up and away

We all knew this at the time, with Satchels interviews about the youngsters. It has been obvious for a long time that Lowe has been pushing to use the youth players. The question arises is what is the consequences of not using them? Well as we saw clearly with Mills, Cranie and Best, they will be on their way if they feel they have no opportunity. Mills cited Satchel directly as his reason for leaving and you can hardly blame the lad. But what the most intransigently thick on here so easily skip over, is that Norwich and Crystal Palace did exactly this in integrating the youth players a full season and a half before us. Like anyone with the slightest bit of common sense they realised you either used it, or lost it. With the added benefit it really brings your costs under control. So what all you are saying is that Lowe should never of tried to get the managers to use the youth players and that we should just rack up costs willy nilly and **** off those youth players who could break through. Just to remind you if we had of taken that action at that particular time, I really doubt we would be in the financial mess now. But you all seem averting the gaze from the finances for some reason.

Take into account his experience and knowledge of the CCC and I don't think any club would go for it. Take into account our financial hole and all of a sudden it starts to look attractive. Any other manager who came in would have to put up with all the senior players on a decent wage disappearing or the remote possibility of commanding a fee. Failure to move on any of them and you are then forced into selling off any of the youth that shows the slightest promise. There are two ways of going about this, fit the youth in and about what ever older pro's you can get on a free or fit some older pro's around the youth. Now seeing as the double Dutch are used to a very similar system that the youth have been brought up on, there is logic there. But why the sudden concern? Why not complain when we were heading into this mess at a rate of knots, when we would have had other options open to us.

Where the fook were you when we were wasting every penny we came into contact with? We are now forced down this route with very little flexibility as to the way forward. Our only chance lies with these young players being able to plug financial holes, because no one else is taking the senior cart horses that are costing us an arm and a leg.

Interesting post and from the other Dutch set ups in the UK, the answer on that one is pretty clear. But realistically, what are the objectives for this season? From everything I saw last season, just about avoiding relegation is the only realistic target. If we bring on the youth at the same time we will have a far better chance next season, depending upon how many we can keep. Lowe has been down this road before with the double Dutch and backed out at the last minute, so I am pretty sure he was aware of the risks. Additionally both he and Wilde must know how much shiete we are in and that would have been the over riding factor.

You only have to look back on past events and you can point to several ITK. The small fact they charged off in the other direction with this knowledge, or could not separate the spin from the truth is another matter.

And would he put his name officially alongside anything that could have administration attached to it? NAFC.

Highly unlikely after a very big confidence building away win. 16,000 Look back at the gates when we have had this odd time on a Saturday, live on Sky and its usually significantly down, maybe 20% on the average gate. I hope your guess is the correct figure though.

My "axe" is simple St_Tel. I believe that the presence of Mr Lowe at Southampton FC is a real and dangerous factor in our fight against administration and even survival. With that in mind I can make no apology for grinding my axe as hard as I can. Now you may chose to disbelieve me or even prefer to shoot the messenger rather than listen to the message, but events are quickly coming to a head and a lot of the serious players in this drama (I refer mainly to the bank and potential investors) are mightily, mightily sick of having to deal with Lowe and his ego. And who would you suggest? We have had enough foot and mouth outbreaks from Crouch, whilst simultaneously running head long into oblivion. Whilst the bank is unhappy, it is because of the current financial crisis and our own declining position from reducing gates. They would prefer us to declare bakruptcy ourselves, whilst there is more chance of a better return, rather than when we hit the buffers. So your advice would be just to give in immediately to administration? As for this ego with dealings with the bank, you are spouting shiete. Just because both sides are looking out for their own companies interest is not a matter of ego, that's what they are both meant to do. As for the potential investors, which is where all your direction is coming from, you are redefining the term potential. Though in fairness, negative potential is a well understood concept. After all this time and the shiete spouted by these potential investors, there are still those that hang their hat on this promise. The simple fact is these "investors" or in laymans terms, "blokes down the pub talking ******", will not be able to do any different without the club going into administration, to wipe out the debts and existing contracts.

You clearly don't have a clue. The SOS initiative, though well intentioned, was a complete and utter failure because those on it didn't have the integrity to stand by what they promised to do. It would not suprise me if Wilde hadn't read the thread prior to the SOS meeting and seen the agreement for it to be minuted and thus pre-empted this spanner in the works. The SOS delegates should have stood their ground and honoured their comittment and given Wilde a choice - either we do this minuted or we report back that you refused to give an open interview. If they'd given Wilde this choice and he'd refused to talk to them then that in itself would have spoken volumes. Why are you getting so bent out of shape over something minor? nearly as bad as Cherry Pester getting to the sweets at checkout with his mum. As soon as Wilde would not disclose anything publicly the SOS initiative was dead, as Wilde was the only one prepared to speak even minimally. The SOS was dead there and then, what then followed was a separate issue. The fact Ron was naive enough to nail up their altruistic beliefs at the beginning is another matter, but no major conspiracy. Then the fact "If they'd given Wilde this choice and he'd refused to talk to them then that in itself would have spoken volumes." Spoke volumes? maybe in your world, but out in the real world it did not matter a jot. Their initial aims were sound but highly naive.

