angelman

I know someone who considered trying to get it for £4m, so £4.5m seems a bit OTT.

I would like to see the amount a club can lose in a year be linked to their turnover. That way clubs like Chelsea wouldn't be able to run at £100m losses and when any normal business would go tits up, they carry on year after year. Admittedly their loss is down to something like £75m a year now.

I am in 2 minds about whether a council should be involved in football clubs like Winter suggests. They do make investments but whether a football club is a viable one that gives the tax payer value for money is another question. Having said that, there is this question of the art. How many people see it in a year? I haven't and don't even know where all the bits are. I suspect not hundreds of thousands though. If they bought SFC then potentially (ie a full ground every game) there would be nearly 8000k people using their investment on football alone, and then there are other uses. This season there were 453,759 people who used SMS to watch the football which I guess would be some what higher than the number who looked at a view pieces of art.

we're not really £30m in debt. Before administration we were but now those who own the debt will have to settle for a lot less

Paul Ince would be good. OK he didn't do too well in the Prem but at MK Dons he was spot on. He has proved himself at the lower leagues.

so if we are in danger of folding, which we truly are, and the only saviour to come forward was Lowe, would he be "accepted" back or would people prefer the club to disappear?

1976 - I got it and thought it quite funny and have to agree that some have to lighten up.

Agree. As it is now, I far rather watch cricket than the Prem League. Can't believe Saints will fold but if they did, my local would be Bashley Town.

apparently Chelsea have a worldwide fan base of 90 million. I wonder how many more ManU and L'pool have?

to be honest, the Premier League has been so greedy and the clubs so unrealistic about running their clubs, that they all deserve to collapse. So little money gets filtered down so it is not a surprise that things are going tits up in the lower leagues and if all the Premiership clubs went bust, I doubt that it would affect the Championship too much. I suppose that the biggest difference would be the transfer market but there seem to be so few players coming up from lower leagues (and especially English ones) that this might not be such a big deal. I also think that there should be a rule that your losses in a year should be directly linked to your turn-over, with points deducted if they are broken. That way it would stop the likes of Chelsea running up a £75m loss, down 7% on the year before, on a gross turnover of £223.3m (2006/7 figures) and not having to worry about it because of their owner being able to throw money (in the form of a interest free loan) at them and carry on regardless, when any other business would be bust. In 06/07 Chelsea's wage bill was 71% of turnover (down 5% from the previous year) which is one of the main problems. My little brain has worked that out to be £158m on wages and salaries!!

Steve Moran

Fair point that they are young and that they are still learning. Although I am not drawing a direct comparison, what was the average age of the Man Utd team that won the Champions League/Premiership in 1999? Was it a lot less/more than ours now?

possibly cos they just signed Michel Sylvestre

mentioned this before. years back (prob early 80s or late 70s) I was in my local sports shop in New Milton and there wasn't a single local shirt (ie SFC or AFCB). Just Liverpool, Arsenal and Everton (I think). About time that the club actually sold itself properly. Possibly too late now but it should have been something that was a major part of sales when we were in the Prem. For example there was a competition in Thailand for a pair of tickets for a ManU game (presumably inc flights!) and they had over 5 million entrants. On a different note, was getting my nipper dressed this morning and really couldn't put on the "sweat shirt" that his mother has bought. Nice red, but on it is says "Skate Champions" and under that "1976"

Lowe is not a penny pincher. Can't you remember him splashing £3.2m on Tino and I presume that he gave to go ahead for our club record £4m on Delap, or actually if you take Tino and his bum chum cousin to keep him company at (I think) £1.1m then that is probably really the club record.

If you don't agree with a group just ignore it. TST does try and think it represents all of us and we all know that it doesn't. Until it does begin to get some influence why not just let them get on with it? As for "fan on the board", I was told that this would only ever happen if they represented 10% of the shares. That was very unlikely to ever happen so it was as good as meaningless. God its nice to see such a happy group of supporters who don't slag each other off!! Just cos everything is so **** doesn't mean everyone has to bore everyone else with their truculant, snide, bickering posts.

SB2 - you got there way before me. I rather liked the Shearer/Shepherd/sheep thing. I think Shearer has been asked quite a few times about management by BBC punditss but said not now. He is doing his UEFA badges and got some academy that he is spending time with. Maybe just a smoke screen but..... Can't see it happening but then I never really thought that we would sink quite so low