Guided Missile

Frank' date=' just tell Alpine he had you at boring, idiotic moronic f***witted sod and bat your eyelashes. He's bound to get a hard on...

It's on the books at a value of £1.1M.

The plc's 2008 consolidated accounts are here. They include the value of the players registrations as intangible assets, so any argument that the plc is a separate entity not entirely associated with football and associated football debts won't wash, IMO. 10 points deducted or my d! cks a bloater...

A quick glance at the Balance Sheet from last year may give a clue. The plc had net assets of £2,296K as of last year. The majority of our assets, outside the value of the stadium are in the form of intangible assets (players to you and me) valued at £6,376K. Two interesting facts will not escape the forensic accountants and the administrators from this. The first is that the plc consists mainly of assets that are related to football, ie the Stadium and the players registrations. So, that's a 10 point deduction, as far as I can see. The second is that to have any hope of paying back Barclays, the adminstrator needs to raise well over £6M from Southampton Football Club Ltd and collect as much of the Trade Debtors and Cash Equivalents as they can. The trouble is, I can't see anyone paying anywhere near £23M for St. Mary's, so any shortfall from this will come straight out of what Barclays can get their hands on. So, for the Administrator to get his Brucie bonus, he will want £15M for Southampton Football Club Ltd., £15M for the Stadium and Jackson's Farm and £750K for himself. Frankly, I reckon 50p in the pound (£4.5M for the club, £10M for the stadium and farm and £500K for the Administrator after the 10 point deduction) will be a real achievement...

I know, Alpine, you must be ashamed. Pity you were never able to find a Southampton girl to marry, although I can understand the attraction of an Austrian bride. As they say in Austria: "Women are like good wine, best left to mature in a cellar."

Alpine, you obviously have trouble making friends and this must have led to your unhappy attempt at making a life in Southampton with your Austrian bride. The fact that you are forced to live in the land of Hitler and looted Jewish gold is hardly my fault, nor, indeed any of the other inhabitants of this beautiful City, which happened to build the plane that helped defeat your adopted countryman. Please don't take it out on me. My wife is American, has lived here happily for 25 years and takes people as she finds them. If you did, maybe you wouldn't be so bitter with the sad life you lead, so clearly reflected in your posts...

Priceless! Dalek, I assume by your name, you are a Doctor Who fan. Your Hoddle obsession also suggests that you have the use of all your limbs. It also suggest that, you're over the age of 40, you still live with your mother and at some point when she was pregant with you she was frightened by a large co ckerel. Give it a rest, mate. There's a thin line between being charmingly eccentric and scarily mental...

The £5,614.54 raised should just about cover Mark Fry's awayday to Wolves....

I can't decide which of these generalisations is more offensive: A delightful thread sullied by two posters in need of therapy, IMHO.

I would beg to differ with your version of events. Up to that last minute, rather than allying with either side, Crouch was hoping for a "unity" board, with Lowe, Wilde and Crouch on the board. As Lowe had turned down (chortle, chortle) Crouch's offer of 65p for his shares, because Lowe wanted the offer to be made to all the shareholders in his cabal, Crouch decided to side with Wilde, who did indeed want a clean sweep of the board, with, as he told Lowe/Cowen, no "toffs" on board. This version is confirmed here.

I'm boycotting the parks until they get rid of the f****** Mayor...

Very interesting, Alpine. Where did you read this? I might want to use this fact in my next thread...

Ron, it amazes me that Dave Jones gives you, a retired insurance manager and Steve, a former Finance Director and now a "downshifted" teacher, details of the cashflow problems of a listed company, before shareholders like me and more importantly AIM. It also amazes me that he is STILL in a position that involves having anything to do with the finances of the club. It's like putting OJ Simpson in charge of the police department investigating his wife's murder...

This does.. You're not a teacher, by any chance, are you Mike? It feels like you're marking a homework assignment...

This and this...

