Verbal

I’m not sure who you think is in that brigade of yours. I’d have thought there was a rough consensus on here – of which you’re clearly not a part – that says something like: saving the club deserves being given the benefit of the doubt – and certainly before a football has been kicked in anger. I hardly see how this makes anyone on here ‘slaves to the new regime’. Fans as a whole can be cussedly difficult to please. I worry that what you appear to want from ML are some big-ticket footballers being brought in at fees and wages that suggest that we, in some sense, ‘mean business’ (a dubious term, in this context at least). If Pardew doesn’t have a plan beyond bringing in one or two ageing freebies, it’ll quickly be shown up. But it hardly seems likely, does it? He has, after all, been fairly explicit about what he intends to do over the next five years. So, quite apart from our experience the last time we tried the brilliant idea of spending like there’s no tomorrow, I have to ask why you’re not prepared to hang fire at least until the season gets underway. I seem to recall that you leaked on TSF quite often about AO during the dark days of the executives’ coup. And I grant you, if half of what you said at the time is still true, there are some causes for concern. But it can also look as if you have a bit of a personal agenda here. So as far as AO is concerned – as well as the team and Pardew’s management of it – isn’t it better to wait just a little longer? At least let's get Millwall out of the way first before manning the siege towers.

Call me a cynic, but I think benjii is engaged in the delicate art of pl*nker-pulling.

That's no longer a problem. Every corner against QPR sailed over not just the last forward but the last spectator. It was like watching satellites in near-Earth orbit.

Team morale is a huge factor in relegation - it's not just down to the quality of the squad. I think that'll be a bigger problem at P*mpey than any of the three you mention.

But thankfully this thread started past Original BS's bedtime, so he won't be able to work himself up into a fainting fit until about 10 tomorrow morning - or whatever time they roll out of bed in Glasgow.

Answer to my question above, then, would be no.

Brilliant. Didn't realise how strong his background is in sports management. Does his appointment mean we have a day off from the girly men on here?

You clearly know nothing about Southampton Football Club if you think MLT is going to be ostracised by anyone here. One thing that does make me a little uncomfortable, FWIW, is FF's repeated criticisms of MLT on a number of earlier threads. Yes, of course, he made a mistake. But 'holier than thou' is a dangerous game to play, especially if you were one of the leading cheerleaders for 'going Wilde'. Make the point once, by all means, then move on. We all make mistakes. Who doesn't? Some turn out to be serious in the long term, others less so - and we don't yet know which applies to MLT's backing of Pinnacle. But surely no one at the club is going to be so up themselves as to exclude MLT from 'the fold'.

Or to paraphrase in the words of Arnie, there are way too many girly men on here.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. (*to the sound of gunfire*)

Let's suppose the answer to FF's original question is 'bogus' - in the sense that Pinnacle were merely trying to grab the club at a bargain-basement price and then flog it off to the nearest buyer. If that were actually true, why did it seem that theirs was the highest bid? If you're really going to do this, wouldn't you want to buy low and sell high? One suspicion is that Lynam might have been in it for the long haul but his backers - such as they were - had very different ideas. And they baulked at the price Lynam had agreed with Fry because they saw it eating into their profit margin in the ensuing quick sale. For all those whining about how we haven't rebuilt the team in the last five minutes, just imagine what it would have been like had Pinnacle succeeded. (Not to mention the ruin of MLT's reputation). Someone - whether it was Lynam or his secretive backers - was prepared to slash-and-burn this club for a quick buck, no matter who got hurt. We certainly wouldn't be buying players, and would by now surely lost a lot more. We had a lucky escape.

You can only be sure of that if you're ITK. FF's post is revealing but still, clearly, not the whole story. Let's hope Leon sues, just so that we can get to the truth of all this.

Thanks for that, man with skate manager's name.

I know the road he lives on quite well. Very ritzy. All large, detached Edwardian villas with big driveways. Ali Dias (for short) is 38 years old apparently. Seven directorships. 'Something' in the City, is my guess.

Thanks, FF. But it still begs at least a couple of questions about the bidding war: Why didn't Liebherr simply trump the Pinnacle bid earlier and rush in ahead of them with the non-refundable down-payment? Was his bid not ready at the time? If that's the case, the idea that we lost almost a month to Pinnacle may not necessarily be true. Did Liebherr offer substantially less than the Pinnacle bid? If so, we can hardly blame Fry if he went for the option that offered better value to creditors. That was his job, after all. If, on the other hand, Liebherr stood aside just because MLT was associated with the Pinnacle bid, then that suggests to me at least that Fry should have been much more proactive in promoting the bid with the greater credibility. It would have saved us all a lot of heartache and Leon a cool half a million. In any case, the idea that Pinnacle's bid was a leveraged buyout is deeply shocking. Was Fry REALLY unaware of that his ‘preferred bidder’ was offering to buy a catastrophically indebted club with…debt? It seems highly unlikely to me. Just as it seems extremely likely that MLT and Leon did NOT know. In which case, Leon quite possibly has an actionable case against Fry as well as Pinnacle. I guess we just don’t know how Lynam represented his bid to Fry and to Leon & MTL. Do we (you)?

Not you as well! It's like an episode of True Blood on here.

True. It's like SWF but with really bad spelling.

I hope someone's hidden the razor blades.

Keep trying, Nick. It's a losing battle. Optimism seems to have gone out of style on here.

At 34, he's a damned good player. We'll be lucky to have him.

Of course we're dangerously unprepared! That much was evident at QPR - and Pardew said as much before the game. But are we in the same situation as the last two seasons, when the club was in the clutches of the Pol Pot of football? I don't think so. It's going to be tough playing catch-up with teams that have had a settled pre-season and with the -10. But we were playing a team from the top-half of the division above us today, and it showed. Even so, a few judicious signings - starting with Murty - and we'll be on the up. And by the way, we really do have some pretty good players in search of a team. Last season, we were dependent on a cut-price Dutch no-hoper to find it; this year, we have a manager with a proven track record to go looking for it. Things just aren't THAT bad.

Based on the last two games, he isn't even picked as a starter at Saints - and was lazy as hell for the half hour he was on at QPR. (Guess who came closest to scoring, though.)

With a few additions, I think this team has some potential. Yes, we lost, but it was good to see some intelligent interplay between Lallana, Schneiderlin and Mills; Harding looked like he's improving; and Murty is a must-buy for the sheer authority and calm he brings to the right hand side. The old weaknesses of last season persist - the team just looked lightweight and very young compared to QPR - which became even more glaringly obvious when the substitutes started rolling on. We didn't create as many chances as our possession suggests we should have had. And we have a habit of panicking under pressure. For some reason, we're also now over-hitting every single dead ball, and there's little evidence of much training-ground thinking going into corner-taking or free kicks in dangerous positions. But QPR are now a division above us, are not a bad side, have had a settled pre-season - and we simply won't face this kind of opposition in League 1. The CB problem obviously needs sorting out. They seemed to just stroll through us for the first goal, we panicked for the second, and we can thank 'Am I bothered?' Greg for the third. But the team was certainly more organised, the flanks looked much more solid (James had a good game and a terrific run in the first half), and there seem to be a few more leaders on the pitch. Assuming no one else leaves, this team is probably three signings away from being consistently competitive from the off.

Is that sarcasm, or have you just pureed your brain?