St Marco

LC's were covered in last years numbers i thought?

I do know about that you numpty. When a football club goes into admin the football league sets up a review board to see if the rules have been broken. That is the point of them. If the review finds rules have been broken then punishment is handed out for those violations. Go back and read all the other clubs who have gone into admin's process' and your see thats what happens. So stop trying to be a tit and think before you post

What it means is every club/company will have a parent club from now on meaning that nobody will ever go into admin again. Because the club itself is owned by a different company which happens to be run by the same people who run the club that means they can get off scot free! Somehow i can't see the football league letting that happen.

Funny how they can answer without having done their review. I doubt this is true very much.

What i know as fact is this. If/when the company owning the club goes into admin the football league then set up a review. That review will be to see if Southampton Football Club has broken any of their rules. I have no doubt whatsoever after speaking to people that they will find the club is the company who have spent all the money, it was the club that makes the money. SLH and the PLC will be seen to be the same and due to the fact we have tried to wriggle out of it they will probably try and make an example of us. Que next season of court cases etc. I will put my name to the flag now and stick my neck out and say "If SLH goes into admin Southampton FC will get a points penalty". I fail to believe that all of the companies who have gone into admin have not thought of this way before nor tried to use it.

Just speaking to my boss who has been a business analyst for over 25 years, he seems to think this will be seen to be illegal. He says that the only way it would not be was if the parent company took out the loans and then passed them on as gifts to the club. Seeing as they took out the loans and used the clubs assets as most likely Collateral (i.e stadium) to obtain those loans it will be nearly impossible to proove to a court the two are seperate entities. He also thinks the FA will use us as a scape goat and hammer us with a bigger penalty if we do that to stop other clubs/companies of trying to find loop holes ala Leeds. At the end of the day this could prove to be a case of Lowe and Wilde trying to remain in power with one last twist. One which ultimatly will see us punished more.

a few others said the same nickh etc. I think even the most anti-Crouch person must now conceed Lowe and Wilde have done far worse then what Crouch would of done had he remained. I just can't help but think if we started this season with the set-up on the final day of last season we would not be in this situation at all. We would be higher up the league with more people in the stadium thus generating more money then we are now. It has just been screw up after screw up since they returned. I still can't believe we held a press conference to appoint a manager who was already a manager and under contract at another club, and the club found out when they saw it on tv.....Will be interesting to see in the accounts who actually paid for that compensation.

Yeah this game could get very nasty if this all turns out true (which it obviously is). I just hope we can keep protests and things until half-time/after the game. We need to get out of the drop zone and get the deduction this year and start next season in league one from scratch. The team can still do that.

Depends on what type of bear were talking about. A better then your average bear might not! He would steal your picnic basket though. Which again is Lowes fault!

Yes As far as im concerned these two people are the cause of everything bad that has happened to this club. Their mismanagement has brought the club to its knees. They came back saying they were the only ones who could save the club. One year later and the club is taking its last breaths. LOWE AND WILDE OUT

Very sad day for our club but we knew it was coming oneday. The truth is this club needed/needs investment to go forwards. Lowe and Wilde were never going to be the people to do that. They never have been. They thought they could come back and fix things without going that route. Everybody told them that. The previous boards said without investment the club is fooked. Crouch and his people said the same thing. The difference being at least the old board and Crouch's board actively looked for that investment. The first thing Lowe did on his return was to stop discussions with Fulthorpe etc. Just getting a tiny slice of that money would of made a massive difference. When it is all said and done Lowe and Wildes mis-management of this club from the prem years to the gamble of giving Burley £12m in under 2 seasons in the CCC have cost us and cost us dear. They have failed. Their positions are no longer tenable.

