up and away

Don't expect anything new from it, but can't wait to read it. Such is the magic of the guy to all Saints fans.

Great to see him at the game, great he got the reception. I have not heard the quote on Soccer Saturday and find it very hard to believe? Just exactly what problem with the FA? something Liebherr is not telling us for our own well being? When you start hearing strine, it's best to put the spade down and stop making a **** of yourself!

We all know what is required but why does that stop us building for the future, especially if the price is right? If they believe these youngsters can add, do better than what we already have, it just makes a lot of sense. The whole club has to be rebuilt, not only the first team! Whether or not this is true I do not know, but it makes a lot of sense!

Patterson was the big plus for me today and we ought to extend that three year deal to five right now. evening Arizona. How on earth you can single out Saga ahead of Patterson is beyond me. I've been singing Patterson's praises since Reading away and today he showed exactly hat he is all about. He won everything in the air, showed strength, a little pace, confidence to run with the ball and caused their back problems throughout. Forget the goal, that was a bonus, when he went off injured and perhaps just a little tired as well we fell to peices. If we'd played him with BWP last season we would have stayed up IMO. I know you are big fan of Saga, and as you know he's not my own favourite, but despite these obvious differences in opinion I still don't see how you could see Saga as better than Patterson on todays showing. As you say, I cannot understand Saga getting a mention in comparison to Patterson. Always looks the part but from a brief scoring flurry years ago, nothing of note. Can't even give him away!

lol and that was posted on a thread that starts with "I have been by a reliable source" I remember when we went after Prutton and Notts Forest had our bid on the table for most of the closed season. The only reason we got to hear about it, was from the selling club trying to move the price up.

, I always enjoy it when someone makes a grammatical error whilst calling other people morons. Before this gets edited, thought it best to make a copy for posterity!

Of course! But dont be frightened by ROI. They will be well aware that to get a good ROI, we need to be top half premiership and secure financially when the club would probably be worth about 100 mil - ROI for ML and NC means success for SFC. The key to that success will be wise investment as necessary and a focus on the footballing needs built upon solid foundations...I know its unfashionable to say it, but despite what Lowe eventually did, he had that same mantra, build on foundations - he got the stadium and academy and 'living within ones means' bit right, but floundered when it came to building on that with a appropriate footballing focus and alienating the fans. I hope we give ML and NC the time and support because it wont be an overnight thing... 5 years to prem would be a good 'fan ROI' as far Im concerned. There is absolutely no ROI in this equation. Just look at what Sunderland have forked out just to bumble along the bottom. Look how much ManC forked out just to be near mid table! Anyone who thinks this is for profit needs their bumps felt. If it was for profit we would be seeing tarmac where all the current facilities now are. With the demise of Setanta this could well reflect on the cash cow that is the Premier and a lot of clubs finding the piper at the door with his hand out. Football clubs are like super yachts which do about 10 feet to the gallon, a plaything of the rich alone unless you are only going to be there for the day. Going back to the original point I don't believe anyone should be worried. The alternatives are something that you should really worry about. It is very interesting that Cortese is the actual driving force and that their relationship is closer to father and son than business adviser. It seems obvious that many different possibilities have been looked at for getting satisfaction from his huge resources, as previous sporting ventures have been mooted. Cortese has talked him into it and all Liebherr wanted to know is that he would sort out the day to day running of the club. Liebherr has bought into the idea now and even if Cortese were to leave, I still believe he would continue unless something dramatic occurred. I just do not see Liebherr as your quick fix merchant, more the sort to plant the seed and nurture it to fruition. It would not not surprise me if the academy again found itself to the fore of the clubs future. I do not know what the main points of attraction were with Saints, but I cannot see the Premier being far away from guiding those thoughts.

Just imagine that having having paid the money for that months wages, there was no exclusion of any party and Pinnacle would be none the different? Without doubt we would have a lot more time to prepare for this season, availability of the free's Pardew so much sought and a high possibility DMG would still be here. You can easily see a case for this locking us into this league for an extra season? Crouch has an undoubted passion for Saints, generous but with caveats that can be insurmountable. If you look at everything that Crouch has done, you just shake your head in amazement of what could be done with limited intelligence.

