benjii

Cortese never said he wanted a "Director of Football" IIRC. He said he wanted a "Sporting Director". I reckon this tends towards the Les Reed role more than the traditional, "some crusty old ex-manager sticking his oar in" role.

He has shown himself to be an utter utter unpleasant idiot of the highest order. He should be banned immediately. ****

Right, but you're not the one preparing for Saturday's match are you? As Stu Phillips Romsey Benson Saint Dave has said, if the club feel it is the right thing to do then it is the right thing to do. Stop being so selfish.

A statue and a stand IMO. And while we're at it, let's get rid of "Northam", "Itchen" etc and have a "Bates" and "Le Tissier" stand too. Most of all, I wanted a passionate, united fanbase roaring us to promotion. I'm ****ing gutted. Let's make his dream a reality.

Wow, what an amazing picture. That's put a smile on my face and a tear in my eye at the same time! As always in these sad situations, one's first thoughts are those of sympathy to the people most deeply affected. Next are the thoughts of regret that Markus didn't get to see his ambitions realised in full but thankfulness that he was able to give us, and more importantly that Saints were able to give him, a cup win at Wembley. I only hope that Saints can continue to give the same pleasure and pride to his family as they clearly did to him. As far as I'm concerned, there are only a very select few people who you could call Saints legends. I'm too young to remember Ted Bates in his pomp or to have seen Lawrie Mac's cup winning team or team of the early 80s but those two, along with Matty were my three legends. There are four now. Thanks for everything Herr Liebherr. We can never truly repay you now but I know I will be roaring the team on with more passion than usual the next time I'm at SMS. And I'll have a lump in my throat. Thank you.

Any adult who likes Dr Who has some problems IMO.

Just watched the highlights for the first time - we looked class. Love the kit too. Unlucky Saints.

Why do you need to watch them to form a very strong opinion about them?

+3.

You have to at the Bournemouth fans a bit. They will turn up, 3,000+ (fair play) all excited about their big cup derby in our impressive stadium, to find a ground about one-third full with the vast majority of those being blanket and flask Itchen/Kingslanders, a few spotty oiks to their right to make up the atmosphere and, hopefully, a largely second-string Saints team on the pitch. Bournemouth.... derby? .... Don't think so! With any luck someone will have a big "Welcome to the Cherries, our friendly second club" banner or something.

What a thoroughly embarrasing and pathetic first post. It does act, however, as a tidy little illustration of why I have not renewed my membership of this forum.

By the way chaps, we don't have a sponsor this year so what better time to try this?

Come off it. Since when did football operate primarily for the benefit of the fans? 30 years ago? 40? 100? Feel free to hate this photography policy but to bemoan the commercialisation of Saints, as if it's some new fiendish phenomenon is absurd.

Bristol to Paddington peak day return is about £160. Bargain, not, I don't think.

We will win plenty of games so stop being a hysterical plum.

I love the way people say, "same problems as last year", as though we actually had serious problems. That'll be last year when for the final three quarters of it we had top two form. That's not to say yesterday was amazing but let's not pretend there are serious inherent problems when there clearly are not.

Lol. We have people complaining we're taking too long to buy people and he's being too circumspect, yet you drag up past history to try and claim the opposite, whilst suggesting a player who had a good debut, is young and was picked up cheaply is part of this imaginary problem. Good effort!

But that's not a realistic wage budget. Your turnover will be less than that. Our turnover in the Champ was less than that and we are a much bigger club. Parachute payment are spoken for. You'll be lucky to turn over 9m IMO so good luck with the 13m wage bill.

I can't imagine anything more trivial and piffling than this.

Yes, in this case, of course it is. The ground for the appeal (or at least part of it) in this area is that the appellant has been materially prejudiced. IMO they may be materially prejudiced by the FCR but you can see why it's arguable, at least, that they haven't been by the disallowed voting rights as the only options are CVA or bust. I imagine the judgment will offer some dicta around the FCR but say that ruling on its legality is outside the scope of the case. I think it's clear that all unsecured creditors are unfairly and materially prejudiced by the FCR but that's not the Skate's fault. Returning to image rights... I'm sure HMRC haven't shot their load with respect to any wrongdoing... I think that's my third of the day so toodle-pop all! COYRAWM tomorrow!

The key seems to be not that the figures were approved or not but that there was no unfair or material prejudice to HMRC. In other words, there were two limbs they had to satisfy. If that's the case then the judgment makes sense, as the alternative to the CVA seems, in this case, materially worse for HMRC. The bigger question around football creditors and image rights is still open. HMRC seem to have been inviting the judge to look to the future and consider hypothetical insolvencies in light of any present ruling on FCR and image rights in order to assess the extent to which HMRC have been materially prejudiced. I'm not surprised he wouldn't do that. What will be interesting us what the judgment says about the administration and what the consequences of that are.

How quaint. Might make sense if we were all mill-owners. (Legal) tax avoidance is fine. I put in far more than I get out and if I could pay less I would. I am certainly not "rich". And to pre-empt you labelling me a Thatherite or, "me, me, me" or some other nonsense... I am not at all. I am quite generous but I am getting a pretty raw deal from the government IMO.

Article: why bookies don't want you to bet on the favourites...

I think you can rule out lying/being deceptive in court. This is a respected QC. He would not do that. There is a big question mark over what this payment in January was though. At the start of the day they were talking about the parachute payments to come and it was agreed it was the publicised £48m. So what the hell was this January payment and the subsequent ones? Was it an advance of television money due to be paid at the end of the 2009/10 season? I'm not too clued up on this area but I suspect the question before the judge goes beyond determining whether the CVA was procedurally correct or not. I think it is clear that it wasn't as there seems to have been no rebuttal of the point around AA summarily dismissing HMRC's assessment. But, I think the judge, to allow HMRC's appeal, needs to be convinced that any procedural irregularity was unfairly prejudicial to HMRC. Anyway, I'm not really sure, like most of us! F5's everywhere are going to get one hell of a thrashing tomorrow afternoon!