Verbal

I wonder if you'd agree to be culled. Humanely, of course. And nothing personal. It's just that there are two many damned Frys in all this - bank managers, administrators and impersonators of Howard Beale. Or perhaps we could merge all the Frys into one super-Fry. A mad-as-hell human torpedo of businesses and forums. Just thought.

To say I'd be happy if you were wrong would be an understatement. In any case, Keegan and Wise apparently loathe each other.

If this is the comedy awards, there's no contest. Sadly it's worse than that though. MJ has the depressing capacity to be just as destructive as that dimwit tommac with his share-price ramping antics and fatuous pretence that he was Paul Allen's representative on earth. We should settle it with a penalty shoot out between the two.

This is just an appalling post. Attacking Pinnacle is one thing. Doing it by making supposition after supposition to show them in the worst light really brings your motives into serious question. How do you KNOW that there was no reason why this became a last minute issue? How do you KNOW that Pinnacle had not been in discussion with the FL (NOT the FA, by the way) How do you KNOW that Pinnacle ignored the issue and 'let it slip' past their exclusivity period. The answer to all of the above is that you don't. And yet each implicit claim to superior ITK is essential to your case that you appear to have known all along, at least in your own mind, that your 'doubts' would be realised. And all of the above are essential to your apparent belief that Pinnacle are exactly on a par with the cretinous Wilde. Surreal.

I think it's time to take a good look at 'Lord' Mawhinney's expenses.

If you travelled out into the universe fast enough, you could return the day before you left. That's probably what was meant by 'Thursday'. HTH.

Add another one to the list, um - the ‘Governor Eyre incident’ of 1865. Edward Eyre was Jamaica’s colonial governor, who directed a massacre against an uprising among the island’s peasants. Hundreds were killed and the survivors flogged. Defenders of his idiocy argued that black peasants were like British workers and required similar treatment. Shortly afterwards, Eyre was attending a banquet in his honour in Southampton - a city known then as the 'gateway to the empire'. But the dinner broke up in chaos because of a vast rally by Southampton’s dockworkers, among others, and led by the 'Jamaica Committee' (formed by the John Stuart Mill). It was at that time the largest public gathering in the city’s history. The Daily Telegraph, revealingly, moaned that ‘there are a good many negroes in Southampton, who have the taste of their tribe for any disturbance that appears safe and who are probably imbued with the conviction that it is the proper thing to hoot and yell at a number of gentlemen going to a dinner party.’ Of course, the ‘negroes’ were the very English and very white Southampton dock and factory workers, who won the day. Eyre never set foot in Southampton again. Here endeth the history lesson.

Quite agree. And the first thing we have to do is downgrade this forum. It's still Championship quality, with occasional bursts of Premiership class. What we need is a real League One forum, where we gaze with wonderment at a fixture list that has us matched against the mighty Milton Keynes Dons, and get all tingly about a trip to the football factory that is Brentford. If only there was a way to make it more crap on here. Or not. I'm sticking with my delusions.

Could you please direct me to a tosh-free thread? Tosh is what we do best.

Fifteen Love. Bit of a soft point though. Nineteen just lobbed that one up to you. Maybe being useless is infectious.

Pinnacle have never claimed that they paid £500,000 up front. Nor has Fry. Only some sloppy reporting by the Daily Echo gave the impression that they did.

True enough, Phil - although saints are common in Sufi Islam. (In fact, they're a defining feature of Sufism). Unfortunately, the oil happened to be under the feet of a narrow, unpopular sect founded by a violent misogynist, whose followers were driven out of Mecca, Medina and the Arabian Peninsula by the Ottomans, and who were put back into power by Lawrence of Arabia. Perhaps if we kept our nickname we'd avoid being taken over by the descendants of these charmers! Always look on the bright side...

Would someone mind summarizing the past 600+ posts with a simple answer to the original question? Thanks awfully. And by the way, why the mystery in the first place? Seems odd to me that we know the identities of the multi-billionaires bidding for that termite heap down the road and others, and yet we're still here playing a guessing game with contracts all but signed.

Strange. I had you down as more of an ar$e man - our very own Sacha Baron Canteen, landing upside down on the forum.

I'm not here.

Sounds like you've just experienced a Damascene conversion - because by the same token, the quality of the OLD chairman also set the tone for the long term future of the club. Hence we're where we are. Presumably then you'll now happily accept that Lowe had 'double relegation and ruin' stamped through him like Brighton rock. Welcome to the dark side (and sorry to bring up what now seems ancient history).

I suppose this shouldn't bother me, but it does. You're saying that you and a few others know what 'really' happened; that those being critical of MJ can't possibly have known what happened; we should all shut up, including yourself (but not on this occasion); and you're not going to tell the many critics of MJ why they're wrong. It makes me nervous. I remember all too well the tickings off initially issued by you and others to posters who criticised tommac. And look how that ended up. I also recall a certain trio on here who were told in advance by Wilde last year that he was going to get into bed with Lowe - but who thought it better to keep that to themselves. A little (often partial) knowledge really is a dangerous thing. Personally I prefer the leaks and misdirection of ITKs to the tut-tutting of ITKBINGTTYs.

KJ's last game, I think, and one of Hammill's first. That wasn't a pretty match.