Even if this were true (which I very much doubt), it doesn't make sense. ML is worth over 2 billion, is in his sixties, and could make more money from finding loose coins behind his sofas than from Saints. The only logical reason for owning Saints is not to make money, but to get the satisfaction of making his club a success. You failed to factor in that the master plan revolves around creaming off the income from League 1 against a very low wage bill. How long that's going to take to overcome the capital is unsure, but I just hope one of the grand children buy into it. Could be completely bluggered by promotion? It's just totally laughable when you hear comments that Saints are a good investment. Does anyone seriously believe that any financial advisor would recommend investing in Saints, it does not come close to Premium bonds. The team will not go anywhere without investment, so I am sure we will get something soon to help us on our way. Liebherrs previous approch in business has been structured and measured, something I expect to be repeated with Saints. I can't see him going out and trying to buy promotion in one hit, but more in it for the long term rather than the short. What we are seeing with Pardew at Saints, looks similar to Pardew and Reading previously, as the model to be followed. Even with what looked like frugal and canny investment by Madejski over the years, this still left him out of pocket. Madejski realised he never had enough funds to maintain the club at Premier level and tried to find another buyer. Something he could not do even with the club at it's highest in the Premier. And that is without trying to make a profit on the exercise!

I have the feeling that many of these moaners are genuinely quite young ! Surely anybody who who has any experience of business and life in general would not react like this ?? This is not meant as an ageist remark but I honestly feel that the immaturity shown by some posters is alarming ! This has always been the practical method to take. I just find it laughable with the conversions to this stance now Lowe has gone.

Yea that is where they differed from the Glazer leveraged debt. The Glazers borrowed from United whereas I am assuming Pinnacle would have borrowed from the City and hoped that the gains made through selling the club on (whether that was short or long term) would outweigh interest on the debt. Don't forget the 12-13m rumoured to be the cost of buying SFC out of debt and owning the club, stadium etc lock, stock and barrel was a bargain. That is why it attracted some of the idiots or sharks it did. Not many of them had a 2 hapennies to rub together. Football attracts speculators and get rich quick merchants like a moth to a light bulb. The only genuine buyers out there were Salz (couldn't raise enough funds), Crouch (couldn't ally himself with others to raise the cash) and Markus Liebherr. The only way Pinnacle could have borrowed money from regular lenders would be based upon revenue or assets. For the assets to come into the equation they would have needed to pump enough of their own money into the business for the lending risk to be acceptable. I would expect that figure to be somewhere around £5M or higher, whether or not they could come up with that I do not know. You then have to find someone to lend you the remainder in a very limited time period in one of the worst financial crisis to date, a virtually impossible task. Given another era and more time it's possible they could have pulled it off but under their conditions, it looked an impossibility. If you have a private investor you can bypass all those restrictions but was that ever the case? It looks like you have a good understanding of most but I cannot see Salz and Crouch were ever serious buyers, only coming into the frame once liquidation had bitten.

Where do you get this idea he has bought the club to make money? It has to be one of the best proven methods of disposing of money that it's on a par with the methods the BofE use for dispensing of old bank notes. I have heard indirectly from Liebherr that the club has to stand on it's own two feet. I have heard the statements from Pardew regarding what players we can afford to keep, those we can't and what sort of players we are looking at. Everything points to building a team slowly as and when the right player becomes available. Now maybe if the bug bites or we put ourselves into a very good position to jump up a league he may well splash the cash, but that looks the best we can hope for at the present. Just go back and look at how Reading got into the Premier and that looks about the model we shall follow. Something has been lit inside of Liebherr and for that I am truly grateful but if you believe it is to make money, you are well off the mark.

I see he backed both Wilde and Lynam - his judgement is clearly terrible and he has directly contributed to the demise of SFC through his installation of Wilde and Hone.... a mistake he was on the verge of repeating by backing the potless wonders in the Pinnacle bid. Here’s a thought that could wake you up in the night in a cold sweat. Just imagine they had delved down the back of their respective sofa’s, throw in a couple of car booters and found the rest via a non high street lender. Still no pot to **** in, with further players having to be sold and Liebherr a distant memory. Now that is scary!

