Wes Tender

No need to thank me, CB. But which gallery is this that I am apparently playing to? Do I detect a certain tetchiness in your response? Do I get up your nose? Poor diddums. I really can't be arsed to trawl though the various threads to substantiate who said that "anybody on here who thought that we could achieve European CL football was a fantasist", so I'll just leave it to other posters to make up their minds as to whether I was mistaken or not. I'm sure that they will have ideas of who the usual suspects might be. Needless to say, I won't be taking your word for it that there weren't any. However, your accusation that I have posted drivel about flexible pricing is something that I asked you to substantiate with evidence and I take your childish playground retort to mean that you cannot find anything from me regarding that. It shouldn't be difficult to find any such statements if they existed, but I'm afraid to tell you that they don't. You must be thinking of somebody else. No doubt you will be issuing an apology quite soon.

No I don't. Before you spout such drivel, I defy you to post anything where I've commented on flexible pricing. I won't hold my breath on you being able to come up with anything. As usual, you're all p*ss and wind, throwing mud at other posters and hoping that some of it will stick.

I presume that this claim that the FL have guaranteed that the Skates will have membership next year is quoted from the source at the Star comic? Membership of what? The third division? A lower division? But as you say, S in P, that golden share is conditional on them meeting certain criteria set by the FL. So wording it that the membership is "guaranteed" is rather disingenuous. But hey, it is the Star. Best ignored as rubbish reporting, as usual.

PS, Ginge. A word of advice; better not to cite examples of seemingly impossible or unlikely events that became reality, to illustrate a point. They will only be flung in your face by those who would label us as fantasists. I am constantly reminded by these uber-fans of my analogy that they thought it was impossible to climb Everest, although our esteemed manager Nigel seems to have gotten away with his similar analogy that some thought it was impossible to run a mile in under 4 minutes until Roger Bannister did it. But then again, Nigel doesn't post on here. But you run the risk of your analogy being lumped in with mine, or bracketed with those others regarding Chelsea's rise to prominence, etc. But I'm sure that like me, you'll just ignore the jibes as being infantile.

Your first and probably instinctive assumption was the correct one. I have no egotistical background that would rate me as an uber-supporter, those who deem themselves qualified by donkey's years of supporting Saints to label others with ambition as fantasists. Like you, I am more inclined to look at the progress we have made from the third division to the Premiership and to use that as a yardstick (see how old I am!) to indicate that it is not entirely impossible that we are the architects of our own future and the level that we eventually reach is in our own hands, as well as being determined by the glory teams who currently dictate who gets to play in Europe. As signing after signing signals the extent of our ambition, it weakens the case put forward by those who not dare to consider how far we might go on this journey.

Firstly, let me say how impressed I am with this signing. Well done Saints. But it must have surprised the club that this signing and others made recently, have caused such ructions with the most intelligent and influential sector of the fanbase; those who post their opinions on this, the biggest and most important fans' forum. There are two things wrong with the way that the club operates and they should take note of what is said here, as otherwise they run the risk of the newsworthiness of the signings being overshadowed by the voices of dissent on here that they are not going about it in the right way. Firstly, they really ought to learn the art of timing of such announcements. This information is freely available from experts in this subject who are regular visitors to this forum. Ignore it at your peril, or face the accusations that you are running a vendetta against the media, or even worse, mistreating the most important element of the club's very being, the paying customers. They insist on being told of such developments immediately the player has put pen to paper, or preferably even before that. Any deviation from that policy will only result in conspiracy theories, causing some to even contradict themselves on the reasoning for the timing of the announcement. Secondly, whereas this policy of impressing potential new additions to the playing squad with ambitious plans to play in Europe seems to be bearing fruit, you should terminate it forthwith. There are people on here with much greater experience of football support than those who run this club and it is their opinion that Saints can never achieve that goal and that those who believe they can are fantasists. It is therefore useless attempting it and cruel on those players to entice them here with false promises, especially the youngsters like this lad, who are at an impressionable age and still a bit wet behind the ears. If the club amends their policies in those two areas, they can expect in return that the forum fans' response will be concentrated solely on the efficacy of the signing, rather than the method through which the player was enticed to come here and whether the club had gone about notifying the fans and the media in the correct manner.

You lose, Shroppie. You do the man an injustice. Just a few minutes ago, I received this erudite response from Gerald V-J apologising profusely for his error and thanking me for putting him right.

Thanks for the compliment, rallyboy. I agree that the FL will ignore his missive for what it is; vote-catching. But I'm afraid that I must disagree with the bit I highlighted. The less time that this sort of idiot spends governing us, the better off we'll all be!

