Saint86

Maguire is interesting to listen to, and he's good at headlining certain data... but equally, he specifically headlines the worst data because that's what gets him air time and money. Re Saints, he's neglected to mention potential incoming fee instalments seemingly (or the media that are quoting him have), and instead just highlighted what saints owe... In reality, i'd suggest any team that's spent tens to hundreds of millions on transfers in the past 3years owes similar amounts. It becomes an issue when there is no money coming in... Like Leicester or west ham, both of which have reportedly cashed in on future transfer instalments. I think i am right in saying this interview took place with Blackmore / solent? in which case its another example of them jumping on a negative outlook and not doing even a basic 30min bit of research to look at saints liabilities and incomings, and either put proper questions to Maguire, or challenge Maguire for a more balanced outlook.

Maybe he can repeat his playing career by joining us in league 1 on -10points in a couple of years and then carrying us to back to back promotions... 😄

Surely that would only emphasis the need to keep the best manager we've had in years and who had us on course for 113points (if our form post switching to a 4-2-3-1 was extrapolated over a season). Also, the clubs finances (and owing £100M in fee installments as a second tier side) is not the fault of the 32year old mananger we appointed halfway through the most recent season. And don't forget, we don't owe all that money this year. We presumably also have other installments coming in from player sales (such as TD and MF last summer). For info, I have made no effort all to fact check this... Incoming fees: The 2025 accounts show a £108M debt on outgoings installments. So Maguire's figure of £99M uses other data. But equally, the MF and TD sales (and others), plus last summer's incoming purchases will all have impacted the numbers. But regardless, I doubt it's as bad as Maguire suggests. Just looking at those numbers: June 25: Outgoing transfer instalments = £108.3M (total) Outgoing transfer instalments = £63.1M (1 year - i.e., now cleared) Incoming transfer instalments = £72.9M (total) Incoming transfer instalments = £44.2M (1 year - i.e., now cleared) Outstanding instalments = -£16.5M (money owed based on historic transfers). Player trading profit last summer = between £60M and £80M. So, re player transfers, we should be in the black when this years accounts get published? Just as important as sorting out transfer liabilities, will be getting wages to a level that is sensible and sustainable for our situation as a parachute team.

The EFL rules are discretionary re cup expulsions. I believe you are referring specifically to ineligible players here? Grimsby for example fielded an ineligible player vs man united in the EFL cup, their result (win) stood, but they were fined. Swindon got kicked out of the EFL trophy for starting a player who was suspended for 7games and using a substitute that wasn't named on their team sheet. This one had a clear impact on the result (from kick off, and from the substitution), the game even had stoppage time when the officials realised - the multiple breaches and clear impact were the deciding factors. Neither case is directly relatable to ours.

His board room confession was certainly very good for boro and hull.

Sadly, i think nearly all legal avenues we could pursue are holed below the water line thanks to the way we've handled the independent hearing. I just can't see us winning case with the EFL for £80M-100M, which is what we would reasonably be owed from a loss of chance perspective alone.

Agree with this bar the last part. Saints were completely stitched up throughout the process and ultimately given a totally disproportionate punishment. No small part of that is down to Parsons handling fumbling of the whole thing (based on the reports at least), and if true, he is significantly responsible for the weakened position we are now in. However on your last point - in the grand scheme of things, any compensation saints may or may not win via future legal avenues is completely dwarfed by the significance of whether or not the FA allow us to keep our manager (a manager that SR may well sack anyway). The two bodies (and any sanctions) are entirely separate. Saying that, blood is in the water and the FA know we are an easy mark for further punishment (again thanks to Parsons / SRs management of this whole thing) - i therefore fully expect them to take the maximum amount of time to reach a decision on Eckert, and then Ban him... Ultimately maximising the potential for yet more harm to the football club. I suspect there are many in the halls of power who live to enforce draconian punishments on clubs, and who wouldn't be happy until they've forced football clubs to their knees and been through administration and relegated etc.

Did anyone expect different with Parsons at the helm?