This was never a deliberate act, gross stupidity YES. The administrator has a lot to answer for here, as I cannot fathom how Liebherr's interest was marginalised. Just a quick Internet check would have ticked all the right boxes. Multi billionaire, very conservative, religious and a reluctance to borrow any money for any of his projects. The guy gets a 5 star rating within minutes. Initially I thought Liebherr's approach was very tentative but have since heard it was nothing like the case. Pinnacle were not to know this and they deservedly lost a lot of money for their stupidity, glossed in good intentions. But we won the lottery and are in a position we could have only dreamed of. So I think that losing the money is all the Pinnacle group should suffer. Their intentions were good, just lacked the smarts to go with it. I can't say they were serial monkey chicken devotees as cherry pip, though Crouchy looks to have ploughed in up to his back wheels on Allen, Fulthorpe and some bedsit in the London suburbs.

My thoughts exactly. We could have even kept hold of DMG! But we are still the luckiest barstewards on the planet. We will just have to be patient and support the club as best we all can, but don't be surprised if we do struggle. If we keep ploughing money through the gates, it's not going to discourage Markus from adding to it. We all know the strength of our current squad, but just happy to have one. If it takes longer, it takes longer but at least we have some hope for the future now.

Everyone foresaw the possibility, only distracted by the decent performances against Stoke and West Ham. It's ok talking about going out and signing these mythical cheap players that would be better than what we had, but so much luck is involved to avoid ending up with the Wottons. We could not even afford a playing bonus to keep Cork or get Howard in on loan. When you have viable financial alternatives for both the long and the short term you have flexibility, but this was already decided by the financial mess. I just love the myopia that led us to this position. When you reduce the over draft by £2M and you still get put into administration, where does the guess work come in? Luckily this now all in the realms of academia after hitting the Liebherr jackpot. But for all those squealing when it eventually happened, hardly a squeak when this was building up! Just exactly how many warnings from the auditors and the chairman, does it require that the club may not be able to continue as a going concern? Where does all this fit into the future? Well I don't expect Liebherr to be throwing money at the club at this stage and I think it's going to be a very big ask for us to get into the play offs. Nothing wrong with Pardew, but we may have to give him at least 2 seasons to get out of this league, something the myopic will be on his back about before we reach Xmas. We have been given such a great opportunity by Liebherr, but how we go forward will in part be down to revenue. If we cannot be bothered, why should anyone else?

I can't say the strategy was flawed, it was something forced upon us by our financial circumstances. This was more the case of " a drowning man clutching at straws". When you are in that position you just look at any possible way to get out of the mess and I have no issues with it from that point of view. Still many fail to realise what a financial hole we were in at the start of last season and I could not understand why Barclays had not pulled the plug on us sooner, as they would have done with any other business. We could not sell players, we could not give them away, we could not force them out of the club, so we were stuck with those costs and it's subsequent implications. We could not afford to use these players if they insisted upon their bonuses and all Lowe could do was sell up the youth and whistle in the dark. I have no problems with Lowe regarding this as our fate was sealed before and he was just left with a hope and a prayer that we could develop the youth to plug the financial hole. You can argue the point regarding Pearson or the Dutch, but again given the financial conditions, I can see certain logic in the direction. Lowe was fully aware of the risks as demonstrated by going with Burley previously when the Dutch looked a done deal. Pearsons record with us was such there was no guarantee of doing any better than relegation, when you compared previous results with what might be accomplished, with what he would be left with. Again you have to consider that he would have to be trying to force these players out of the club and not be able to use those insisting upon their bonuses. As many had already said the young players found it all to much, mainly down to the physical demands of the CCC impacting upon form. But again what degree of choice did we have when you could not successfully compete with League 1 clubs for players and with the exception of Perry, no better than the youth we had. Lowe was never the issue this time round, our bed had already been made and it was just a question of taking a line that gave us some chance of getting out of the mess, however limited. Even so I could never see us getting out of this hole long term with the mill stone of the stadium debt. As it is our wildest dreams have come true with Liebherr, even considering League 1 and starting on -10.

Shocked and stunned that you say that........he became an international playing at right back....what games have you been watching!!! The ones where he has been playing as defensive midfield in front of the back four.