If it paid for itself, then why did Lowe arrange a 25 year agreement to borrow the money then????:rolleyes::rolleyes: We still owe in excess of £22m on the loan notes taken out to fund the building of St Mary's, so it quite clearly has not paid for itself. Once again you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Over the 4 years in the Premier we were able to double the crowds at St Mary’s, resulting in far greater income. Assuming an increased gate of 15,500 at £25 extra per person gives us 15,500 x 4 x 19 x £25 = £29.45M Stadium sponsorship gave an extra £1.2M The profit on the Dell was estimated originally at £5M, but we had a windfall total there rising to £7M For the CCC years lets just add one year at an extra 10,000, giving 10,000 x £25 x 23 = £5.75M This gives you a grand total of £43.4M, without taking into account the extra revenue the fans spend at St Mary’s, the profits from concerts, functions, cup games, friendlies, etc which will easily be in millions. Take away £12.5M in interest charges over this period, which would easily be far less if we ploughed all extra revenue into repaying the loan notes. So all of a sudden it is not difficult to see the stadium paying for itself, the fact we did not use the monies in this manner is a separate issue. So according to the Lord of the Muppets, because we still owe £22M on the stadium means we could only have made £10M from the move to St Mary's.

I'm not being funny but you lot were counselled on the meeting with Wilde before you went into it. If you'd stuck by your word and inisisted the meeting was minuted then Wilde would not have been able to play games with yoU. I've got absolutely no sympathy for you or any of the other SOS posse. You all put your greedy ITK aspirations ahead of doing the right thing and therefore none of you have any right to give lectures or whinge about what a complete failure the initiative was. You, or the other SOS boys, might not like my bluntless but this is how it was and not once have you lot ever apologised for lying to us, instead you think we should feel sorry for you. Un-****ing-believeable. What a total over reaction and more in spite than common sense. I said at the time that their approach was impractical and there would have to be information given confidentially or none at all. Just because they were a little naive in their objectives does not diminish for me their aims and goals, however unsuccessful it may be judged. Just look at the people that attended and pick out someone whose judgement you trust. From the subsequent information coming from that person you can learn a lot, so to my eyes it was not a waste, you just had to know how to pick the sixpences out of the Christma pud.

You can count the seconds before someone turns this thread into the usual boring rant.... I agree Norwich support has held up well, you could argue that Saint's support is more able to elsewhere (Pompey, Reading, even London clubs are all pretty accessible) than Norwich fans. Ironically Saints doing so well for so many years without a bigger ground was a double whammy - it didn't cement the fanbase (those who came in due to SMS and have since left were comparative newcomers) and it saddled us with a debt we struggle to service now. Put simply we didn't have St Mary's for long enough in the Premiership to coin in the big money, but had the costs that came with it. Look at all the extra revenue we gained from St Mary's and taking everything into account (sale of the Dell, extra revenue, sponsorship, etc), it paid for itself. The fact we used a lot of that money on players and wages is another point, maybe one that helped maintain that Premier position? Now without a doubt it is a millstone around our necks. Our basic problem was that we did not address our costs a lot quicker. We had the cull of the Premier players under Burley and then just nonchalantly reintroduced most of them.

There is a big difference now, Delap could never throw the ball the distance he currently does with that flat trajectory. He could throw it flat previously, but I never saw it get to the 6 yard line from those distances without it being loopy and using the wind. Something has changed, either the ball or Delap. If you factor in the amount of improvement required by Delap, I just do not feel it is practical and must come from the ball. The ball that causes all the problems is the one angled in at about 30° from the touch line, something he could not do over those distances with the same trajectory we now see. Repeat that same throw from alongside the penalty box and it has no where near the same impact, something he could do with us. I don't see much change in Delaps overall fitness, making it even less likely the improvement is down to the player. Just for reference on another posters point, in our first season down with Delap in the side, we had the tallest team in the CCC, never helped us then.

When they introduced the new ball there was overall condemnation from goal keepers because it moved around a lot in the air. They had a variety of top goalies critising the ball with the only plus point being from one goalie, that thought it was far better to distribute by hand. I don't know if the ball is lighter or the aerodynamics are causing these effects, but the overwhelming view from the goalies was a significant difference. The only thing I have noticed is that it was far more difficult to get the ball to dip with power from the closer free kicks, than the one it replaced. Renaldo seems to have overcome that with a technique where he appears to push the ball into the surface / or even kick the ball downwards.

There is one very big difference to then and now, the ball. Delap has not been working out all of the time he left us, the ball is significantly different. As for Fuller, it virtually took him a season at Pompey, a season with Saints, then 1/2 a season at Stoke to get back to full fitness.

The humble pie seems to be going down extremely well this dinner time!

You really are defining the role of village idiot, pretty soon you should have it back to a simple cell structure. You have £5M in the kitty and you immediately go out and spend £7M before the season has started, alongside negotiating contracts that cannot be afforded. It does not require outstanding intelligence to quickly come to the conclusion that you require to sell players to sort things out. But even with all of that, there is plenty of time and resources to turn this around and make us sustainable. The thing that had to be done was incorporating the youth set up into senior set up. We all know Lowe intended this from the comments from Redknapp's period at Saints, but no one else (with the exception of Crystal Palace and Norwich). We had so much time and resources to sort ourselves out, you are embarrassing yourself into believing everything was impossible.