Phil, I think you and your critics – or MJ’s to be more precise – are slightly talking past one another. The small matter of trust is at the heart of this. It’s a rare and precious commodity, especially where Saints is concerned. I know you’ve been on nodding terms with MJ for a while now, shared drinks in all the best dives in Dubai, and have got to know someone who perhaps doesn’t conform to the cartoon figure that MJ became through his previous dabblings around the boardrooms of Southampton and Bournemouth. In both those previous instances, MJ’s involvement was at best distracting – and at worst, made us look like a football club with all the panache and ambition of Southern League (Maidstone Division) triers. I don’t doubt for a second that MJ had the best of intentions, and together with Green and others, worked his socks off to try and rescue the club. As you and a few others have rightly pointed out, we internet warriors hardly have the high moral ground on this, sitting comfortably behind our keyboards and hoping for some unnamed, loaded saviour to hove in over the horizon. But that’s not really the issue. Suppose MJ/Green et al had a bid that was higher than Pinnacle/MLT’s. Leaving aside Fry for the moment, whom do you think the majority on here and among Saints fans generally would prefer? Even with the fantastic track records and commitment to Saints of Terry Paine and Mick Channon, no one since Ted Bates himself has earned the degree of trust that MLT has – in fact, I’d challenge you to find any player anywhere who’d surpass MLT’s combination of breathtaking talent and one-club loyalty. It’s not just that no one can compete with that – it’s that people have been genuinely fearful that MJ would somehow trip up the MLT-supported bid. And frankly it’s a fear with a good grounding in past failures and bloopers. MJ may be an all-round good egg. He may even be a reformed character, having learned his lesson from staring at his blazing fingers. But you can’t just walk away from your past mistakes as if they never happened. MJ could never have the degree of trust enjoyed by MLT. As far as trust is concerned they don’t even exist on the same planet. And this is not just about the recent past. Imagine a ‘sliding doors’ world in which you could skip between a universe in which MJ’/Green’s bid won, and the real one. What would happen when things get sticky – a few bad performances, a struggling manager, etc? Who will get the more time to put things right? Who, in other words, would be the best bet for building the club in the way that Ted Bates did all those years ago? FWIW, I appreciate all the work that MJ and others put into this, but I’m glad he didn’t win. By the way, I'm curious to hear your take on the Fry problem at some point...

Nick, as usual, the problem in any argument with you is that you just make stuff up. I said ‘I don’t think the radio station is any good’, did I? Where, exactly? Then you wave your airy-fairy wand. The signal reach is supposed to make the station profitable? The station makes the club ‘modern’? Sheesh! Radio has been around since the ark. Forget it – the business model of a virtually stand-alone, fully-fledged radio station is history. The real question is: What should the club do with its live radio/internet rights to the games? After all, that’s the main reason people who can’t get to the game want to tune in. The new regime has two basic choices. It can sell those rights to their local broadcast stations. Coventry have a deal for their matches with their local BBC station, as do Crystal Palace. Wolves and West Brom sell their games to their local commercial radio stations and their associated internet sites. And so on. Or the club can set up a stand-alone internet site and, say, add a small upcharge on the membership card as a subscription for access during games. The collapse of Radio Hampshire is no reason to deny fans who can’t get to the games the ability to listen in. In the grand scale of things, given all the challenges the new regime faces in rebuilding the club from the ruins left behind by Lowe, this is small beer. But I’ve no doubt it’ll be addressed by Pinnacle, assuming and hoping all goes to plan in the next twenty days.

Exactly. For some reason, nickh and Frank Cousins decided to engage in playground economics yesterday by declaring that the radio station could have been a good investment – if only we hadn’t been relegated. While we were in the Prem, it was a loss-making service. When we were relegated, it was just another millstone round our necks. Lowe may have fancied himself as some kind of media mogul but if his intention was to make the radio station a long-term ‘profit centre’ for the club, it was naïve in the extreme. The economics of commercial radio requires that you club together. You need to share advertising sales staff, backroom staff and as much overhead as you possibly can with as many other radio stations as you can to turn a profit. Many if not most commercial radio stations also share programmes. Even with all this, it can be a struggle to stay in the black. Radio Hampshire was owned by Town and Country Radio, a very, very small (mostly Welsh) radio group. As it turns out, it was too small to make it work. To run a radio station as a ‘stand-alone’ or as part of a small alliance is tempting commercial suicide – and the ONLY justification for it, when the club is wealthy and successful, is as a service to the fans. Yet even with the takeover it’s not clear at the moment that the club will even be able to save parts of the club like the Academy – it may well be cut back to focus all attention on building the first team. In any list of priorities, the radio station is WAY down there – and in my view shouldn’t even be considered. Let someone else take it over if they want to, and let them deal with the constant and distracting (for a football club) struggle of making it pay. And if you want a radio station, pray that one of the big players takes an interest.

It's like coming out of a long, dark tunnel. Not just the weeks of near-collapse, but the interminable years supporting a club repeatedly hijacked and assaulted by spivs, charlatons, chancers, monomaniacs and liars.

Well that's progress at least. I'm a bit puzzled as to how the Echo can report that they handed over £500,000, and yet Fry is quoting the figure as 'undisclosed'. But hey... I presume this also means that MJ has yet again got as far as shelling money out to begin due diligence (but 'non-exclusively') and lost out. Surprising that someone could be gazumped in this economic climate.

In other words, in any other world except the real one, this was a good investment. Brilliant! If ever I give the impression that I need investment advice from you, nickh, please assume that I have lost my mind. Thanking you in advance.