Well speaking from a business point of view i know if my company wanted to sell they would need to get permission from the bank 1st. If i recall part of the lending agreement states that should business change hands the debt must be cleared or transfered. In fact if i think about it more i recall the Leeds case. Just browsing that i find these lines "'Richard Fleming, Mark Firmin and Howard Smith, of KPMG Restructuring, were today appointed administrators of Leeds United Association Football Club Limited at the request of the club's directors. Shortly after their appointment the joint administrators agreed to sell the business and its assets to a newly formed company called Leeds United Football Club Limited, the directors of which are Ken Bates, Shaun Harvey and Mark Taylor. The sale of the club is subject to approval by its creditors, via a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA). This would see creditors forgoing a significant element of their debt, in order to allow the club to continue trading under new ownership. The creditors' meeting, to consider the CVA, will be held before the end of May. The Football League will also need to approve the sale.'" Leeds and Southampton both are similar in that they had been in trouble for sometime. But the key difference is that at this point Leeds had nothing left, the stadium had gone, players had gone and they were £35m in debt. They had been issued a winding up order of £5m by HMRC. If they did not pay it the club would of been liquidated. Point being the creditors knew they would not be getting fook all as there was nothing to sell, no way of making the money back. It was just a dead carcass with nothing but the bones remaining. The football league gave the points deduction out after the admin team agreed to the sale. Saying if they had not agreed the club would of gone under. Now Saints are nowhere near that situation. If we are then we would know about it, players would of been sold for next to nothing, players would of been released and so forth. Seeing as we have even spent money in recent months on signings such as Morgan i doubt we are anywhere near the winding up order. So we would have to convince the creditors that we are doomed and they wont get a penny before they would agree to it. And while we still have some players of worth they will never do that. Just as you wouldn't let it go if someone owed you money.

I'm 99% certain the only way they would be able to do that would be with the creditors backing. So that means all the people who have lent us money would be saying ok to losing their money. Due to the fact we owe money on the stadium to Norwich Union of more then £3m (£23m?)then why would they agree to give up their money? They would never do that. They would claim default on the loan which means they would be entitled to claim assets equal to the amount owed. Therefore they could probably claim the stadium. That then means the new company has a club with no stadium. They would then have to either buy or rent the stadium from Norwich Union who will be ****ed they were not paid back and could block it, chosing to dismantle the stadium and sell the land off. They would make a vast amount of money by selling the land due to it being in the city. If things were as simple as that every company in the current financial climate would be doing it.

If you were a bank manager and some guy comes to you like this Bank manager - Hi Mr Smith, yes we have requested you to come in and have a chat. We have looked at your account for sometime. We have become quite worried by your level of spending and wonder how you will pay us back? The figures show your quite deep in the red Mr Smith. Your income no longer covers the minimum payments required. What do you think? Mr Smith - You have made a mistake Mr Bank Manager Bank Manager - I assure you we haven't Mr Smith, those figures are the figures and you owe us a lot of money, money we are worried you will never pay back.... Mr Smith - No not a mistake with the numbers, they are correct. Its just im not Mr Smith..... Bank Manager - But these are your signatures right and these are your details? Mr Smith - They were my old details Bank manager - How do you mean? Mr Smith - We'll im no longer Mr Smith.....im now Mr Jim Bob. Bank Manager - ............... Mr Jim Bob - Any chance of a loan? If only it were that simple hey. If the club move the debt to a new company of which they are apart of i have no doubt the club will get a points penalty. On top of that the company probably can't do that without the bank/investers/shareholders agreeing to it. If they did that they would probably end up in jail.

The thing which i do find odd is that they said we didn't need loan signings. That is fair enough but clubs around us have strengthend in the past few weeks with loans. We have if i remember right 6 games in 2 weeks starting saturday. 3 games in 6 days. With so many games in a short period of time there will be injuries. The older players might find that run in a bit tough. If we lose one of the backs i.e Perry or Size who will we have who can do a job? Olly? If these experienced players get injured we have nobody with the ability to cover them. It will be the return to playing with kids, we saw how that went. With so many crap fringe players the club needed to get in someone who can help the club. We have players like Pullis,Gasmi,Molyneux,Liptak,Smith etc who are not helping the team one bit. There were a lot of decent players who could of helped out if someone got injured. You had Ian Harte go to Carlisle....Dos Santos go to Ipswich, Gunter go to Forest along with Blackstock and Everton keeper Turner, Lee Hughes went to Blackpool, Lua Lua to Doncaster, Sodje to Leeds, Stepanov and Rose to Watford, Alan Lee to Norwich, Taarabt to QPR, Kitson to Reading and Eustace to Derby etc etc Lots of decent players who will help those clubs no doubt. Why did we not try to get any players in? I can't help but think because maybe nobody wanted to come in, maybe Wotte has no influence over players outside the club in the same way say Pearson does etc. Going into the last 7 games with 6 games within the next 2 weeks with no cover for many positions seems like the ball being dropped to me. I hope Wottes arrogance of "i don't need to bring in any players, the squad we have are playing for their careers" pays off.