I would expect the club to maximise saleable assets - partly to balance the books, partly to free up funds for reinvestment. I reckon Scienza and Jander will both be sold, and for at least double our initial outlay which is much needed from a PSR perspective - reasonable to expect £40-45M for those 2 i think? Charles will also be sold due to contract situation, hopefully another £15M. That's a likely £55-60M for those 3. Ramsdale for circa £10-15M if we are lucky. Plus £100k/wk (£5.2M/yr) wages. A potential £65M-£70M if we sell Ramsdale If anyone will give us a profit on THB then i expect he will be sold as well. The reality is that having a £20M CB is a luxury in this league - i rate him and think he's a brilliant CB for the championship, but if someone offers us £25M to replace him and strength elsewhere, we will take it... So potentially £85M-90M sales just on those 5players. Rumours of a sell on fee for Fernandes - so hopefully a small bonus there as well. Against that, we need to offset a circa £15M drop in parachute money this coming season. Plus we need to make sure we balance the PSR 3year loss limit of £61M - for which, we don't know where we stand for the season just gone. All in all though, i think we could have a tidy pot to reinvest this summer. Larin for £3-4M isn't a bad buy - but crucially he will have no resale value. And Stewart will be similar in that he's going into his final year on his contract. Having those 2 as our strikers leaves us staring at an issue in a couple of seasons where we may be needing an entirely new front line and have no parachute payments etc., to replace them. If any championship teams are in for Ballard, given our sell on fee (discount) we should at least be considering joining them...

The defence doesn't need major work. Bree, manning, Wellington, roerslev, Stephens, wood, quarshie, THB (sold and replaced?), and sansa coming through. Doesn't have to be flash for the championship. Bazunu is left. Ramsdale will leave. A new first choice Keeper is a must. Preferably Peretz 🤷. Midfield sadly I fear for us a bit quality wise. Charles and Jander (both sold and replaced) are almost certainly gone. But at least we'll get paid well for them and they should get replaced with a similar quality of our scouting holds up. It leaves us with Bragg and Downes - clearly lightweight for a 46 game season without major strengthening. Azaz, matsuki, fellows, scienza (sold and replaced?), edozie, and Robinson is okay for the attacking mid/wings - but for me we need one more for quality depth even with scienza staying. Should archer be included here? CF - Larin (signed), Stewart (extended), downs, BBD. It's not bad for the level in truth? But being greedy I'd want one more. Can tonda get the best out of downs? Anyone know whether there are any more good youth prospects coming through?

Presumably, if Tonda stays, we get Peretz back. Putting the band back together so to speak...

Now you've done it...

The FA can absolutely sanction the club. If the want to be really heavy handed they can bring in external oversight of our scouting and analytics departments for example.

Peretz is on record as he loved playing for tonda, and that he wants a few days to sort out his thoughts. One way that can be read is, Peretz is waiting to see if tonda still has a job at saints in parallel to seeing what other options are open to him...

AC Milan could come and clean our house. Stranger things have happened.

Salt has far more years experience as an analyst than Eckert has as a manager 😌🙃 Should have known better, I'd say. We need to look after and protect junior and inexperienced staff like Tonda, 6months experience as a manager and he's been hung out to dry 😥

Do players that dive get sacked? When clubs like Everton, west brom, Leicester, forest overspend by tens - hundreds of millions are they forced to sacked all the related staff? Do they all get subsequent football banning orders? We scouted some other teams training sessions inside an arbitrary window that doesn't exist in any other major league, we did it a handful of times... There is already the precedent of bielsa who did it for an entire season and did not get banned or sacked.

Tonda admitted doing it 🕵️‍

Surely they'll struggle to get significantly more that we did? He's in exactly the same boat with west ham as he was with us contract wise, except he now has back to back relegations on his CV. There was a rumour of a low release clause in the event they got relegated - hopefully that is not the case!

