dubai_phil

hmmm think it deserves a new fred

uh oh! hope you didn't miss out on the fb stage:-)

That would screw Pompey then.....

Freeze me and send the bill to the ex wife every month along with the court order demanding SHE has to pay for my upkeep for the next 1,000 years oops sorry feeling *****y this morning

An old mate of mine once sorted them as follows, and I try to recall how it went Wife - a constant stream of bills, criticism of your fitness, lifestyle and friends, secks when they want it and maybe a bj once a year on your birthday as long as you don't get p*ssed up first. It's always HER friends who come to dinner parties. You can't afford a weekend break in Prague Fiance - First signs of worst habits of wife but with secks, a definite reluctance to "go out with the boys". Will still be interested in a weekend trip to Prague but only for the architecture and that "pretty bridge". Will invite your friends for a dinner party but will be stressed out for months about it Missus - a wife in waiting, focuses on looking at furniture, suggests improvements in your wardrobe, will go out with your mates a couple of times a year but gives the body language of hmm. The secks is ok but unlikely to be quickies in a lay-by, might remember where the feather duster is once or twice a year, probably get a bj once every 6 weeks or so, would probably enjoy a weekend trip to Prague but will drag you home from the bar after only 3 beers with the promise of something interesting (which in hindsight wasn't REALLY worth missing the other 6 beers for). You would take her to a dinner party Girlfriend - sits at your side through football, pub with mates, cinema, shopping. Looks at nice things in shops and goes ooh, but doesn't REALLY expect you to buy it for them. Rarely seen without best clothes on, always full of compliments about you, your friends and of course your choice of Vindaloo on a Friday. Only sign of the woes to come would be a reluctance to have a kebab with Chilli sauce on the way home from the pub. Has secks regularly and enjoys being creative. A really good one would buy you a pay of handcuffs for Christmas and a feather duster. Would join you in the dodgy bar in Prague and gently crtique the bodies around the stage. You would have dinner in a pub/restaurant F*ck Buddy - visits you as often as possible, doesn't want to go out, just wants more more more. Will even wear a Saints shirt and sit on your lap while the game is on telly. Creativity isn't there as she normally only has time to tear your favourite shirt in a rush to get it off. Would be on the stage in Prague given half a chance. Who the hell needs dinner! Date - Holds your arm while walking from the restaurant or the posh "chill-out" lounge that you have been to impress her. An occassional holding of hands causes a speeding up of your heart rate and your mouth starts uttering stupid comments that would sound cheesy in a bad Hollywood college love movie. You are focused on what's under the T-Shirt/spangly top, she is focused on what's in your wallet or what's in your gene pool. You know that only slappers sh*g on the first date, you don't want to go out with one but you HOPE that she'll make an exception just for you. She'll want to play it cool so that she doesn't scare you away and you go home thinking - hmm next time, next time, next time. Why waste money taking her to Prague? but you know you're going to take her to that big romantic restaurant that your mates recommended (and which is always embarrassingly BAD) Oh and she's always late 'cos she's making herself look gorgeous Then finally you get that whole drunken fumbling 30 seconds later moment, and then it's all about recovery time as to whether you go to level 2, straight to girlfriend or back to square one. Of course this misses out the whole new technology stuff but it was a long time ago that he recounted his tales! He also pointed out that it can take anything from 3 months to 10 years to get from step one to wife. Just depends on how long you are able to delay the process

Nope, only Novell, Oracle, Microsoft, Lotus, IBM, HP, Cisco :-) Release 1.0 product launches - ah those were as funny as an LLS takeover story, and as full of holes

You know what? If the market rejects the bale out in the USA, everything is in doubt The football club will probably be the LEAST of our worries. You need cash or a credit card or a cheque to get a ticket, won't heppen if you're waiting for Gordon or the Paddy's to give you your money back after all the banks shut their doors. Anyway Warren Buffet is always after a bargain when things go t*ts up

You've obviously never worked in the IT industry Salesman This upgrade will do this this and this and make your business THIS many times better Customer BRILLIANT here's my cheque Salesman Thanks our support desk will be in touch once they've got it to work, should be ready on Friday

Yes there was, it was mentioned on the OS and in articles in the Echo at the time

Why should we have live face to face ones? We can't even keep an Internet one going.. 76 fans online tonight, would be able to hold the forum in a broom cupboard at SMS these days

