saintbletch

I fully expect Wotte to buy himself out of his current contract. The Egyptian job marks a twice in a lifetime opportunity that he just can't turn down. Thanks for trying Mark.

Very good!

That's the truth Sue! I didn't see the original suggestion but this occurred to me when I saw that David Ross (mentioned on the 'Who is he?' thread) had today sold a load of Carphone Warehouse shares. It set me thinking. Great minds and all that...

Perhaps the new owner needs to dispose of some assets prior to acquiring Saints and if their identity became known it might affect the disposal in some way?

Not sure about that. According to The Guardian this morning his remaining 155M shares in The Carphone Warehouse are worth £250M alone. Oddly he doesn't appear on The Times' rich list.

David Ross? Co-founder of Carphone Warehouse now building a property development empire in leisure property. Just sold a bunch of shares in CW to put into his property company Kandahar Real Estate (no, really.) Also having to keep his head down recently after having to resign a number of directorships for breaking city rules on using shares as security on personal loans without informing other board members. And he's a sports fan having rescued Leicester City before selling to Mandaric. This from Wikipedia... Oh and he also enjoys shooting ducks.

I feel that Master Bates should be able to claim back the cost of his morning Echo on expenses from the SW coffers.

Nicely put. I think Pinnacle will get one opportunity to convince the fans to come and watch League 1 football and I think that will be best achieved by starting with a clean slate. We will be more inclined to "believe again" if there is no baggage from previous regimes - both above and below stairs. However, Wotte will get my support if he is the manager come the start of the season but it will be difficult to be as enthusiastic because I already think that I know what he can do.

I agree with Trousers agreeing with NC here. You have summed up my concerns in a nutshell.

Shroppie, if you have to ask that question, you will never understand the answer. This thread is the Internet equivalent of prison officers "letting" inmates have access to soft drugs. The mods have obviously decided that if they let us continue posting ad nauseam, literally about nothing, at least we won't riot. I propose that we carry out a sit down in B Wing until we get some real news from Mark Fry.

I noticed that too!

That should do it.

Personally I think it's disgusting. Owning up to that on a forum is beyond the pale to me. Fancy admitting having a Tory mate! On the BNP issue I assumed the posters on here were on a wind-up. They both seem like otherwise sensible people who wouldn't be taken in by the thinnest veneer of political respectability. Unless of course they actually are bile-filled, hateful racists.

Perhaps the individual / business has a background / reputation that, without fuller explanation, might cause concern for Saints' fans and the consortium wants to announce it with all of the other positive news?

I share some of your concerns MusicMan. 2 and 4 are my biggest concerns but perhaps the part of Tony Lynam's message on here concerned me most. Would a consortium that wants to own a football club, for footballing reasons, approach a Property Consultant to become an employed member of their team? I don't think so. And without wanting to offend Tony Lynam who seems like an all round good egg judging by the personal recommendations he has on here, why would you then ask a Property Consultant to run the show? Now should we worry? Maybe. Maybe not. We were toast before this bid came in so it would be pretty churlish to not appear grateful but until some of these questions are answered I remain a concerned. It seems pretty clear to me that in the investor's mind this is a transaction about property and not about a football club. So if the investor gets whatever property he is after (SMS, Jackson's farm, planning permission along the waterfront, whatever) and we get a team that stays in business with a local hero as the Chairman. Is that a fair deal? Perhaps it is. The reason that the investor is important to me is that unless the motivation of the money behind the deal is to create a football club that we can all be proud of, when times get tough his priorities may be elsewhere. That's why this "You don't need to know who the investor is, I'm going to run the thing with MLT and ask him for cash if we need it" line is a bit of a worry to me. Ideally I want the investor to be someone who kicks every ball and heads every cross from their seat in the Director's box. Not someone who smiles at his property portfolio and gets a monthly report from Tony Lynam on how many Balti pies we've sold. I'd like to know now, which one of those investors we have behind the Pinnacle bid and I do wonder why our investor is not happy to be named.

I know he's no giant, but that's a bit harsh IMO.