Is this true? I haven't seen the actual evidence for it as yet. "Bullying" (etc) wasn't a listed charge. The use of junior staff was a reprimand. This is the quote (below) that relates to it, it doesn't mention tonda - which, given he is named for other charges, is an explicit/interesting omission I would say. To me, that omission suggests that any evidence (if any) relating to pressuring staff / bullying is lacking and/or doesn't actually show tonda is guilty of bullying. Has it instead been added as a nefarious "doesn't this sound bad" to back up / hammer home the punishment without really being proven - because I cannot see any hard evidence of it? Happy to be wrong and shown it? It's feasible this could have been part of a plea style deal for Salt after the fact. The reality is that it is very likely he did the dirty on us after getting caught to save his own skin. The EFL had one oral witness (which is almost certainly salt), and 4 witness statements it total - and someone gave us up for the Eastleigh/Ipswich spying after the initial offence (and Ipswich weren't aware of it) - this cannot have been taylor. Boro only knew about Oxford from the start (on the same day salt rocked up at their training ground). Which we all know was very fishy anyway. The report appears to go on and mention salt (without naming him), and him saying verbally in the his oral witness statement that he felt under pressure. But this is oral evidence after the fact and initial charges, and from someone accused / admitting to wrong doing for the initial charges - it is seemingly not backed up by any messages (text/email) and it's essentially a case of "he said, she said". And frankly, he just isn't a credible witness at this point as he is basically saying whatever the EFL want to protect himself. So as above, I am happy to be wrong on this, but I haven't seen actual evidence that tonda bullied Salt into spying against his will yet 🤷. And yet the story from the media (and Blackmore has said this incessantly ) is that tonda bullied salt. It looks like a further trial by media, and people choosing to interpret the report to hammer eckert. But I'm afraid that in the "bullying" accusations, Eckert has to be given the benefit of doubt and be treated as innocent until proven guilty - and people, especially journalists, and club journalists in particular, should keep that in mind. Sadly it's been a witch hunt since the start.. In fact, it's all a little bit dubious that the report puts so much weight on oral evidence of a whislteblower (again, almost certainly salt - guilty of multiple incidences of wrongdoing himself) to justify such a disproportionate punishment after the fact... Whilst also the same report outright dismissed the oral evidence of our 4 witnesses when convenient. Thats a kangaroo trial in my book.

How do we sit on PSR legacy issues? £53.9M loss 25/26 £5.7M profit 23/24 Total = £48.2M loss Vs a PSR limit of £61M. This season our transfer profit is circa £75M on face value? But for PSR purposes, that figure doesn't consider outstanding player transfer amortization, nor payments by installments for transfers in/out. Next season it's also all change, and we are limited to the new squad cost rules at 85% of revenue.

Well for starters, I meant post January when he switched to a 4-2-3-1, and which was then further supplemented with larin for AA. His return is 14W, 5D, 0L. Which is 2.47ppg, or 113 points in a 46 game season. A run that excludes beating Arsenal and Fulham, but belies the fact we were playing essentially 3 times a week post the international break with severe fixture congestion and against some proper quality sides. Equally, there has been 21 championship seasons since it's inception in 04/05, or 504sides. Only 13 sides have exceeded your metric of 94 points... But why you would judge him on that when clearly the team improved significantly in January with the adoption of a 4-2-3-1, a proper target man, and the turn around in morale / confidence. I.e., If we started the new season with him, you would expect to pick up from where we are now, not picking up morale from a 12point prem season, languishing at the bottom of the championship, and without the right players for his system / bazunu.

Let's surmise again for those that can't process bielsa did more "spying" (scouting) than Eckert did. Players pre Eckert - relegation scrap. Players post Eckert - one of the all time best championship sides. Players: "it's eckert's fault we didn't get promoted" 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Every club is going to refer to us as "the cheats" etc., next year. May as well own it and rub their faces in it to boot... Everyone knows he's a quality coach, every club wants us to sack him or be made to sack him. It's not disputable that he is class manager, possibly the best in the league, and he's tainted now - so basically he's our if we want him. If he doesn't get banned and the 26/27 squad will stick with him, we would be stupid to sack him... Really is that simple. I know some fans struggle with the media/peer pressure and engaging their own critical thinking skills (the voting on this thread is proof enough of that with the initial sway from 70% "sack" to near 50/50 now - thankfully). Blackmore is a prime example of someone who gets wrapped up in it and just goes with the flow. But bottom line - we are all saints, as it tonda and the squad, sod the outside - they've already judged us... It is time to close ranks and stick together. None of the outside noise changes that this team and manager would have been in contention for the best ever championship team... Imagine if city hasn't scored an 82nd minute deflected bouncing shot from outside the box, imagine if we had got promotion... yes we stupidly broke a stupid rule, but this team was performing near miracles. You don't blow that up unless we're forced to.

Same points stand for the players though. They were shit before tonda - they can't seriously then blame him for him raising their games 🤷. Despite the bielsa non ban precedent, I think the FA will ban him. They have the chance here to look tough and put the boot in - to make up when they let all the big boys get away with stuff. We should all expect saints to receive further sanction.