Ken Tone

What you may be missing is that Aviva will not expect to get all their money straight away. If someone comes in with proven funds/sensible business plan/acumen/credibility they could buy SLH for £1, so sharehoders get nothing, then do a deal (CVA) with those owed money. So actually they may only need to pay off some or all of the overdraft immediately, and convince Aviva they will be able to take over paying back the mortgage. The credit crunch may have changed this a bit but even so i'd have thought Aviva would prefer the mortgage being paid (at a decent interest rate) to the prospect of closing down Saints and trying to recover their money by selling the ground etc. K.

I found the interview encouraging ..speaking as someone who always said administration would be nasty He actually says 4 parties *have been through due diligence*, not 'begun' as written article says. Sorry if this is patronising but some posters seem not to understand what DD means. They have to show they have the funds they claim to the administrator, then THEY do DD on us. This is the financial equivalent to having a survey done on a house you are considering buying. You may or may not then make an offer depending on what the surveyor says about the roof leak you hadn't been aware of. These interested parties may or may not make an offer for saints depending on what skeletons their solicitors find in our cupboard that they weren't aware of. But not many people would bother with DD unless they were at least seriously considering offering, in the same way as you wouldn't waste time and money on a survey on a house you weren't at least seriously interested in. By saying 'timescale tight but hope to have sorted within a month' he is surely also effectively saying we aren't going completely bust a day or two after the Forest game. K.

They always say 'at least x' minutes, but the reality is not consistent with that. If they really meant 'at least' then logically some matches with only seconds to add on, would end with a board saying 'at least 0' minutes, allowing for up to 1 min. As for saturday, it was not clear to me when the game had ended, but I was aware of it *before* the idiots ran on. The pitch invasion annoyed me though, quite apart from the stupidity of confronting the burnley fans, because it meant there was no chance to properly finish the home season by clapping the players. Before some smart arse says they didn't deserve clapping -- some of them did! K.

When you look at the really wealthy owners in this country, few of them spend much of their money on the club. For example QPR fans waving fivers at chelsea fans is looking a bit thin now isn't it? They may have the wealthiest owners but that doesn't make them the wealthiest club in reality. Abramovitch caused (forced in effect) chelsea to spend a fortune, but as I understand it all the money he's put into the club is technically on loan. There is a view that he did this to ensure that if things got nasty in Russia and he had to leave in a hurry, he would have funds already safely transferred into in the uk, ie he could recall his loans if he needed them. If so chelsea's wealth is insecure, and their spending could backfire on them one day. All in all, I'd most like a wealthy owner who is a lifelong saints fan ..cf Blackburn and jack walker ..but surely if there were such a person he'd have shown up by now. Next best though is a sensible owner(s) who cares about the club and runs it within reasonable spending limits as a going concern, rather than an ultra-rich foreign wild card making us live above our means, who might dump us at a later date with even bigger debts.... cf Portsmouth's future? K.

Never mind if Shearer or if not Shearer, the good bits of this rumour are 'wealthy' and 'transfer kitty', and maybe 'no boardroom interference'. K.

We knew that already also I'm afraid. The solicitors would be involved at the due diligence stage. But anyway, it has to be good-ish that at least one bidder is serious. K.

Yes , but I was keeping quiet about it. K.

But will it be on CCC wages or L1 wages? And can we really expect him to take a pay cut if other clubs offer him more? K.

Good on you for that, but it is worth remembering that all the away ticket money goes to the away club (another big club rule change carve up a few years back), so going to forest does nothing for saints financially. Not knocking you; no doubt you have good reasons for not going to the home game, but if anyone else is wavering.... K.

Well I for one do rate him .. ok not yet as premiership standard .. but he is a good player and he is a local lad who seems to care about the club, unlike most of our mercenaries, so personally I want to se him here next season ------ assuming there is a 'here' to be at. K.

I don't know Crouch, but my impression of him has always been that his heart is in the right place but he hasn't got much brain. So I see him as on the side of the angels, but not a lot of help, and maybe even accidentally doing a bit of harm. There must be something there or he'd not have made the money he apparently has, but ..... K.

I can't see anyone completing today, or even very soon if we are only in early stage of due diligence. 'Due diligence' is however a somewhat elastic term. Quite often big flash City law firms are employed to do this. They can do a good job or a rushed job, or a very expensive, fairly good, rushed job! Normally takes a couple of weeks or so. Can be done in a few days, depending on how diligent you want to be and how much you want to spend. An administrator is presumably required to be very diligent to ensure that the creditors will get what the buyer promises. From the buyer's side, it is up to him, and how fussy his backers are .... how visible our skeletons in the cupboard already are. K.