So Lowe goes, leaving about £5M in the kitty, we then subsequently have the following monies to draw on in the future. £5M kitty £7M remainder of Walcott deal £10M Bale £3M Baird £6M Jones £0.75M Blackstock £0.75M Best and Cranie £0.6M even from Burley not to mention the remaining parachute payment of £6.8M Bearing on mind that a lot of CCC clubs can't get near a 1/10th of those resources, it is not too much to ask to get things on a sustainable level to safeguard our future. Then again I suppose we hardly had time to organise matters, but by some stroke of luck Crystal palace and Norwich had already integrated their youth players into the first team set up. Nope, we never stood a chance!

I can understand part of that logic, but not completely true. All NU has to do is pull the plug and let things remain idle for a year. By which time we would have had to find somewhere else to play fixtures and the whole area becomes desolate. The council has already got proposals for regeneration around St Marys, so given time, that could well include an old stadium. Your view holds a lot of sway, but it could easily go the other way in these desperate times. As a developer, it looks a very attractive opportunity for the future and the council would have to give way eventually.

When the UI gave an in depth analysis of the Fulthorpe project, NI listed the pro's and con's of the project and let the reader themselves make up their own mind as to it's viability. From my point of view I could not see anything that would make this happen, unless you found some idiot with a passion for Saints and the loot to boot. Throughout everything that has happened over the last few years, I feel Nick Illingsworth has been near enough spot on with his analysis and what is best for Saints. What I don't think he should do is to pass on these dates for events to materialise. These have obviously been passed on by the originaters, but I feel it would be better to just let it go until it actually happens. Difficult one I know, as I expect he will be continually asked what's happening / is it still going on, but I feel it's best left until something actually happens.

All sounds very rational, but we all know from your previous ******, it's all about removing Lowe for you, irrespective of what is best for Saints. I have lost count of the number of times you have argued the case for Wilde until you had that road to Damascus conversion, coincidentally at exactly the same time Wilde backed Lowe. Now your allegiance switches to the idiot Crouch with no one else aligned against Lowe. If Crouch had wised up and tried to do the best for Saints instead of getting caught up in these petty battles you seem so fond of, I could happily accept him. All I have ever wanted is for someone to wake up and smell the P45's before it was too late, who ever that may be. But all Crouch did in those final weeks was to hunker down in the bunker telling us the cavalry was coming. So it was Lowe that came in and tried to sort out the mess and for that I am grateful, he even managed to avoid the petty battles, no recriminations, kept his mouth shut and rosy cheeks out of the way. Just cast your mind back and remember when you were spouting this ****** the first time round and that Wilde was our saviour for a new beginning that will all be hunky dory once Lowe is removed. Any of that starting to come back yet? or has the EST just made it a distant glimmer? As has been shown comsistently in our past and other clubs past with similar issues, it's always best if they find a way of working together. The return of this spirit you keep talking about dropped last time upon Wildes entry and still resulted in record low gates with Lowe no where near the club.

]In truth though the Lawrie and Ball partnership worked well for us initially,but it still fell apart. Wasn't Bally meant to have told some reporters at a press conference something along the lines of " don't ask me ,ask Lawrie.I'm only a coach around here". Don't forget the manner of AB's departure,before judging the DoF role.In Lawrie's tenure as DoF,we saw a turnover of four managers.So my conclusion on the DoF role is even when it said to work well,it has still not run smoothly. You just have to laugh at this ******. The very qualities that make a lot of these managers very successful when hands on, make them an absolute disaster at any other position of standing within the football club. That obstinacy and right if wrong attitude can work if followed by discipline, even if the tactics are adrift. I don't know of any one who worked under Lawrie post manager who had a good word to say about him. Bally kept complaining that all he did was argue about the team selection and John Mcgrath would of been happier chinning him than shaking hands. Lawrie was a meddler, bully and ego. Great qualities for a manager and what gave Saints our glory years, but away from that, more destructive than constructive.

And if they had been interfering in areas they shouldn't have, then that would have made their tenure even worse than it actually was. Perhaps when Lowe criticised the old regime for not supporting the manager and failing to manage him he ahd this type of "managing" in mind. You have to ask yourself why would Lowe now address the players, regarding the financial situation at the club? What would fit if we were to get some financial news on the club very soon and the reason for the departures. But I can see you have all your time consumed with the no smoke without fire routine, so I shall leave you to it.

And if they had been interfering in areas they shouldn't have, then that would have made their tenure even worse than it actually was. Perhaps when Lowe criticised the old regime for not supporting the manager and failing to manage him he ahd this type of "managing" in mind. You have to ask yourself why would Lowe now address the players, regarding the financial situation at the club? What would fit if we were to get some financial news on the club very soon and the reason for the departures. But I can see you have all your time consumed with the no smoke without fire routine, so I shall leave you to it.