SaintBobby

I'm not sure I agree. The penalty is not that you are automatically relegated. Their on-pitch performance means they stay up.

I'll renew, as will the missus and my mum. I'm guessing that there's a difficult pricing decision here. In that, say, 5,000+ fans would probably renew even if the prices were to go up. I'd probably be willing to pay somethign mad £500 for a season ticket, even in League One. But the problem is how to "milk" the hardcore, whilst trying to take advantage of the stadium's huge capacity. There's a lot of folks who may come along if tickets are around a tenner, but would'nt think it worth it otherwise, or can't afford to. Some would say that any empty seat is a waste, but - of course - the more you cut prices, the more you are reducing the money that you're raking in from the hard-core/affluent fans. My solution? Given the likely further collapse in corporate support, because of the wider economic position, not just our diminished league status, we should release the (extensive) spare capacity in the corporate suites for those STHs willing and able to pay a bit more. I'm not going to pay £500 for a season ticket, if I can pay £15 a game. But I might be willing to cough up £500 if this entitled me to, say, six games in corporate hospitality through out the season.

The rule is a bit complex, but basically fair. If you go into admin before the March deadline, you lsoe the points there are then, in the current season, irrespective of where you stand in the league. If you go into admin after this stage, you lose the points in the present season IF this makes a material difference, otherwise they are carried over to next season. This is to stop what happeend to Leeds a coupel fo years back, they went into admin when already relegated, assuming they coudl take the hit then - and not caring that they were simply relegated by an additional ten points. Because Saints have been relegated irrespective of the ten point penalty, we take the hit next year. The annoying thing is that if we had gone into admin a few days earlier (before the deadline), we would have taken the penalty this year and could have started League One with a clean sheet.

Interesting point this - I wonder if there is a domino effect. If several others do go into admin over the Summer, we might see a tidal wave, because if, say, six clubs start on -10, then a seventh club taking the hit might consider that it doesn't spell relegation certainty. If SSN are right though, Stokport lose ten points this season (confirmed in the last few seconds).

I confess, I don't know the numbers....and it may yet turn out that fivers in buckets have kept us alive for some crucial 72-hour period. What has been shown is that the sort of cash that you can raise from the fan-base is no more than a stay of execution in the present terms. A particular offence I took on Saturday is that I shelled out for myself, my missus and my parents to go corporate (total cost c. £380+Vat). This is affordable for me, but is a stretch. Then I get Leon Crouch rolling up, asking me to put a twenty quid note in a bucket. Just really, really annoyed me....

Interesting point. I thought you'd said a kidney might pay Skacel's wages??? But I did shamelessly nick it...sorry!

You think Saints are a good romance novel? Geeeessss........

Madness. Fair play to all who donated, but talk about re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic....

Just to reiterate again - I'm the original poster, effectively - sidthesquid merely pasted my article in (not asserting any intellectual copyright stuff, am merely pointing this out for the record). Please understand that it is a conclusion to a match report - at a match where Crouch was present both in person and in the programme (e.g. very publicly). I do hold Lowe and Wilde considerably MORE responsible for our present plight, but I don't think anything and everything that is written needs to be in some strict ration of, say, ten criticisms of Lowe and Wilde for every one of Crouch. Lowe and Wilde are (I hope) history. By way of analogy, I didn't say that McGoldrick's penalty miss on Saturday was bad, but then spend a whole paragraph on how Wotton's miss against Watford earlier this season was even worse. I think Crouch needs to shoulder some of the blame for the finances of the club getting out of control over the past few years, which is ultimately what has brought us to this sorry state of affairs. In retrospect, one might even argue it would have been better to have got relegated last year than to have reached this situation, but I wouldn't want to pursue that argument too vigorously and, of course, no one could possibly have known that at the time. Those who have been in charge of the club oversaw a ballooning wage bill for under-performing players. A complete break with the past is therefore necessary. I also think that Crouch's present behaviour is unedifying, however well-intentioned.

I think he probably should have - or at least acted ratehr more quietly.

I really think he is making an idiot of himself. You don't save a club like Saints by passing round the buckets. It's all very well to applaud anything taht looks remotely well-meaning, but some of it is just idiotic.

Yes - if it was the only option. I'd still suport the "official" Southampton FC at St. Mary's if it existed, even if Lowe returned as Chairman.

I'm the author of the piece on the "On the Cross" website, which you can read in full here: http://www.southampton-mad.co.uk/news/loadnews.asp?cid=TMNW&id=445050 I actually don't hold Crouch anything like as responsible for our present plight as Lowe and Wilde. But I do hold him partly responsible. My key reason for this is - as argued by Tom28 - is that he failed to slash costs in the face of collapsing revenues. At the end of his tenure, we managed to stay up - but were nowhere close to being financially viable. We were spending more than we were bringing in. He was dealt a difficult hand, for sure. But, overall, he played that hand badly. I do think the bucket collection stuff is ridiculous and embarrassing. If the club believes there should be a serious drive to raise cash from fans, it would be far better to have it fronted by Le Tissier, Benali, Rodrigues etc. I don't doubt Leon Crouch's personal devotion to the club, by the way (his payment for the replacement Ted Bates statue was touching, but of course the first statue should never have been so embarrassing in the first place). I just think he shares a bit of the blame for where we are and is starting to make a fool of himself. Btw, I'm also not a "PR plant". The opinions in the article are my own, honest, heartfelt views. Disagree with them by all means. But can we all stop suggesting that anyone who puts forward opinions which don't 100% match one's own is definitionally motivated by some nefarious "agenda"?

Southampton Football Club continues to trade - otherwise you couldn't buy tickets for the Burnley game.

Im 99% sure this wont be our last game at St Marys

Alpine is wrong. It would not be illegal to sell season tickets. The problem is not knowing - even now for 100% certainty - what division we will be in combined - presumably with a desire to let the pricing policy be set by the new board.

do-able, definitely do-able. Heart says two wins will do it and we can pull it off. Head says the Charlton game was the real "must win" game

yes...that seems right to me, too. Our last three fixtures are pretty good, really.

I think the mere fact that we play Forest on the last day means one of us and Forest are likely to drop, but probably only one of us. One thing we do want to happen is for Burnley to have secured a play-off slot before they come to St. Mary's!

See...told you this was going to be easy...:-)

The way I'm looking at is that I'm sort of assuming we have to win at Notts Forest. I'm sort of factoring that in to my equations - so am sort of lookign at the league table with us having Pld 43 and having 47 points and Forest Pld 43 with 46 points. Cheating I know. But then I'm asking - what else do we need happen? What's the least we can do and survive?

Charlton are dead. It's two of Barnsley, Norwich, Forest and Saints, with us as the slight underdogs.

You'd have to be a bit mad to believe we could gain enough points to day to more than make up for the fact that Forest gained 3 points on us earlier this weekend

No, at the moment we gain 2 points on Forest and 3 on Barnsley. we just don't gain any on Norwich.

damn. Big win for Norwich.