At the time the gates were reasonable and the player sales provided the money to spend so I would say we could afford to. We couldnt afford to not get promoted and keep that list of players so bad management there after played a big part in our downfall. not the attempt to get us out of trouble. Time being the operative that you have failed to factor effectively. We got out of a major financial hole by selling on Jones and Baird when fees had gone through the roof. We had no idea this would happen, with the players only being worth a fraction of that return when we placed ourselves into that financial mess. Things were far, far worse than what you imagine.

I am very surprised someone like Liebherr got involved in football, but so thankful he has. After looking closely at what he has done before, I don't think you could wish for a better chairman. I particularly like the way he has removed politics and the past from the club by his basic common sense stance. Anyone who supports Saints is welcome, all you have to do is pay your way. Everything he has done and is about revolves around a frugal, ambitious business maxim and I cannot see him changing that just yet, unless the bug bites deep and hard. Going back to Notts County, that is indeed interesting. I get the feeling that being the oldest football club in the world had a lot to do with their decision and am pretty sure they will be throwing money at the problem. Svenn has been retained on a large salary plus a significant share in the club to get him to commit long term, but really not sure what value he brings until the club gets to a higher level. As for Pompey and the FA, I just get the feeling that the original backers just went through a 3rd party financing company with Sulaiman Al-Fahim's out in front. I don't see anyway the FA can untie that knot from the middle east and will just have to accept it.

Anyone who has ever met Leroy lita for more than a few minutes would laugh in their face at the idea of him coming to Saints. I don't think he is a bad player but unlike him I don't believe he should still be playing in the Premier.

To be fair to Hunt and Gordon neither of them had a position under Lowe - they were against his return. Both men were part of the reverse takeover it is true but were minor players. Both men are fervent fans and have served the club well for many years. While I think it right for ML to cut out the complimentaries for those who did not contribute to the club in any way it would be nice to think that ex players are welcomed back - perhaps being given discounted tickets. I think it's best to cut out the complementaries completely, although not totally practical. I would even make ex players pay with the exception of one, but certainly lavish the hospitality on them once they have paid to get in. If staff have to pay for their tickets, there is absolutely no free ride anymore. The real big issue I have had with complementaries is the hangers on and relatives that come attached. One complimentary turns out to be 2/3 when it gets to the door with some who have little interest in Saints. Even throwing a strop if having to wait to get the extra free ticket, be glad to see the back of them. There is a fresh new broom going through St Mary's and what Liebherr is doing is exactly what the doctor ordered. What has happened in the past is being left there and people can come and support the club irrespective of previous politics and pettiness. All of a sudden we are heading in a new direction leaving all the crap behind. I know it's early days as yet, but I have to keep pinching myself to be so lucky as to find someone like Liebherr.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Lowe. I don't know of anyone who wants Lowe remotely near the club now. His time has gone and he has nothing to offer. There are several who have no time for either Lowe or Mcmenemy past his point as manager, because he has such a negative effect. That does not diminish what he did as manager and has to be the greatest from that point of view ever. For all the good he did as manager show me one decent thing he did subsequently? That said with the current set up we have now I can see no harm coming from him now as he is effectively neutered. Let him sit in the directors box for recognition as his time as manager and as long as he does not try to interfere, let him stay there and bask in the recognition from those great years.

So now we've gone from every player who has worked with him not having anything good to say about him, to Bally commenting on him about his stint as a DOF, and Paine, whose strained relationship with Lawrie has been public knowledge for almost 40 years, being held up as a justification of your carte blanche claim. Well done. Only slightly moving the goalposts there then LOL. You stupid boy Pike. I have always consistently stated that what LM did as manager is truly worthy of praise and can think of no better manager we have had. Again consistently said is that those same qualities which made him so effective as a manager, proved an absolute nightmare to his subsequent dealings at Saints.

How about the following players who have publicly backed Lawrie at events (or in private) I have been to over the years: Osgood Channon (who shared a platform with him recently) Rodrigues Fisher Bennett Ball Williams Wallace Peach Steele I really could go on and on and on (let me know if you need any more names) Those qualities which made him effective as a manager made him totally unbearable when DOF. When Alan Ball was asked about working with him as DOF he said he was an absolute nightmare, with the only thing noticeable that he would never of picked a certain player on the team sheet. John McGrath was so happy with him he wanted to give him a special kiss. And the guy behind me who asked Terry Paine if Lawrie had a forward in his book at the signing should have been far more careful.