Bit harsh on the other 2 but I agree entirely about Mills. He shows real promise, as did his brother. K.

Fair point, and one we must indeed keep making in the forlorn hope that the FL will believe us. ;-) However the administrator of SLH will be telling the directors of SFC, most of whom he has appointed, that they cannot spend *any* unnecessary money, because if he did otherwise he would be neglecting his duty as an administrator. K.

We are in administration! We can't sign anybody on a long term contract. If bloody David Beckham offered to play for us at £100 a week, we'd have to say no. Until we get a new owner we are pretty much at the mercy of any club who wants any of our players. K.

The big question is, is he playing football yet? K.

This just goes to show how desperate football fans will clutch at any rumour straw. With chester about to go down to the Blue Square, their fans will hope against hope for any way the club might avoid it. We're just the latest straw that some bright spark has thought of. Them hoping for this is a bit like us hoping that we beat burnely and forest, and don't get the 10 point deduction, really ;-) K.

Perhaps it would be better to restrain yourself until after they've attended the Burnley game? ;-) K.

Quite. What's the point of this? We are where we are. All fans want us to be somewhere better. The best way to achieve that is for us all to pull together, back the club and team as they are now and hope for the best. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from arguing over whose fault it is that we are in this position. K.

Not if we do well in L1. If we go on a long winning run next season the fair weather fans will return, even in div 3. People like to watch their side winning, almost regardless of the division. Meanwhile I'll be there for the burnley game as I have all season, because ... oh. K.

Well a) premier league and football league have different rules, and b) the big boys have to watch their own backs. Even man united's parent company is in trouble. The football club is doing well financially but the parent company (because it borrowed to buy the club) has huge debts that would cancel that out if they were a single entity. What if they went into administration? Can you see the premier league daring to dock Man U any points? The supposed difference will be how much else the holding company does, or owns, apart from the football club. The football powers-that-be will hide behind that supposed distinction somehow. They won't dare dock West Ham points in case they are next to suffer.... as long as west ham pay their football debts. K.

Must be a reserve game on? K.

I am amazed that anyone thought this would be a quick clean deal. How many times do we have to say administration is not a pleasant thing? The club has no control over its own fate. We fans have no control over the fate of 'our' club. It may be that we end up with a new owner who isn't just out to make the most money he can out of our assets before buggering off somewhere else. We will all then be able to heave a sigh of relief and congratulate ourselves on getting rid of Lowe and ending up with a united club again, even if it is in in the third division. It also may not end up that good. We may well end up with a chancer in charge. It may even be that the club ceases to exist, though personally I cannot see that happening. The fact is we fans are totally bloody helpless in the process. Actually I'm quite encouraged by the fact that the administrator hasn't started selling off assets piecemeal. That suggests he still expects (hopes?) to sell the club as a going concern to someone who can pay the creditors a fair part of the debt. If/when Fry sells Staplewood or several first team players, then we will know we are in real trouble. K.

I agree with most of that for the short term, but in the end I think the smaller 'prem league 2 teams would be naively planning for their own future trouble. Their initial financial gain would not last. How long would it be before the prem league 1 teams start pushing for a disproportionate share of the TV money etc? Then prem L2 would in effect be as poor as the current championship teams etc. The problem football has is that the top teams are so greedy that eventually they will kill off the smaller teams, which ironically will eventually kill off the top teams too. Excellence has to have mediocrity elsewhere to look good. Or to put it in a less philosophical way, even the biggest teams need some little teams to beat and to bring on future players for them to nick. K.

I posted the message below on the 'ticket office idea' thread a while back. It is illegal to trade when insolvent, and therefore also very risky when about to be insolvent in case you might be shown later to have known you were going bust, which will be why they didn't sell tickets in March and can't sell them now. But I can't see why a pledge system couldn't work and surely it would help? K. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have just sent this to David Luker: David Sorry -- another supporter interrupting your work! This may well be better forwarded to the administrator; I'm sending it to you as I do not have his contact details, and it is related to ticket sales. Please pass on if you think it appropriate. I realise that the club could not and cannot legally sell season tickets for next season its current parlous state. However it would send a very positive signal to potential investors if they knew that thousands of fans would definitely buy a ST if they could. So might there be some facility for fans to pledge to buy season tickets for next season, as soon as the club's future is secure, regardless of which division we are in ? The club could either publicise 2 prices, one for each division, or just set a figure regardless. Fans could then 'pay' in advance with the money not actually being taken from accounts/cards until the club was formally solvent again. This would, as I say, encourage investors, but also from the administrator's point of view, show that keeping the club alive is the best way to ensure that creditors have the best chance of getting their money. K.