Email duly dispatched to the idiot Council Leader:- Perhaps if there was an argument put forward cogently that his stance was a vote loser, he might think again. But we are talking about Skate voters here, so there probably aren't enough intelligent ones to realise that local businesses, schools, charities and the taxman are more deserving of consideration than their football club.

The Skates had better hope that Luke Rodgers doesn't have some strange psychological hatred for people called Westwood. Or that would have serious implications both for their new first team coach and their number one fan.

Right. Lowe, Askham, Richards, Cowen, Wiseman, Gordon, etc. Now's your chance.

Not particularly.

All those emails that we directed to the FL expressing disgust that the Skates had effectively exited adminstration without a CVA, have paid off. We argued that they had so far failed to pay a penny to the unsecured creditors of the last CVA from two years ago, so it was tantamount to exiting administration without a CVA. It seemed that we were p*ssing in the wind when we received their stock reply stating that it was not something that they could comment on at this stage. But somewhere along the way, some of it must have sunk in and brought about this decision today, so our efforts have been vindicated. It probably also helped that gradually it became clear to the supporters of other clubs that the Skates had obtained an unfair advantage by the purchase of several quality players they couldn't afford, accumulating vast amounts of debt in the process which they have subsequently written off via not one, but two administrations. No doubt that many others have followed our lead and put pressure on the FL to punsh them. A pity that the football authorities didn't take it one step further and take away the FA Cup win too, in the same way that a knighthood would be taken away from somebody who had been given one then subsequently acted dishonourably, but at least it is a step in the right direction. The other conditions imposed on them, make them even more unattractive for anybody to buy and even Chainrai going after the parachute payments will find that there is a lot less in the pot once the football creditors have been paid, so he must really be considering whether it is worthwhile going any further himself. Of course, one has to feel sorry for the fans, as they are being punished for the misdemeanors of the people who were running the club and none of this is their fault. No, I don't believe a word of that last line I just wrote either.

Fitter in the Tampax factory.

Agree that it is difficult to get anything to rhyme with policy, but that need not be a problem. The line could refer to policies that are sound, so that then you could end the next line with ground, for example. Lots of alternative adjectives to describe the policies that have easy rhyming words in the next line, such as Sublime - time Unique - up the creek Right - bright Great - first rate. etc, etc.

It is always encouraging for management of any type of business to have feedback from their customers that their policies generally meet with widespread approval, so if anybody in the club's management reads this forum, they will be pleased with this metaphorical pat on the back. Regarding the chant, we already have one:- "We do what we want, we do what we want, we are Southampton, we do what we want." If that sounds a bit too arrogant for your liking, because the proposal of a new chant was yours, I'm sure that most on here will be happy to leave it up to you to come up with something suitably appropriate and yet catchy and witty at the same time.

But it isn't as if our club don't let us know through the media what is happening to our star players who are the subject of media speculation, is it? I seem to recall quite a lot of comment from us along the lines that we don't want to sell Luke Shaw. Or did I dream it?

Ah! the Daily Star; a newspaper with a giant reputation in the news industry for the integrity and veracity of its reporting, this article written by a journalist revered by his peers for his intellect and his unassailable grasp of the English language which makes him compulsory reading for the intelligentsia. I therefore believe the article to be unchallengeable

I'm not in the least bit embarrassed. The player has exercised his right not to sign a new contract with Rangers Newco, his contract with Oldco being null and void following their liquidation, so he is a free agent. Let's not forget that we were also shafted when we went into administration and had to shift players. I'm far more concerned that we show good business accumen rather than a degree of class, which would only have the effect of showing us up as a soft touch rather than astute business people. It is only the law of the jungle that when there are bones to be picked, the vultures circle. Instead of being a bit precious about it, consider that money saved on one transfer is money available to put towards another. And that it is financial astuteness that will ensure that we don't end up in the gutter like Rangers and more so the Skates, or indeed ourselves three years ago.

And what is the point of dredging up this affair involving Terry shafting a team mate's girlfriend? Surely this is all water under the Bridge.

"And these dolls aren't the only example I found in Tescos", continued Holly Beckett. "Shortly afterwards, I was passing the aisle where the sugar was, and to my horror I noticed that the white sugar cost more than the brown sugar. I immediately demanded an explanation from the store manager". "Well, madam, the white sugar is more refined" he replied. "What sort of message is that going to send out to the black community? It is going to set back race relations in this country by decades", said Holly.

I'm no expert on employment law, but surely the players' contracts were with oldco, which has been liquidated, therefore I would assume that their contracts are void and no longer enforceable.

http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11095/7884385/ So the skates think that Rangers' players would leave one basket-case bankrupt club to join an even bigger basket-case bankrupt club? Totally and utterly deluded, as usual.

LOL Must have a dumb buy, yah?

And delicious irony that Google produced the OP as the first info on the subject and frankly not much else helpful.