or B) if he knew there was a deal in the offing that can't possibly get off the ground until after Lowe has gone (and that potential investors do not want to be seen making a deal with Lowe).

Just a thought, but wouldn't Crouch's rumoured £5m be enough to buy out Wilde and Lowe? So maybe they would't need to co-operate thereafter? Though I doubt Lowe would sell his shares without a similar deal for his mates.

"What's the longest joke in football? Rupert Lowe - Over a decade and they still haven't got to the punch line, though I did come very close."

I think you just answered your own question. Running a canny chocolate shop when people were falling over themselves to buy expensive organic chocolate is easy, but if you only sell Cadbury's and the punters don't really want it, you might just need to be more inventive, and do more to entice the buyers back, i.e. you need to be a better CEO than when times were easy.

... "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" .. the common name given to this personality a in business person which in a criminal would be called "psycopathy".

Why would a buyer have to pay £22m to discharge the mortgage? There is absolutely no obligation to. Aviva or whatever Norwich Union are called now would presumably foreclose... and do what with the stadium? In the current climate they aint gonna sell it for redevelopment, so they give the buyer of the club a tenancy/lease, or renegotiate the mortgage. I can't see the skates wanting St Mary's when they have acres of development land around Fratton Park, which they would't get much for at the moment My bet is Lowe is playing this game with them right now because it isn't in their interests to foreclose and force administration... unless they have already been approached by people who could make them a better offer than Lowe might be trying to get. Setting aside the mortgage issue, I can't see Barclays forcing Administration for 5-8m, although I guess there must be some equity in the stadium they could take a share of if hardball was their game, though I doubt it is. It all sounds to me like Lowe threatening administration in order to get some debt rescheduling, because the climate is probably the best he's going to get to play this game. He'd rather do that than bite the bullet and seriously look for a buyer.

Why would a buyer have to pay £22m to discharge the mortgage? There is absolutely no obligation to. Aviva or whatever Norwich Union are called now would presumably foreclose... and do what with the stadium? In the current climate they aint gonna sell it for redevelopment, so they'd have to give the buyer of the club a tenancy/lease, or renegotiate the mortgage. I can't see the skates wanting St Mary's when they have acres of development land around Fratton Park, which they would't get much for at the moment My bet is Lowe is playing this game with them right now because it isn't in their interests to foreclose and force administration... unless they have already been approached by people who could make them a better offer. Setting aside the mortgage issue, I can't see Barclays forcing Administration for 5-8m, although I guess there must be some equity in the stadium they could take a share of if hardball was their game, though I doubt it is. It all sounds to me like Lowe threatening administration in order to get some debt rescheduling, because the climate is probably the best he's going to get to play this game. He'd rather do that than bite the bullet and seriously look for a buyer.

Denis Hollywood's own goal, when he stopped it on the line, then side-footed his pass to the goalie over the line! It was all so slow-motion!

An argument that applies equally well to everyone else in the division, perhaps less so to the newly relegated still in receipt of a parachute payment. But we seem to be managing much less well than the rest (Charlton excepted), and I really don't believe that our wage bill aggregated over the last 3 seasons is significantly more than most.

Surely if he dumps JP, he's got to dump the rest of the coaching experiment, i.e. Wotte and Hockaday. (haven't heard if there has been a change with Hockaday and his gardening leave), unless of course there has been a bust up between JP and Hockaday, in which case maybe RL is planning to repeat his Wigley and Crouch's Gorman/Dodd mistakes by giving the job to DH?

Tiger Woods, Federer or Hamilton do not get transferred for 100million pounds, they just get paid a ridiculous amount. And that ridiculous amount isn't earned from one employer. Woods and Federer have to win tournaments on their own. They pay for their trainers and managers out of their own pockets. Their earnings are in big proportion sponsorship earnings. So it just isn't the same thing at all. Kaka doesn't win championships on his own, does he? Last I heard, football was a team game. The 200k a week or 500k a week or whatever lunatic wage he'll be on is just what the club will pay him. It is obscene. If the Dubai people have that kind of cash to spare why don't they start by doing something worthwhile. You could probably pay the food bill of 5 African states for 100m. Lets just hope our Govt make sure they get every penny of tax out the w*nkers and use for something other than bailing out banks these t*ssers have shares in.