I think you're right buctootim. I'm amazed how may seriously wealthy individuals are unknown to us. Given the dead sea scroll-like "clues" (or misinformation) left behind by The Farmer before he went radio silent, I personally think that the answer to the Da Vinci code lies somewhere within propertyweek.com, insolvencynews.com and Google.com. As an example how about Andy Ruhan. He has been buying up distressed Leisure companies through the administrator Grant Thornton and must be pretty wealthy but I'd never heard of him or his companies Sentrum or Bridgehouse Capital. That said it looks like something dodgy went on with his purchase of the Massive Pub group. Could he be our man? Or Richard Caring that I mentioned further down the thread? When/IF he is finally revealed I think it will be bit anticlimactic and we'll all say "Who?".

How about Richard Caring? Left-field I know but he fits some of the information we "know". He is an "unknown" millionaire with a fortune of ~£350M He has worked with the Guernsey-based Candy Brothers on property deals. I am guessing (yes, I know) here that the Candy brothers were clients of Pinnacle and assuming (yes, I know) that the Candy Brothers may have been originally part of the consortium. Good mates with Philip Green. Also has done business with Gavyn Davies.

YIKES! Trousers you've got it. We're being bought by the fairground owner.

But what from column A and what from column C? So in true Sherlock Holmes fashion, can you clear something up for me The Farmer? When you posted that information originally, had you been digging around for the information as you suggested? Or was it a case of "knowing" the information due to your commercial relationship with Pinnacle/Lynam ( a relationship that appears to stretch back to at least July 2008 ). Was the information 'blessed' for release? I tell you why I ask, because at the time there was a lot of (unfair) criticism on here about the look & feel and grammar used on the Pinnacle site. Within a day or so the site was changed and the grammar tidied. This does suggest (to me at least) that there was a degree of communication between the forum and Pinnacle (via you I presume). The alternative is that you were digging into information behind Lynam's back and releasing it on here around about the same time you were making changes to your client's web site - not too ethical that. And I have you down as someone with ethics than that. So my dear Watson, if I was a conspiracy theorist I'd jump immediately to the conclusion that what you put in your original post was blessed/fed to you by Pinnacle.

That's fantastic Holmes, Watson here and I wonder how you can reconcile the above with the first post of any substance on the matter from The Farmer? Bearing in mind that (I think) we've subsequently learned that The Farmer created the web site for Pinnacle and has known Tony Lynam for a number of years. So I think that this post is laden with either clues or misinformation. I wonder if it was posted with the blessing of Pinnacle. Either way, it does seem to suggest that this was about property and not ponies.

Negative slant? Yes I suppose that's fair and I guess that does come from conjecture on my part but on the ultimate motives of the new buyer not the motives of the two "want-aways". But conjecture can only happen in the absence of fact. Until I know where this is heading I can only speculate and there are things that concern me. I took away from Tony Lynam's message that he wanted the club to stand on its own two feet - hence my comment about being run on the finances of a League 1 club. And by the way I think that is exactly what is needed right now and am completely behind that approach. I also saw that Lynam said he'd go ask for money if he/MLT think it is needed so that is all good but then we see players leave/leaving and so I can only speculate (as GM is doing in this thread) as to the reason for this. Probably the players not wanting to stay as you say. Maybe there is no basis in fact? I just don't know. I really am more than happy to be persuaded that our future is rosy but right now I feel a little concerned. But if all that transpires is that we are a united fan-base with a well run, well managed club with little investment, I'll be more than happy. By the way, and again you might want to ignore this as conjecture but in the absence of fact, etc... but you say that we will need to be promoted before the owner will see any real return. Some would say that acquiring the substantial assets of the club for a knock-down fee might be all the return the new owner was looking for. Personally, right now I can't reconcile that the mouth-piece of the new owner is a property consultant.

I don't think it is any more sinister than the fact that we've been bought by someone who seems to value the property he is purchasing more than the club, who works through a property consultancy and who doesn't plan to invest millions to keep and expand the quality within our squad. But we're in business and given where we were a few days ago that looks pretty appealing. I'd suggest we all get used to being run on the organic finances that a League 1 team can generate which will mean cashing in on our saleable assets when we can. That will probably mean selling before we can buy.

Good question. Someone who sees the entire transaction as a property purchase?

LOL. There is an obvious, and potentially worrying reason for this.