stevegrant

I think it was hidden behind one of the advertising boards. I'd like to say a big thankyou to everyone who helped out, including (but certainly not limited to) Katie and Glen at SFC, Pam on the turnstiles and Baj for arranging the shirts. Also thanks to all the players and managers for making it as easy as possible for me to arrange and then run on the day, and obviously a massive thanks for the gifts, lads

Que?

Anthony Nolan Trust

To be fair, I think he had been giving the ref fairly constant grief for a while Official attendance: 137 (not including players/managers) Man of the Match as voted for by the players: Alex Griffiths (Griffo) Griffo, give me a call at some point over the weekend and I'll arrange to give you your prize, which is a signed Saints shirt. :smt023

Onions bowled with real relish today

Yes please

They're cracking up with the nerves over the other side, lads.

?

For absolutely no reason. He's just doing the job he's employed to do. His PR skills do seem to be more than reasonable, for which he deserves a bit of credit, but for the amount of money Begbies Traynor will be charging the club, he's doing exactly what he should be doing.

Don't worry, they've arrived now...

Disagree - investors are primarily interested in assets. Coventry had none then and they have none now. The ground is still owned by the council. SISU took on the debts that the club had accrued (don't think they paid any of them off, they just underwrote them). They spent a bit of money in the summer - the actual total is unclear as there are loads of undisclosed fees, although the two transfers that had disclosed fees totalled £1.7m. My understanding of the SISU offer for us involved a share placing that would a) pump somewhere in the region of £10-12m directly into the club (£12m for the shares less the various fees involved), but b) dilute the shareholdings of the existing shareholders. When Lowe, Wilde and Crouch wrote that open letter to SISU asking for further details, I expect they were pretty ****ed off that they'd not conducted business in private like most people would have done, but I'm led to believe that they did request a personal meeting with the "big 3", which was either ignored or rejected. It was at this point that SISU decided that they weren't going to get enough support, so backed out.

I reckon you were just having nightmares about Andres Iniesta

Not often I agree with you, but this is one such occasion.

Well this is a new angle from dalek...

I'd agree with that. If anything, the uncertainty with his pending court case probably prolonged his spell here.

He did some freelance work, particularly for the Guardian, immediately after leaving the Echo. I believe he had to be "unattached" in order to retain the copyright of his book.

We are being provided with plenty of balls - 8 or 9, I think. It's multiball time...

I will be sending one final e-mail today at some point.

While I'm sure you were probably taking the **** a bit, amusingly the bar will be open serving Carlsberg's finest plastic-cupped lager and as it's deemed a "corporate" event, you can even take them to your seat

Can do, although I'm just about to walk out the door and drive to Blackpool for the weekend, so won't be able to do anything until I get back from Forest on Sunday night...

I now have all the shirts, as well as the away socks for those who asked for them. Home socks should be delivered today or early next week.

Yes, they state that if a football club goes into administration, they will be deducted 10 points. Southampton Football Club is not (yet) in administration. While there may be very obvious ties between SFC and SLH, the Football League rules state that everything applies to the football club only. They've (arguably rightly) decided that we've exposed a loophole and should still be punished accordingly. They've (almost certainly wrongly) decided that Stockport haven't exposed a different loophole in the same rule, and will essentially get away with a points deduction that means the square root of sod all to them.

What a shambles. The idea of the rule in the first place was to prevent a "Leeds" situation whereby a club would go into administration towards the end of the season when they knew whether they were already safe/relegated and take the points deduction then, which would be rendered fairly irrelevant. The Football League appear to be very selective with the parts of their rules that they apply to the letter and those with which they arbitrarily decide a club is attempting to exploit a loophole.

Panic over. Grey shirts found. Don't ask...

Surprise surprise, just over a week to go and a rather major headache has developed... Long story short, the club have sold all the adult-sized grey shirts, so there aren't any left for us (despite having reserved them a month ago, and the people involved at the club read the forum on a daily basis). As a result, they have offered us last season's yellow shirts instead. We're not in a position to turn this down for several reasons, so that's what we're going to have to go with. Needless to say, I'm not overly happy with the situation, but not a great deal I can do about it, sadly. Due to the timescales involved (and the lack of likelihood of acquiring yellow shorts/socks ), we'll stick with the grey shorts/socks combination for the away kit.