sotonist

The context was in response to the assertion that KL's father was the businessman, not her. The "value of saying that" was to point out that her grandfather was the successful businessman, while her father has no track record of individual success in evidence. Arguably he was a more successful businessperson than his daughter in light of the fact MALI Group suffered many job losses and has clearly been scaled back in his absence, but that may arguably be because engineering was his personal interest and not KL's. He might even have been subsidising losses. IIRC the few revenue figures I got wind of were not remotely close to those of a 3bn empire. Football was his personal interest, not KL's. Thats not to say SFC is being managed the way MALI was. We appear to be on a hiring binge. I see no reason to "STFU" about the myth of ML which apparently stands without scrutiny, based on ropey information. If you have better information, I'd love to hear it.

I didn't say he was unsuccessful I said there's little evidence that he was.

All the information we have came from a dodgy article on a nothing website, which was quickly repeated everywhere after the takeover. I can't see that the Telegraph have done any real investigation into it. There's not a lot to find tbh. There were a couple of news articles about Markus buying the WIFAG factory, which was quickly corrupted into the concept that he had bought WIFAG, which looks to have gone a different way and been acquired by polytype(IIRC) There is some evidence of MALI attending a couple of conferences before Markus passed on, but since then it appears to be just a web site advertising the WIFAG factory for sale and now showing some diesel engines. But shows few signs of a prospering company. What evidence of this is there? the return of shares in the 1990s was reported on that dodgy website i already mentioned and appears to have just been lifted by other sites and newspapers from there. There is now a similar article on a more authoritative website stating that he returned "most" of his shares. We don't know the terms of the return of shares. Nor should we presume does the writer of the article. He remained a director of LIEBHERR into the mid 2000s however, A 3bn figure for his net worth appears to have been plucked from somebody's arse as well. I'm saying there's little evidence Markus was a successful businessman. That's true. There's nothing solid to draw that conclusion from except for his ability to buy the WIFAG factory, a couple of small german tractor manufacturers, and SFC, then continuing to invest in SFC MALI was not a household name and there is no evidence as to its value. I've not checked for absolute evidence that Markus inherited a 1/5 stake in LIEBHERR but it stands to reason and fits with inheritance laws in that part of the world. Not sure why you're being so abusive tbh.

what a peculiar article. everything he says supports a scenario where the players had no intention of staying beyond last season, but he's spinning it as if the club's handling of them after their decisions were made have affected that.

Depends how these are structured. Skacel completed his loan with Hearts, wanted to sign for us, but Hearts activated their right to buy and Skacel had as part of the loan already agreed terms.

just walk away

It was certainly the lodge he mentioned. Have the club replaced that in any way? He obviously feels that having the youth players living there was instrumental in their youth development plan. Maybe due to the camaraderie or the supervision.

People seem to forget they don't actually know why ML bought the club and have probably never been within ten yards of the man. Yeah he probably viewed it as a good punt and a fun investment as well. KL probably views it as a large asset which fell into her lap, she has no personal interest in and it is problematic to effectively liquidate without converting the assets of the club into cash first. It's all probable. A lot of people are claiming to know the motives in play when they are only making very reasonable guesses though.

The same way Cortese got in charge of Markus's investment in the first place. To be fair, Hoffstetter has better credentials to be on a board of directors than Cortese did and Rodgers as a chartered accountant was qualified to be company secretary, if not showing any aptitude for becoming CEO. Run under instruction from the CEO. Perhaps it wasn't Reed who knifed Cortese in the end. He's a director and chairman of the board of the holding company. He might be tasked with growing commercial activities or he might simply have been a front man. He holds no position with the football club as far as I can tell, so is unlikely to be involved in football matters. He's a director of the company that makes the technology for Oyster cards and the like. He was billed as bringing experience of corporate governance and i've no reason to believe he's on the board for anything other than to oversee the restructure of responsibility. We've employed some bird from the apples.

Her father was one of 5 heirs to Hans Liebherr's business empire. there's little evidence that Markus was any good at anything other than spending his share on his hobbies.

There were people biding for dickson and sharp. there just wasn't anyoen willing to match their wages so we were stuck with them. That's commitment. Unfortunately it's more difficult to make a long term overinflated contract unpalatble to a player than it is for a player to make themselves a nuisance and more trouble than they are worth to keep. Get used to that. it's not just Southampton. On the bright side, if we don't bring in any more players we could well be fielding a mostly home grown XI. That wasn't the stated intention though, was it? 50% was the aim IIRC. I don't know how we intend to manage half a home grown player. Our best chance of being competitive and having 5 home grown players in the match day squad is for those players to be average. We need to sell the exceptional ones for big money, bring in foreigners of an immediately high standard and keep the average ones to bulk out the squad.

the club is expressing four years of loyalty to the player. we don't get to renege on that. tommy forecast, billy sharp, and ryan dickson's promotion bonuses demonstrate that.

When you replace expensive proven assets with fewer (so far), cheaper, unproven assets and pocket the difference, possibly. So far our sales are outstripping our acquisitions substantially and with the likes of Schneiderlin, Fonte and rodriguez all looking at the exit door as well, we've got a very weak looking squad going into the season.

Fonte hasn't been offered a deal yet. cardiff are offering him more money than SFC. which is it?

Killer must be at his wits end with the board who seemingly can't even get a fire sale right. We're not giving the players away anywhere near cheaply enough. I dare say we could afford to pay to get rid of them.

Any club looking to buy a DM is going to buy Khedira, except they can't afford his wages. Now any club looking to buy a DM is going to buy Schneiderlin, except they can't afford the fee.

he had 12 months left on his contract then as well.

certainly the biggest factor but i'm sure they are all interested in progression. personal professional progression, salary progression, and team progression. when the team is at a perceived plateau and you are staying to maintain a standard rather than progress to the next level, the prospects look worse of progression in all other aspects. the club's ambition may or may not have stalled. what has certainly happened is we've quickly reached the point when enough people inside and outside of the club think we've hit the glass ceiling and want to move onto the next gravy train or the big pay off.

If you're looking at his profile, it defaults to showing activity of friends as well. K,Billy's supersound is on Guan 2.0's friends list.

Agreed. how are we supposed to show a lack of ambition by making signings like this?

Can see rome being a draw, but unless they are likely to reverse their fortunes, i'm not sure they are more likely to get champions league football. They were 1 point closer to CL than we were, they had one more team between them and CL football, and they had a 0 goal difference. Of course that means bringing in De Vrij might make the difference.

I find it surprising that mid table Serie A is more attractive or lucrative than us, let alone Manchester United.

and strachan managed to get a team to a cup final in the same year.