dubai_phil

You on commission from her fan club? :-)

Don't think they'd pull the plug either. But they could have said. Your overdraft is xxxx. By 31st August it needs to be yyyy and we will support your business plan providing the overdraft does not rise above zzzzz in the period up to January. Simple really if we go over the limit they'll bounce the cheques. That isn't pulling the plug, it's controlling what we spend. Pay wages or pay the mortgage or pay the taxman or pay the suppliers at the club shop/local business etc OR get the money in anyway you can.

Think the reason they have not quoted a fee is they don't want other clubs to know how much money we still need. On here it's been suggested that we need 4mil, so we say 1.3 and some bstds could come in and say we'll give you 2.7mil for SJ, KD & AS all in one deal take it or leave it and go bust......

Don't be silly, we all allegedly understand the real reason, nothing to do with having to work...... Sunday is the day that the management at the FA get to have one on one's with their secretaries allegedly so I read in an Iranian newspaper translated into Urdu and posted on a Chinese web site from Thailand

Don't know what's worse. Them being a day late with the news or you being their listener on the breakfast show... :-)

They weren't that interested last summer.... And they are part of Dubai Gov. Who still hold out hope at Liverpool.... yup good one But they did get a synopsis of the opportunity....

No it's not scary It's inflammatory. Might as well post a Nuke into the middle of the Saints fans Tin hats and anti-depressant pills chaps

I'm sure we will add more as we get happier with the formation. Like a sort of 4-3-3..... or 4-5-1.......;-) Don't see us being Mike Bassett yet

From the reports on the Reserves last night. Wotton on the bench instead of one of the youngsters along with John OR McGoldrick. Can see the thought process on Saturday - we have two forwards on the pitch so we have cover there don't need on the bench....didn't work, so would expect Thompson back on the right and one of DMG/SJ on the bench. Only alternatives would be Euell or Patterson on the bench. BWP didn't sound like he was ready... First test for JP

TBH it is obvious why he hasn't been able to pull this off. The fan base go ballistic when any word of a dividend payment is discussed There are pages of abuse about shareholders lining their own pockets People dissect every morsel of an investors private and business life and reprint gossip on here as fact. Then you have a business that has been SO badly managed that it's expenses are about 30% higher than it's income. You have a mortgage that has terms that do not allow it to be renegotiated. You have a customer base that has PROVEN that it will not respond to new ownership - look at the attendance trend line for the past 3 years, there is NO up turn when Directors change, it is just downward The ONLY current course of action is to make the business WORTH investing in. In a recession there are MANY ways of using money to make money. Just as the CCC is competitive, so is the investment market. Without the weekly losses, an investor can use his/her money to make something better. Doing that will add value to their investment. Right now, one of the primary reasons we need an investor is to pay the wages for Skacel & Euell.... Why bother? Let Lowe & Wilde take all the pain and all the sh*t, THEN when the hard work has been done you come in, have a better chance of making money AND have better PR because you are making things BETTER with your money not having to take "unpopular decisions" Wise businessmen won't get involved. Egotistical businessmen may. The problem is that the few times they have looked in the past either 1) We scared them off by the mess the finances were in or 2) We scared them off by deciding we didn't think they were up to 3) They didn't have the money but thought they could get it This last one is the same lesson - Lowe couldn't do it, neither could Salz, tommac and his "pals" etc etc etc

A VIP supporters 20 year preferred Debenture Bond, that's what we need. They can invest in the fund, it doesn't go to the shareholders and THEY have to take the first dividend if we ever get back to profit. Anyone know a stockbroker?

lolage at the thread. Those nasty viscous white rinse ladies on the sloping angle half-way down the West stand terrace all those years shaking their flasks at the ref. Made it what it was except for them teaching us SOOOO many bad words. On a related note, new cost saving idea for Rupes on wages AND it brings in high quality experienced YOUNG AND FIT AND HUNGRY footballers AND bound to get THOUSANDS back into SMS Sign up 2 or 3 of the USA Olympic Womens' team.. Now that would work - pace, skill and ... MB on the sidelines with the camera for us. Oops sorry back into my shell, tin hat on

And where's Morph?

How about the after a couple of Bullfrogs new idea? A simpler solution that has a lot of holes but a basic concept is that we are a PLC and we need new capital - sort of like the banks have done of late. Wilde Lowe & Crouch worked together to hold a meeting to send an open letter to the Execs. Eventually, it worked Wilde & Crouch made a power play to remove Lowe. It failed Crouch made a power play for total control at the time of the AGM because of the division between Lowe & Wilde. It failed. The "TAKEOVERS" have tended to struggle because who in their right mind would buy the shares for millions in a club that has been bleeding to death as a business for 3 years. So, with Wilde & Lowe bringing a larger percentage of the share value together, the obvious answer is to hold a RIGHTS ISSUE with an investor, NOT a full-blown take-over. A new investor can take up the rights putting money directly into the club. The shareholders retain a smaller percentage BUT they have the chance to sell out later OR to reap the profits of a recovery in years to come. The "DEAL" with the new investor becomes a proxy of votes. Control passes, money goes STRAIGHT to the PLC and hence the club, NOT into their pockets, they cede control BUT they retain the opportunity to benefit in the longer term when the cub is stable and the share price rises. Maybe Crouch and his old pals need to rethink and work with them. Maybe it really IS all about egos and control and playing with the train-set, but with enough proxies we could take a 10 mil cash injection, the shareholders don't get to lose all their money and we could get new leadership.... ???