Actually, the ST and it's members liked Wilde a lot. So much so that they rolled over and let him tickle Steve Godwin's tummy with the promise of a fan on board. I'm not saying that Wilde and his mentors, Crouch and the Saints Trust, didn't, by their lack of objectivity and background checks, help place the club in a contractual position that required expensive termination payments. What I am saying is that maybe they should send the bucket collectors round to the former Directors houses that benefited to the tune of over £1M, just for being bad at their jobs. Dulieu's position, FFS, was not even supposed to be one which attracted a salary in the manifesto of Chairman Wilde, but I bet this permatanned, ex-copper must have made a far sight more out of Southampton Football Club, just for being sh! te at his job, than a lot of staff at the club have in 10 years. I can see the guy now, using the money to improve his golf game in Portugal, while fans are shaking buckets outside St Mary's....

To put that figure in perspective, it is less than the amount that was spent by the Wilde regime on Termination Payments (£560K) in the 2006 accounts (ie to get rid of Lowe and Cowen). It is also less than the amount that was spent by the Wilde /Lowe regime for the Compensation for loss of office (£600K) in the 2008 accounts (ie to get rid of Hoos, Dulieu, Hone and Oldknow). Now, excuse me for dredging this up, but am I the only one to think that the current state of affairs is sad enough, but for Crouch and the Saints Trust to come out and ask the cash strapped fans to raise £500K to allow the club to keep going, my first response would be to tell them to go and take a jump off Dock Head. My second response would be that as both of them were partly responsible for inviting that incompetent scouser Wilde on board, who managed to reward TWO sets of Directors to the tune of £1.1M, maybe, just maybe, the first phone call would be to some of those failed directors, to ask if maybe they could post a cheque to the club, in the sum of one half of their generous and tax-free payoffs. Actually, forget it. The situation at Saints has got to the stage where it is so ridiculous that the only way I can cope, is to view it as a situation akin to Woolworth's. After Woolworth's administration, I might have popped in to the Woolston branch with the rest of the crowds to bask in the nostalgia of the pick and mix, but if a bloke with a bucket outside the shop had asked me for a few bob to keep it going, I would have laughed in his face. This time I think I'll do the same as I do, with the Big Issue sellers in London and tell him, "Mate, I already f****** donated....big time" (PS I know I bang on about fans not being consumers, but, really, I've changed my view and am fresh out of goodwill)

Thanks for demonstrating your complete lack of knowledge on what differentiates a true fan from a punter looking for a couple hours light entertainment. TBH, you're just a fickle windbag, whom the club will be well rid of next season. I'm glad I don't have to read your self preening and false justification for your absence from St. Mary's next season, as some sort of boycott against Lowe. Me? I'll be with at St. Marys with the rest of the muppets. Enjoy the shopping trips with the missus. You will have lots of fun, complaining about the fruit and vegetables at M&S.

Rule 34 ensured that football clubs were run for the benefit of the fans and the community, not the directors or shareholders, numbnuts. It prevented some idiot with more money than sense, buying a few shares, deceiving a few gormless fans into supporting him and spunking all the club's money, on a sh! t or bust gamble to get promoted to the Premiership and thus potentially making lots of money for himself and his cronies along the way. The question in this thread what other way can fans get rid of a board they don't like and the obvious way is for the fans to own the club. Rule 34 encouraged this type of structure, by removing the profit motive, levelling the playing field, which, without it, now favours rich sons of gun runners....

