Daft Kerplunk

Fantastic result against an incredible team. Crap defending for the goal. VAR nonsense adding to the drama. Was a solid team effort and the fighting spirit seems to have arrived thankfully. Impossible to criticise our play going forward against such a well organised team who rarely give the ball away, and certainly not cheaply. Nice one Saints.

The financial situation might be better but we still have the same dithering staff.

Everything that’s shit began with Man Utd. Business first, football second, and the rest have just followed, and then others saw English football as some sort of easy pickings promised land.

The giveaway was the lower case ‘a’ in American 🇺🇸 or maybe it was Paris Hilton…

The third part would take more investment that imagined, academies are expensive to operate, a country like the US and continent like Africa is vast so where would you be based, and it’s likely to be more efficient to develop links with clubs that are high performing already. As it appears now, global development sits in the commercial department so the only objective will be making money. If there was a joined up strategy, it could work but it would take a big commitment. Or, as would be more effective, just having a very strong scouting network and identifying kids and snapping them up before they join Red Bull Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund, Ajax and the like. This last bit seems the big win here. Imagine Haaland signing for us instead of Salzburg, and we really should be able to compete in that space.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out. The comparisons with Red Bull seem a little wayward given that Red Bull have poured tons of cash into stadium development, sponsorship etc. to help their clubs compete at a higher level. It’d be great to see this new ownership doing that but it’s not apparent yet, although there hasn’t been any real detail. I’m hopeful that the academy hierarchy and commercial team leadership are shitting themselves a bit given how rubbish those areas have been over recent years.

This is a ‘managing expectations’ interview from Semmens. All sounds lovely but no further money coming in. Interesting that he has just said that we see a way to build a network of clubs. Looks like Semmens has managed to get a role in the new business.

More of the same then 🤷‍♂️

As soon as the right offer comes in, which this probably wasn’t, she will almost definitely be off. Was always the plan with Gao but he never really had the money to buy the remaining shares. I couldn’t care less though if this is actual investment from people looking at a long term impact. Fingers crossed.

Man Utd, Chelsea and Spurs. All arrogant cnuts (many fans included)

It’d be a £15m pay off as he’s on £6m a year

Good fortune for the club as there are clearly worse teams than us. Perfect for profits too where minimal spend equals hanging on to the big bank carriage of the PL gravy train.

Our current government is certainly corrupt and a bunch of liars but other countries are encouraging vaccines too, even the really sensible ones like Denmark and so on.

The academy thing still continues as an appealing option but it’s a bit of a myth. When you dig deeper you can see that it is no better than most others. We had a purple patch that ended with Les and the weaker level yes men. He and the current board claim the glory, but the hard graft and best work was over a decade ago, and it now needs a significant overhaul. Signings like Tella, Tino and Small paper over the gaping holes and a lot will rest on Kami Doyle’s shoulders. Clubs like Brighton are now superior at the academy level in terms of facilities and staff. We are still an attractive purchase but had Kat been less greedy, or needy for quick cash, and Martin Semmens less enamoured by the potential of the Chinese market (which was always a stretch when you dig in to the country’s low level love for football) a better buyer than the failure Gao would’ve been found.

The waiting list for season tickets is massive (more than 20,000) and Leeds think that with a stadium twice the size, they can bump their annual revenue over £250 million. They’re doing very well on one commercial front this season — shirt sales will be not far off 300,000. Leeds are definitely a bigger club and proposition than us for investment. See above if you’re still arguing about it. Our commercial department would wet themselves if they had these numbers. Anyway, we need to be taken over now just to stay in the league. Ambition without backing is meaningless. Investment into the stadium and further improvement/extension of the training ground is vitally important. Investment into the academy is even more so. Any team investment would be a dream. I’m not holding my breath.

You should check out the next tweet in the chain to determine the accuracy of this one

All we need now is the players

Free hit anyway

Orthodoxymaton

Genuinely hoped this was a player we were being linked with. Instead I await some boring names like Gucci Connelly or Ferrari Braithwaite.

I don’t think Tells is the future of football like some of our fans b it he’s got to be better than Walcott and Djneppo. Unless he’s really dropped off, in which case his decent showings were as far as he will go, or like other players, he’s got on the wrong side of the dear leader.

Can’t imagine the really local brewing companies would be able to meet the type of commercial/financial requirements needed. It would also need to be quite a creative deal to make it work alongside the Kingfisher deal. Would be nice though.

Regardless of whether he goes on to be decent for anyone else, selling him was the best sale the club has made for some time.

It’ll be similar to when Rupert Lowe was in charge. Whomever wants to invest has to promise to keep the current leadership team in place. I know plenty will disagree but we aren’t far off where we were with Rupert in charge. The club are still crap commercially, there is no money to invest, they don’t understand fans, and we celebrate things that are irrelevant to the football (see digital ‘content’ awards and nice hospitality whereas once it was a radio station and…hospitality). Rupert at least did put some great people in the academy, whether by fluke or design. Like good ol’ Rupes, they also think they’re brilliant and they’re the only ones who can do the job they do, and therefore probably wouldn’t step aside for a great investor who’d really make us a solid outfit. You can hear this when Semmens says we (as in he) have to find the right people and at its core, that means keeping him in charge. Maybe he’s the right person, maybe not but if he and his team had to step aside, would they do it for the benefit of the advancement of SFC? After all, he was the architect behind Gao buying us so why is he now so trusted to get this next move right?

£6m a year contract so whatever that works out at. Losing a player to pay off a manager would be slightly mad, but also, totally a Saints thing to do