Well that's an easy answer How many ITK's have said something is happening....... lots - has anything happened? How many have said nothing is happening.......... none so obviously we ain't bieng taken over When people start to say nothing is happening then that is the time to start a new take over thread. Anything happening this week? yes - supposedly on Wednesday - so we all know what that means now Phew, off for a lie down now after that piece of logic fried what brain cells I have left

Window Cleaner Full Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: hiding in shadows where I don't belong Posts: 581 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: Originally Posted by toofarnorth I hope he can play right back Doubt it Ah ha so he's a shoe in at Right Back then After all nobody else in the side can play there.... allegedly

Because Strasborg payed his wages until such point as he was fit enough to come to us Allegedly HTH

Fri recovered from a Birthday party just slobbed by the telly Sat Chick came round cooked a bbq instead of bothering to watch the game (good call that) Sun Chick stayed round Mon recovering 8/10

Great news hope he can play as a wide right midfielder who knows what they are supposed to do unlike DMG. IF we get some shape in the team THEN we may start being less erratic

Oh dear. I'm not deluding myself and I am not stating anything to do with Lowe. In case you had not noticed, Rupert does NOT run the club at this point in time, Barclays Bank does so currently we have an employee of one of those marvellously professional organisations that have sp8nked away zillions in your and my life savings in search of a quick buck making the decisions about how much money we have available to spend on anything. My observations were NOTHING to do with a takeover or the sale of shares, simply an analysis of SURVIVAL and why it is highly unlikely that the Bank is particularly bothered about our attendances when the club are improving the resale value of the assets (ie Kids) so that the bank can get it's money back. IMHO we will NOT see ANY indications that we have further financial difficulties - simply because it will allow the BANK to get the MAXIMUM in any negotiation for ANY of the kids we can sell in January. I didn't even BOTHER to point out that it would be un-necessary if we were getting 25.000 a week as that is simply la-la land at the moment as is expecting Lowe to give his shares away, Paul Allen buying us or UK house prices recovering this week. But thanks for the useful contribution regarding Lowe's personal motives and attitude, I', sure all 30 posters left on here had forgotten all about it

Hopefully we won't be on telly for a month or two so we'll be ok. Meanwhile there's a simple answer to the problem of Sky. Where's that White Witch gone?

From what I recall, the Stadium is not owned by the Football Club Ltd but by another subsidiary of SLH. In theory even IF we went into admin as a CLUB, the stadium could still sit in the subsidiary and not be affected. the debt would likely still be there, but the BIG difference would be that the "new SFC 2008" would then have to pay rent on the stadium. No doubt the subsidiary would expect to make a profit between the mortgage and the rent - thus staying at SMS would actually burden the footballing side even MORE than it is now. My main thrust is that the stadium debt is pretty much irrelevant to Barclays Bank. IF they liquidated the club NOW they'd get very little of their overdraft back as anything left over after tax, VAT and salaries would go to Norwich Union IF the entire SLH was broken up. So in fact it is in the interests of the BANK to keep us trading, and allow us to cash in players in January. I THINK we had a hangover of non-stadium debt and higher wage bills after the transfer window closed. I THINK that the idea of staying in business until the end of the January window MAY allow us to have a sustainable business model based on crowds of 12,000. The HUGE worry is of course whether the players left could keep us in thes division. But at LEAST it buys us TIME. All we really need now is for ENOUGH results before that point to make the job easier. Like I said I may be wrong but a long slow admin to TRY and have a clean rump business left over that MAY be attractive for a buyer is about the only way I can interpret the lack of panic about gates and results in the "official" pronouncements from the club

Well, FWIW I am quite looking forward to seeing a game where Lloyd James has another Saints player between him and the opposition's corner flag. Stop getting torn apart down the wings and maybe we can play football, but last night I had a guest watching who'd not seen CCC before. The most printable comment - oh dear. This is football?