It definately depends on what the player's attributes are and when those attributes go into decline whether they have enough else about them to adapt to a new role. Owen's effectiveness definately declined once he couldn't beat a player on speed alone. He knew it himself and constantly checked back rather than go past. He's clinging on, but isn't anything like as effective nowadays as he really didn't have a lot else to his game, bar decent marksmanship, if (a big if) he can get into the right place at the right time. Benitez knew that when he let him go to Real. But we are ok, because most of our players are 18-20, and Lowe seems to think they are all like Owen was (and Walcott).

If Lowe decides he has to dump him, he will pay JP to come up with his own reason for resigning, and the payment will have the usual terms attached to it i.e. keep your gob totally shut about everything.

Ruddy-faced Incompetent Prat Sinks Football Club

Well, we are truly screwed this season then. If our creative midfield score as many goals between them as that pair have, then there is very little hope we will win many more games.

Then the starting post should have made that clear, shouldn't it, rather than leave it to the rest of us to interpret what "Andrew Cowan" might have meant? The bald quote can be taken either way. And as Cowan is Lowe's mate, and always seems the height of discretion, and if it was obvious he was distancing himself from Lowe, the starting post should have added that bit of info.

I'm as anti-Lowe as anyone, but even I can see the "type of people" bit is aimed at people who shout ant-lowe and anti-wilde stuff when they aren't there to hear it. I think he might just be calling these fans stupid.

Ah I see you haven't yet appreciated what the objective is. You play two wingers on the wrong sides, and they cut inside. He then wants the fullbacks to run outside. Then your centre-midfield players drop back in behind the fullbacks and your forwards (well, forward plus one other) drop back into midfield. See the pattern yet? What you get is two very nice subtly-oscillating contra-rotating circles, one on each side of the pitch. Viewed from above it looks very much like synchronised swimming. It is VERY pretty, looked at the right way. Its all about perspective, you see. All that is missing is the smiling. And it is difficult to smile with all this unpleasant singing going on, so stop it, and all will be well. You'll see.

His maths is ok. Your logic however is faulty. He didn't say that they'd have won 4-0 if they'd have scored from all of their golden chances, just that they had 20 golden chances (of which they could easily have taken enough to win 4-0, given the usual kind of ratio of chances taken to chances worked). You know his meaning is crystal clear. Somewhat of an exageration I'd have thought - you seriously believe we've played MUCH BETTER than the opposition in more than half our games, and we've been frequently been frustrated by the other team's goalie having a blinder? I'm surprised you can see anything at all through such heavily-tinted rose coloured glasses.

Then by your own definition, Saints, much more often than not this season, have been unable to make enough luck to win enough games. So you are really agreeing with Marco that we made a rare bit of luck against Barnsley, but made ourselves no luck in the majority of our other games. All in all it still sounds like a lucky win to me.

I recall an old boss of mine (an Irish fella called Mick strangely enough, running his own trenching contracting business in the town) was mates with a lot of players in the late 60s - and regularly had a cuppa with them in the Hacienda in London Road. The regulars there were Hughie Fisher, Freddy Kemp, Tony Byrne mostly. But one thing I've long wanted to know, can you confirm or otherwise the story that Hughie Fisher got Mick Channon p*issed just before the away game at Plymouth, back when Mick was just breaking into the team?

My impression here is that the comments are more often the other way around - We'd have beaten 'x' if it hadn't been for Lallana's scuffed shot that was went wide (our only chance), totally discounting the 14 chances the other side missed.

So you've given up trying to maintain your anonymity on here now?