Good plan. Let's start by giving a nice refund to the few fans who tried to help out and renew their season tickets in the summer when e needed money because we had no football. Oops no money in the bank OK let's upset the season ticket holders who invested in the club by reducing the prices to every one else who didn't bother or couldn't afford to help us out when we needed the money in the summer Oops that's probably illegal Oh I know - let's give season ticket holders a special discount on their cup match tickets And bingo yes they did.. And WHO set the prices for the season tickets and the early bird renewal schemes last year then? Correct, not the current incumbents but those who did what exactly to solve the financial problems? Yep the same ones who gave promotions and pay rises to people working in SMS and they had a board of how many directors? Nice idea though, needs a bit of work

Bl**dy hope so as his wages have been really useful to Stoke & Reading we have to pay him so can't keep better players. Great.

Glad to see our comrade fans in Germany think it worth spending all that money to come to England.... or is /de now a UK web address? Or maybe they could just send the cost of their tickets to Eastleigh - should kee us going another few days

In answer to the question originally posed. Nothing different unfortunately. Maybe I'd have kept my mouth shut about the nature of the troubles so I could try and get more money from the fire sales, but then I'd be accused of pulling the wool over the fans eyes. I STILL haven't found a single viable alternative. I STILL cannot understand why it was business as usual from November last year when Crouch took over. These losses haven't come about overnight and all we seemed to do was promote people in the club and loan out Saga and Rasiak. He didn't have a viable alternative aither, no investor will pump the money to buy the shares, no investor can arrange a leveraged buy-out these days. Administration is a great idea but we will never recover. here we are bleeding to death quietly out of the spotlight, and yet Man Ure just signed a 10 million sponsorship deal that is only about image rights in Saudi Arabia. It's laughabale to think we can get our snouts back into that trough right now, but I think that MOST of this mess is because we thought we belonged there. We don't belong there, nobody does. You have to EARN the right to be there. Our arrogance since relegation as fans, players and management has got us here. Pride goes before a fall. Get over it, the sooner we fall over the softer and more control we have over the landing. I just don't see any other way except pain and bloody hard work

We forgot to add. Much fewer season ticket sales and zero income during the close season which would have made a bad position worse. Follow that with the "nobody else is stupid enough to pay such stupid salaries" so we can't actually get rid of the players we WANT to get rid of and are reduced to selling the family silverware and cashing in our endowments for far less than they are worth, all we can do is vent our feelings and hope we feel better I'm still looking for any alternative, and still ain't seen one. Even after we've burnt the whole sorry bunch of them at the stake, the ashes ain't gonna be any use to us we'll feel better for a week or two but we'll still be screwed. Think we have 13 days left to get money into the club one way or another from sales and the only people looking to buy are Stoke & Reading. It's ****** but it's life. Anyway didn't see Gordon Brown & the sub-prime morons in the list. Without them we may have at least had a month or two extra breathing space

Hmmm now where have we heard about dodgy sheikhs from Dubai before on here then Actually it is well known in footballing circles (well the NOTW) that Ashley is looking to sell up. I would have thought that it was clear to anyone that Frediie Shepherd travelled to SMS to gain advice on how to mount a successful return takeover bid from our own resident expert on the subject Mike Wilde lol.

You're top of the league then - first point scored 100% record......

nah his meeting was last week there you see how easy it can be to drop curve balls into stories that are a load of hot air:-)

Think he'll be at left back PDQ if Surman's really off, otherwise, no he rots or sits as cover for the players who are in those slots in the team at the moment. Surman and Holmes have done nothing to merit being dropped yet. It is clear he is not in the long term plans so COULD be gone any time up to the end of September. We have already seen threads about the morale and motivation of the younger players and we've all said they need games to gel. So you drop a player who doesn't deserve to be dropped who you are likely to need in 5 or 6 weeks at the top of his game. See the logic in the play him argument but there is the other side in a longer term view. The ONLY person who can really make that call is the coach - he knows whether the effect of being "unfairly dropped" vs the benefit of development and gelling as a team. On the other side again we don't know about the attitude and the motivation of Skacel. Too many assumptions on our side so status quo is the most likely outcome

28 players in the first team squad on the OS. JP said 24 in one of his early interviews (wish I could find it been googling all day!). 4 still to go then Davies Surman, hopefully Euell & Skacel, if not.... crikes

Oh bless. Ladysaint reminded us of the Parachutist who took the match ball off down Shirley High Street and the next day this Beauty appears.... http://www.supersport.co.za/football/article.aspx?headline=Parachutist%20delays%20start%20of%20Burnley%20match%20&id=265918 lol