once_bitterne

Has your 3 year ban from all football stadiums for not being able to hold your drink finished yet?

Well indeed... AP has gone on record saying he only agreed to come to a L1 club because of the financial resources the club now has. Anyone who thinks our improvement is more down to team spirit, a feel good factor and a united fan base is having a laugh! Football is all about money now. It's why Wigan is in the Prem and Leeds are in L1.

Matty Taylor! F'kin Skate bast ard! Oh........

Whenever they drag out Richard 'Here's my mobile phone number' Chorley he is referred to as the Chairman of SISA. I never even knew it was possible to be Chairman of oneself.

FFS he's not even made his debut yet!!!!!

My bet would be top ten finish but missing playoffs (due to 10 point deduction).

Oh dear Duncan will not be pleased!

Is it just me or is the above totally incomprehensible!

Indeed! I would imagine him and his colleagues from the Air Stewards and Stewardesses branch of the the Unite Communist Club are frantically trying to put together a coherent case as to why BA staff at H'row are paid twice as much as most other airlines staff! I wonder if they will accept Virgin's pay and conditions when BA goes under! FF seems to want football to go back to the how it was in the 80s while the Unions drag the country to a halt as they did in the 70s! No wonder he's been grumpy of late and isn't enjoying his football!

Fine apart from the fact that there are no members anymore.

That brings up an interesting point. When we were a plc the accounts had to be published and were freely available to all. Even though we are now owned by a ltd company we would still have to file accounts which can be downloaded from the companies house website for a small fee. (I'm sure Guided Missle will do this for us!). From the announcement that was on the O/S from Fry when the takeover occurred the company name that was used to buy SLH was 'DMWSL613 Limited'. A quick check shows this company is still active: http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/7687c39f49435456f9739f2053c2e0eb/compdetails It will be very interesting to see, what with having no mortgage repayments or loans to repay and the higher crowds we have been getting this season, if the club are running at break even point or are being subsidised to run at a loss by ML.

Top Post. Without a doubt the most sensible contribution to this thread. As always it seems that instead of forming a judgement on this one specific incident a lot of fans are still going down the route of judging by how they feel about the people involved. Where before it was 'Lowe can do no right', we now have 'MC & NC can do no wrong'. Funnily enough neither statement was/is true. I don't have a shadow of doubt that if the very same situation had happened this time last year that the people who have jumped on this thread and called the Echo a 'two bit rag' that has no relevance in the world today would instead be jumping on their high horse and championing the rights of a free Press and saying what an important piece of the local community the Echo is. If you take this issue in isolation I cannot see how any fan can not feel slightly concerned that the new owners of the club feel it necessary to censor/control the local media. It sets a very dangerous precident for how they might behave in the future.

Everton are apparently interested in him.

Surely it is Cortese who needs to grow up? The last time I looked we were meant to be in a society that allowed freedom of the press and where football clubs were not allowed to run the local media as some form of Pravda approved PR mechanism. If Nicky is getting his knickers in a twist about the Echo reporting on a bit of building work that anyone with an internet link could have pulled down the plans for then god help him if the Echo was going to run a story about a player misbehaving out on the town.....

Yes Rupert won damages from Samuels paper but the war was won by the fat journo as him, and his colleagues on other papers, took this as open season on Lowe and the club in general and never missed an opportunity to put the boot in to show him/the club in a bad light. This will be exactly what will happen to Nicky if he tries the same bully-boy tactics on the national that he used on the Echo. This is a VERY bad move on Cortese's part. Hopefully ML will tell him to wind his neck in asap. These tactics may have worked in the banking industry but the world of British football with the British press is totally different. For one the first times in recent history, there was no conflict in the club. The board, players, owners and directors were all universally supported by the entire fanbase and the local media. For some reason best known to himself, in the Season of Goodwill, Cortese has chosen to inject some confict into things over something as trivial as a bit of building work down at Staplewood. What the club needs is a period of harmony between everyone including the fans and the local press, any 'war' between the club and The Echo can only have a detrimental effect on all parties. I really have no idea what Cortese is thinking.....

More worryingly for the long term it does show Cortese's naivety of how football works in this country. He may be able to bully a two-bit local rag but if he thinks he will be able to do the same with the red tops he is in for a shock. As one of his predecessors could no doubt confirm once the likes of Martin Samuels have it in for you they can make your life very difficult indeed....

If poor Nicola is this precious about the local rag printing a story about building an extension at the training ground heaven help him if/when the Nationals print something unflattering about him. I would imagine SC will be going down the tried and trusted legal route.... The problem is, as Rupert found out, you may win the battle in court but you always end up losing the war to the Red Tops as once they have you as an enemy they will never let up.

http://www.dcfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10270~1901978,00.html

Very odd! Firstly this seems at odds with Cortese's charm offensive but also I can't think for a second how NC thought he could really keep news of the Staplewood redevelopment underwraps! The planning application and full plans to go with it were posted on the internet last week and were completely in the public domain days before the Echo printed the story.....

WRONG! SWP is his adopted son, BWP is Ian Wright's biological son. IHTH.

I think you have got a bit confused. Yes, there was a Manifesto which was to curry favour for the Wilde bunch takeover but there was also a Fans Charter. Had you forgotton? Allow me to jog your memory: http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/staticFiles/c7/37/0,,10280~145351,00.pdf It looks pretty similar to NC's one.... I'm pretty straightforward in what I want from an owner: Ensure the good has good facilities (ground, training, etc) Appoint a good manager Fully back this manager, both in financial and other ways From my perspective, ML and NC have ticked all of these 3 boxes since they took over. Personally I would prefer it if they left it like that and let us fans judge them on their actions and not on their words. Their actions have been Grade A so far but ironically I am left feeling less impressed with them when they feel they need to go down the PR route. When their actions are doing more than we could have ever hoped for why do they feel the need to try and further butter us up with Charters and statements like 'we are no longer a selling club'?

I think you'll find we published one of these during the Wilde bunch error. It's amazing how easy football fans are to be won over by PR, far more than in any other walk of life it would seem. A chairman only has to go on record with some nice PR speak like 'we are not a selling club anymore' and the majority of fans are all to ready to take each and every word as gospel and prasie him to the hilt for it. Sadly for him, Lowe never realised this and made it very obvious to the fans the contempt he held them in. I would imagine that Lowe thought 95% of our fanbase were utter morons. Ironically I would imagine the same can be said for Glazer, Abramovich, Gillett and Hicks, etc. However they are far too media savy to ever let the fans know this. Working in football club's PR dept must be like shooting fish in a barrell. It's a cold December morning, what shall we do? I know lets stick out a Fan's Charter. We can fill it with weasal words and before you know it the fans will be campaigning on message boards to send the owners Xmas cards! Let's get to work!

On a kind of related note, I have asked this before but haven't got an answer. Does anyone know if Markus has children? His wiki page doesn't even say if he is married. I understand he likes his privacy and god willing, even though he is in his 60s, he has plenty of good years left in him but it would be reassuring to know that when the day comes the club will be passed down to an heir as opposed to being part of his estate which, if he had no children, would surely be carved up by the adminstrators of his will leaving the future of the club once again up in the air (or heir!)

I'm sure people have been sending each other Christmas cards for a number of years now. You could add a bit on the bottom of your card to ML moaning about him closing the Kingsland Stand for the FA Cup game! Personally I can think of nothing lamer than fans clubbing together money to buy a Billionaire an Xmas present.

But only from one particular seat eh! LOL! For the Love of God.....