Shame as i thought he was one of few who have been performing well recently. Him, Size and Davis and maybe Perry are the players i think have done well the past 4 games. Putting Surman back in the middle i guess will be the obvious thing for Wotte but i can't help but think he is better where he is for now. Maybe go like this -------Davis------ Skacel--Size---Perry ------Wotten------- -------------------- ----Morgan--Euell--- Surman---------Holmes ------Saga--BWP---- I think we have to be attack minded now, draws probably wont be enough. Having the 6 pushing forward will obviously leave space for counters but Morgan and Wotten can fall back into those slots if Skacel gets forward. I just hope Wotte doesn't go ultra defensive for that game.

Or of course it can go the other way. The results are released and Lowe has saved the club almost nothing. In his almost year return at the club he will blame it on the previous board yada yada. Then will be held liable for not only not saving the club as much money as you guys make out he is saving but also be liable for our current league situation. But of course it all depends on how you look at it. Im sure your find something to praise him about even if he gets us relegated,makes us bankrupt and steals the head off the ted bates statue etc..

One good thing about this international break is that if Scotland fail to win on weds i will probably win my bet that Burley would be sacked before the end of the qualifiers. Will win £20

The thing is Dexter is good and has done very well this season. He has scored 11 league goals from 26 starts making him 13th top scorer in the league. Meaning 1 goal nearly every 2 games. Not a bad ratio at all for a 22 year old. In contrast to say DMG who has scored 9 from 38 starts, a 1 goal every 4 games ratio. I would swap him for DMG in a heartbeat. Blackstock will score goals for Forest that is for sure. Lets just hope his new defence cancels it out by letting in a few more hey

It's a nice little break from the nail bitting high pressure stuff we are currently in. The thing is after this break we go into hardcore mode, we have to play 5 games in 14 days. 3 games in 6 days starting next saturday. A very busy schedule that will obviously have us in the hunt or down. So a week without having to give a **** is always nice

The thing which worries me about all this is that people are forgetting this is a gamble Lowe has taken. Speaking from a business perspective point of view i would say it is a massive risk to the future of the company. It is like the chips are all down and only way you win is if you avoid the drop. Now the bookies don't have us faring so well as they all have us 2nd favs down. So we will have to proove everybody wrong and win enough points to keep us up which in turn will keep us out of admin. However if the critics and bookies are right and we sadly fail to stay up then we are most likely into admin. If we are on the brink of it now and we then go down we will cut out a vast amount of our revenue from tv rights and exposure. The FL rights were bought by Sky for £264m. From next season Sky will show 65 live CCC games and BBC will show 10. Meaning next season the CCC will have almost as many prem games being broadcast live. That brings more revenue as the exposure increases. £264m for 3 years = 88m a year in tv revenue. That is a vast amount of money. Which means every club in the CCC gets nearly £4m a year just from tv money. The League 1 teams get just 12% of the deal. Which means each club gets just over 500k a season. If that happens to Saints they will be nearly £3m out of pocket by dropping a league. Without investment the club would not be able to run due to the interest of the £20m+ debt being more then the revenue the club makes. Which means admin almost certainly. Now i'm glad the club has avoided going into admin, it gives us a chance to sort the problems out without having to go to the courts, means we can sort it out on the pitch. Which is the way it should be. But if we do go down and we do then go into admin we then risk dropping to league 2 because of this decision. We will go into the league one campaign with fewer players and with less quality players. We won't have the money to pay wages for Journey men to help get us out of it ala Leicester style. But worse of all we will go into it with a points deduction. Meaning if this back fires then we will probably be spending next season trying to stop another relegation. A bit like Bournmouth. If that happens then we will come back to this point. A point where it was decided to go for it and risk the next few years. The way i see it i see it as Lowes last stand if you will. I don't like the guy but i respect a lot of things he has done for the club in the past. But if he put the club into admin people would crucify him for it because that means relegation for sure. It would mean he would be gone as he would be removed by the court. It would effectively be him and his board throwing in the towel. Lowe will not let go of power until the empire has fully crumbled. So while i think the board deserve good words for not going into admin and condemning us down, i also think people need to realise that chances are it would not happen unless the banks made that decision for us by stopping our overdraft. So for all our sakes i hope the boys play out of their skin and get the wins we need to survive. Anything less and things will get even worse before they get better. At the end of the day this club needs money, we need investment. Without that things will always be hard.

