The9

If it was about "fairness" then the League would come to a compromise. It is not about fairness, it's about legality, and the League trying to cover their ar5es for leaving a gaping hole in the Administration ruling logic. The person talking sense here is ringwood, in stating, how can the FL insist that the club is in admin which is not true under corporate law, and then insist that a document produced under corporate law is produced for the club? The FL aren't interested in the moral rectitude, they're interested in claiming their rules are watertight and stopping others trying to exploit them. A compromise in which we accept -10 and no appeal and they agree we won't require a CVA is the only way out. Otherwise we're gone, and no amount of Photocopier Man Bluster will sign for a takeover knowing we're almost certainly going to end up with another -15 for not providing a CVA (when we can't) and are fooooooked before they even start.

Well, we won't get in the Blue Sq now anyway, fixtures are released on July 2nd. Its no coincidence that it's a day after players' contracts expire/tick over into the next season. And there aren't any free slots in the Conference anyway - we'd probably have to take a year out at best. The players are not Free Agents until midnight tonight if they're not paid, and even then the non-payment means they merely have the right to issue their two weeks' notice, which they could withdraw - though of course some players' contracts are up within a week anyway. Also, there will be no promotion of another club at this late stage even if we go to the wall, no-one will take our place, but there would only be 3 relegation places in League One this season.

Looked pretty solid to me. Managers in place from the first friendly, lots of games against crappy teams who we barely beat, ending with a draw with Prem opposition a week or two behind us in preparation. Other than the John/Rasiak/Saga, er, sagas, it didn't seem too "wrecked" to me.

Oooh, oooh, except Kevin Keegan with Fulham... :roll:

I went to Bucharest... and Saints Aid.

Arguably, they haven't.

It is a matter of managing your debt, rather than actually being in credit though.

Having Googled this a few months ago, I know there's nowhere online where a comprehensive list is being kept. Even the clubs in crisis website only really covers the last few years.

The counter-argument being "when did you last go out of your way to watch a Belgian League match", of course. For as long as there's a "global brand" stampeding over everything else with their Michael Ballacks and their Cristiano Ronal... erm, bad example... Fernando Torreses, other Leagues either have to accept their limits and either regulate sensibly (like Belgium) whilst accepting that their clubs won't have any European success when facing the money clubs, or they can go balls out to try and grab that market share. Given the established Worldwide "club brands" are already in place, this can only happen if a league as a whole becomes interesting, and when distant global audiences stop glory-hunting and stick with "loser" teams, which is never going to happen.

The problem is that the only way to compete at the top level now involves more money than pretty much anyone has, and usually more money than a Football club is capable of generating. Until the system is sorted (hello Football League, and far less likely, Premier League) clubs will overstretch in the desperate bid to make it to the promised land (and then fail to have a hope in hell of winning anything when they get there, but that's another story). When it comes down to it, the fault still lies with those spending money they didn't have, as it is possible to run a self-sufficient club. The problem is, in doing so you'll just slide further and further down the league as you get overtaken by multi-billionaires until eventually you find a level of native clubs breaking even, grazing in the pasture of Ultra League B (fourth tier) or whatever they're branding it that week. The spectre of Premier League II tells you everything you know about what a number of Club Chairmen think about returning to a collective bargaining, profit-sharing, "good of the game" system. Its fingers in pies and grab a grand while its there. Football Will Eat Itself.

Top bloke for his honesty and loyalty to the club through all of this, deserves better than bowing out with us in this kind of state. Is that the last link with the Prem side gone now then ?

Yep, they must know the actual owner, not the conduit (Lynham). Does make me wonder if that's part of the stalling process with the FL as well...

No argument from me on that front, the interesting thing is none of the clubs punished have actually had any success as a result of the period prior to their admin - except Leeds, who'd already been relegated twice when the punishment kicked in. And of course had we gone up in the play-off season we would have had Premier League riches to tide us over for a couple more seasons, so there was really no disincentive for the gamble at the time. Of course any half-competent regime would have cut costs drastically far sooner than we did on failing...

As would any one of 40 clubs in the two divisions above us...

With the players training, matches planned and everything else going ahead as normal, I don't see that there's an issue at the moment. It's not like they're all sitting at home wolfing down pies and watching daytime tv instead of doing fitness and training... Pre-season only becomes a problem on July 1st if the out-of-contract players we'd expect to be playing for us decide to leave and join someone else, leaving the squad understrength - and who could blame them at the moment ?

Are you serious? Ask any of the fans of those clubs how "easily" they were in and out of admin, especially Leeds and Luton, who have been at odds with the FL for months on end, and Rotherham who were only saved from Luton's fate by the fact that they, Bournemouth and Luton all got penalised at the same time. And that's without mentioning the clubs who actually went the whole way and got actually wound up without a buyer.

Sounds to me like the sticking point continues to be getting it in writing that we're not going to get nailed for another 15 points if we accept the initial position. i.e. we accept the -10 with no appeal, but the FL agree not to punish us for not having a CVA, given that SLH won't exist any more. The alternative being that we don't accept the -10 and they won't let Pinnacle take over, dropping us right in it with a limited timescale, even if someone else is rushing to replace them who will agree to it, because they'd be tacicly accepting that we're in admin and requiring a CVA which we can't provide, hence further deductions. That's assuming that everything else is on the level and they still have the funding of course.

What I think, MLT involved or not, is "get on with it".

Well, no, without any fans at all there's still a club as long as they have players, they don't even need a League to play in for that. Unless all those years of people playing Saturday and Sunday Parks football were in my imagination... ...much as fans try to make themselves out as a massively important part of the process when it comes to football clubs as a business, they are just the consumer, and a strange kind of consumer at that - especially when at the very top level its faceless foreign tv corporations and bank overdrafts funding the existence of football and the people who actually go to the games barely have any financial impact at all relatively speaking. I'm actually hoping we never get to the point where the fans will actually make a difference, cos by then we'll be in Eastleigh FC territory (with the greatest of respect to them).

I must be more forgiving than most. Harry Redknapp, Keiron Dyer and Mikael F\/CKING Nilsson, the sh!i!thouse also "Amarillo" is a name. Those who were there know. That's all I've got. And once again on a hatred thread I challenge anyone to find a link online that says anything bad about Saints coming from Kevin Phillips' mouth. This has been going on for about 4 years now, and no-one has ever produced a shred of evidence of anything other than "it didnt feel right".

Other than Mawhinney when he said we could appeal, evidently.

They've obviously designed the statement to be as vague, ambiguous and wordy as possible, in order to allow them the maximum possible number of options in their eventual decision. Like Crouch basically saying we set the club up to cheat the system and Mawhinney saying we have the right to appeal, any unequivocal statement is a weakness to be exploited by the other side. Vague, meandering, multiple-meaning statements like one which says "we want the other clubs to know where they stand" but also implies "you lot might yet end up in League Two" are where it's at.

Pinnacle, or anyone else who takes us over, preferably with a ton of cash.

I'll just make it clear now I'm not going to be changing the Southend fixture !

Frankly, none of the points above are anything other than extremely arguable, and they've all been done to death elsewhere in the Forum. And as its been said above, if they want out, they just say "no thanks".