We won't go into admin. Simple facts - there are about 15 weeks until the transfer window re-opens The policy of "blooding the youngsters" has seen the development of Lallana especially, but also "to a certain extent" Gillett, James, DMG, as well as the emergence of Kelvin as a "quality shot stopper". That gives ALL of those kids a resale value. Barclays Bank hold the purse strings, they make the decisions. Norwich Union are a preffered creditor as would be the tax & VAT man. By allowing the club to continue trading and to continue giving the kids experience, BARCLAYS are simply ensuring that come January, the Academy youngsters CAN be sold to cover the bank overdraft and so they avoid becoming BOTTOM of the pile in an admin situation. MEANWHILE we have been bringing in players who are NOT of value yet, on which we have loan extansion options come January and who are feeling their way into our style. The next generation - Gasmi, Pulis, Schneiderlin, Lancashire, White, Hatch, Mills, Holmes, Peckhart/Robertson/Smith maybe will have become more experienced. Whether they could actually keep us in the league is another matter, but what it buys the Bank, and the club is TIME to try and find a white knight or for the "maybe forlorn" hope that they will click as a team. Over the weekend I have been thinking this through and it starts to make sense, forget the attendances, as far as the BANK are concerned player sales will trade us out of the last of the fiscal mire and reduce their exposure. The lower gates just mean we EITHER have to get MORE for our kids OR more of them have to be sold. It will reach the point where even 450k for say James will be needed. There is NO way the bank will pull the plug UNTIL after they maximise the amount of money they can get back from sales. Put us in Admin , we'd get 75 quid for Lallana and the bank would get nothing. Any other replacements? Well if they don't go THEN I think we'll see Thomas, Euell & Rudi used far more. they have little resale value, are costing 2mil a year and so the kids will be sold to give us what many are asking for - Rudi back in the team... But right NOW their presence in the team would IN THEORY stop a youngster INCREASINg his value by keeping him out the team. (As well as adding cost pressures for bonuses etc) Hope he's worth it and hope I'm wrong

OK, time to comment from Phil. I agree with the concept of having a top to bottom process at the club to bring through the youngsters. I agree where POSSIBLE that should mean a consistent set of tactics and formation. I believe that the appointment of the Dutch duo was a gamble too far, one that SHOULD have been mitigated by having a wise old head to help even part time as a Director of Football to whom the guys could turn for mentoring and guidance and as a brainstorming support. I think that JP will become a damned fine coach, and I hope it will be with us. What I DISAGREE with and have said a number of times is the blind allegiance to the formation. It is not about me being a Mike Bassett and demanding 4-4 bl**dy 2, it is about what I have seen succeed at this club over many years adapt your SYSTEM to fit the PLAYERS that you have. Jan's formation requires two WINGERS. At this moment in time we do not have those in the squad. Holmes is injured, Smith is yet to train and we really do not have a right winger yet. With Lawrie we played a sweeper system, with Ball & Le Tiss at his best we played a diamond system, with Hoddle we played a version of 4-3-3, not because of a DOCTRINE, but because the system chosen MATCHED the abilities of the players who were available for selection on any given day. At the moment our full backs have simply acres of space ahead of them - especially James - why? because DMG is NOT a right winger, does not track back and leaves the kid exposed. Neither the 2 DM's are able to get out wide in time to cover when the ball is played long into the space. So without wingers, the 4-2-1-2-1 formation allows us to be torn apart by a longer or diagonal ball. It is also clear that Lallana is wasted out wide - again he drifts in rather than back leaving gaps in the system. While we have the lack of competent wingers, the system doesn't fit the players we have. A diamond in midfiled would work. A sweeper with wing backs would work, but most importantly 4-4-2 with wide MIDFIELD players would work. Fit the PLAYERS we have into a system and we will go from strength to strength, allowing TIME to develop White or even BWP into that position, or allow Gasmi to play right and Smith left WHEN fit. What ISN'T working is fitting square pegs into round holes, it is a fault and is a problem of policy versus reality. The longer it stays like this the more up and down we will be. As SOON as players are fit or available then of COURSE we can revert and I would expect we'd actually be quite good at it. Right now though we are sh*te at it

Actually I think it's a bl**dy good idea and a potential money spinner for Hoddle and anyone else who finds "lost gems" And what's more it ALWAYS p*sses off the fans of the clubs that let the player go - for eg see Brian Howard threads :-)

Anyone done a forensic earlobe check?

Impress the missus let her give you a leg waxing Of course, you could always do the washing up, cut the lawn etc - less fun but FAR less painful and stupid in the long run

No there seems no speculation anywhere that this is the case, and no speculation that Glenn may even be talking to Rupert let alone any of our scouts. More a case of "hmm are we copying his idea?" or vice versa