You're assuming that the fans have a right to determine the makeup of the board. That only works when the fans own the club, a la Barcelona. In the absence of a Bundesliga rule in which all the clubs in the German league require at least a 50% shareholding by the fans, you'll just have to accept that the only people that can determine the makeup of the board are the shareholders, even clueless ones like Wilde. Not perfect, but the consequences of the FA scrapping Rule 34. As David Conn wrote in his excellent article in the Observer Sport Monthly, Sunday 29 July 2007: ....later codified as the FA's Rule 34, these restrictions established the culture that being a club director was a form of public service, that directors should be 'custodians', to support and look after clubs. There never was a golden age of selfless club owners, but the system of clubs as not-for-profit companies did provide the basis for their phenomenal growth. Fans were never overcharged, which helped to encourage loyalty and return visits. But it was not all good news: lack of investment led to decrepit facilities, a failure to deal with hooliganism and crumbling and unsafe grounds. The FA and their rules were in need of updating as football itself changed and modernised, but instead they surrendered completely. When, in 1983, Irving Scholar's Tottenham Hotspur became the first club to announce the intention of floating on the stock market, the club's advisers asked the FA if Spurs would be free to form a holding company to evade the FA's restrictions on dividends and directors' salaries. The FA, who have never explained why, permitted Spurs to do what they wanted. Every other club that floated after that formed holding companies similarly, to bypass the FA's rules. Football clubs became companies for sale like any others, against the 'heritage' and rules once insisted upon by their governing body. No other country has a perfect system, but in Spain the tradition of the membership club survives. Barcelona and Real Madrid are both owned by members who democratically elect a president and board. The clubs are resented for receiving the largest share of Spanish football's TV money and are ruthlessly ambitious, but nevertheless Barcelona, particularly, embody a sense of belonging in their very structure. When Roman Abramovich went looking for a major club to buy in 2003, he considered first Barca and Real, but discovered that, because they were member-owned, they were beyond his reach. Spanish clubs that were in debt in the early 1990s were required by law to convert to limited companies but, alongside Barca and Real, Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad survive as member clubs and bastions of Basque belonging. In Germany, the football association stipulate that Bundesliga clubs must be 51 per cent owned by their members, the fans. This is one part of a general policy maintained by the German FA that clubs should remain connected to their local communities, with prices affordable to young and poorer people. At Schalke 04, entry to league matches at the magnificent 62,000-capacity Veltins Arena (including safe, modern terracing for 17,000 people to stand) begins at €9 (£6).

I am struggling with your logic that if I'm anti-administration, I am a Lowe sympathiser. That's like me saying that because you moved to Austria, you're in favour of keeping children in cellars. I'll forgive you for your irrational and abusive nature, because it must be tough being forced to program microwaves all day. I can see you now, hiding in your study, frightened that you'll hear the sound of your mother-in-law's army boots outside the room, as she demands why you aren't able to buy her daughter a new dress. It's bound to make anyone bitter and abusive...

Here's one that measures the muppet factor on this website...

In the original post, I simply said that it would have been better if the fans had kept going and administration had been avoided, nothing more. Since you bought up the subject of elasticity of demand, however, and while you are welcome to demonstrate that you gained an HNC in business administration, where you did an homework assignment on market economics, in this case we are talking about a football club, FFS, not a branch of MFI. As I have captured the attention of two Dragons' Den wannabes, how about you and your fellow intellectual, Steve "Saints Go Wilde" Godwin commenting on the data below and your wholly inappropriate application of the "Elasticity of Demand" to the economics of community based organisations such as football clubs? 1995-1996 F.A. Carling Premier League Manchester City 27,941 1996-1997 Nationwide League Division One Manchester City 26,710 1997-1998 Nationwide League Division One Manchester City 28,197 1998-1999 Nationwide League Division Two Manchester City 28,273 1999-2000 Nationwide League Division One Manchester City 32,088 Carling Premiership 2000-2001 Manchester City 34.058

Now that the inevitable has happened, I wonder what people think, now that they reflect on the consequences. Many on this board have been campaigning for administration for a long time,as a way of ridding the club of a personality they disliked and reducing the debt in some way. Some, myself included, viewed it as the worst of all outcomes, demoralising for the players and employees, with uncertainty replacing hope. The team look shattered to me, with their confidence destroyed. I can't see an alternative to relegation and a long, long fight to rebuild the club and a continual risk that the team will spend as long in Division One/Two as it did in the Premiership/Championship. I wonder how many of the posters that wanted administration will say that the situation we are in now, is a good place to be. I also wonder what the true "surge" of support has been since Lowe has gone and the "fans" fighting for his removal flooded back to St. Marys. Cue replies of "It's too early to tell". That won't wash for me, because there is no way this course will ever be better than if the fans had kept going and administration had been avoided. They say be careful what you wish for, as it may come true. Never has this been more apt...

It's been a petty, pointless day, TBH...