The problem with this game is 6 teams directly above us play each other. So that means possibly 3 teams could win. If those teams are Norwich,Plymouth then we are screwed. If we fail to win i don't think we will be coming back from 7 points behind with 6 games remaining. 2 of those being against Wolves and the current in form scoring for fun Burnley. That means we would need to win 2 and draw 1 while hoping Norwich and Plymouth both lose their next 3 games just to get on level terms. Basically in short if we draw/lose and Plymouth/Norwich win that will probably be it. I don't think we can then expect to go to Watford and Wolves and get wins. Draws perhaps. If that happens we will be confirmed down if we lose to Wolves having lost to Watford the pervious game. So Charlton is a must win game. No excuses. They are an awful team who have won once away all year. However they have scored 16 goals away while we have scored 18 at home. So chances are this will not be a goal fest. This is the game to either keep us in the hunt ot to take us out of it. Must win at all costs, a draw will not be good enough with the others playing each other.

Think your wrong there nickh. Of the little i do know i do know that Crouch had the backing of the bank. Plus i know that he was seeking the investment this club needs. Lowe and Wilde have not done that and never will do that. Our debt is crippling us. A debt which Lowe and Wilde contributed hugely too by first getting us relegated then spending the money we had by giving Burley £12m in under 2 years to buy players. A gamble that did not pay off. The only reason they gave him that money was because Wilde assured the board and shareholders he had the money coming in. Crouch and Corbett as well as others were saying don't spend the money if your not 100% sure. The fact they have not been sued over those remarks makes me believe it's true. Crouch has done nothing wrong in regards to the finances. He did not sign anyone, did not sell anyone. Hired a manager on LESS money they what the previous manager was on and loaned out players to reduce the wages. At that time we had a massive injury crisis and we had to get in a few loan players. That was all we had. The fact people such as yourself try and say things would be worse if Crouch remained is quite pathetic really. We find ourselves 2nd to bottom and have been there pretty much all season. Haven't been out of the drop zone in 2009. Are now playing players who were not used for over half the season because we wanted to give the youngsters a chance and give the new revoulutionairy dutch system a go. What happened to that? But now we have Davis,James,Skacel,Lallana,Surman,Gillett,BWP,Saga,Perry,Euell, etc players who were all being used under the Crouch set-up, players all experienced and now the dutch system is long gone. Did Crouch take that decision? If this club gets relegated and goes into admin it will be nothing to do with Crouch it will be to do with Lowe and Wilde. So the fact you think he would do worse while we sit 2nd to bottom and have brought in players like Liptak,Gasmi,Pulis,Smith,Molyneux etc who are all being paid by us to just leads me to believe the club has never been run so bad as it has now. And you have a nerve to try and suggest things are better under the current regime. Wait until we are out of the relegation zone and have survived before you make such statements.

No i wasen't saying you were lying nickh just that from what i know very few people know the true finance numbers. If you knew the numbers were paid up then that would mean you know one of the "inner circle" if you will, which would also mean you must know other things happening behind the scene. Which i don't think you do. Where as FF i know does as do others. So not saying your lying nickh just that probably the person who told you that does't know.

If we have postponed paying for DMG (100k?) or simply didn't pay it then that to me would suggest we either don't have the money or the money could of been used elsewhere. Which as FF says could be the IR. I know he is very well connected in the club plus there was a board meeting yesterday on a non traditional board meeting day. So something is up, just a question of what. Speaking to my connections in the club i asked about it and was told "very few people get to look at the books and know the real extent of the current finances", which makes me think Nickh saying last he heard they had paid up is not credible really. Guess we will see. Personally i hope it isn't the case at all because IR are a real bunch of bastards.