Roman

Although in the larger scheme of things, it doesn't make much of a difference, Morph did say three times over the last few days that Salz would be there as Crouch's guest. I do wonder... I notice that one of Morph's other recent bombshells was to confirm that Sundance was Lord Marland. Now if that were actually true, I'd be sorely tempted to direct the gossips in Fleet Street to a member of the House of Lords cavorting with the delightfully Pickwickian characters on b-anter.

Yet another reason to get a better blend of youth and experience in the side.

And if you want to know how barking the director, Werner Herzog, is, try Les Blank's 'Burden of Dreams', the best 'making-of' ever produced. (A film about the shooting of 'Fitzcaraldo')

Otherwise we'd have made origami of them? Who knows to what extent JP's options are hemmed in by you-know-who. It would be interesting to see how JP's decisions shape up, free of the bits of paper being handed down from above.

Morph's promise that Salz would be Crouch's guest in the corporate boxes is an exact mirror of the claims tommac used to make. I have enough sense to know that Morph and LS are not in the same utterly brain-deficient, angry-dervish, weirded-out league as tommac... ...but it would be nice if they were right for a change.

We've been down this road before, Snowballs. You had faith in tommac. I didn't. So I think it's best to be safe and base our trust on results - even with the small details, such as: was Salz really at the game?

At last? I've been going on about Salz ever since tommac started spreading nonsense about how he was just a doddery old pig farmer who knew and was interested in nothing. I remain sceptical about LS and Morph not because of any personal animosity but because, as I've said before, their information comes from the trenches of only one of the armies in all this. That's why Morph's been wrong in the past - not because he's been duped, but because the balance of forces have overwhelmed whatever he thought would happen.

Not sixty yet. Who know if he'll become Chairman, but the important thing about Salz, in the short term, is this: imagine the next meeting between the club and Barclays. Do you think the Mr Mannering at Barclays would react differently if, instead of being confronted by Lowe, he was dealing with one of the most senior executives in Rothschilds Bank? It could be the difference between survival and administration and/or relegation.

Salz is young enough to be Andrew Sachs' son. Don't believe the tommac-inspired crap.

Nick, my 'source' isn't LS - as he himself knows, I've been a little sceptical about his claims recently. As Weston quite rightly points out, a lot of ITKs only see one side of the story. The idea that the club is running into the sand comes partly from the club itself. They're the ones who talk about the overdraft increasing to £8m. The pub meeting the other day was only the latest at which senior officials from the club said that we could 'only' stave off administration if the gates went up. At least two posters on here apart from LS confirmed they heard the bank were troubled by the way things were going (may be wrong but I think Weston was one of them), etc, etc. I'm surprised anyone even doubts where heading for a fall.

None taken Nick, and I'm with you on being cautious. The problem right now is that the Lowe revolutionary express is heading at 100mph towards the buffers, and the alternative, at the moment, is offering a destination for which they haven't even built the track yet. There are a lot of questions raised by these leaks, speculations, call them what you may. ITKs have brought us crashing down in the past with practically a 100% success (or failure) rate. But let's see where this takes us.

Long Shot, this thread was more interesting when it started talking about what might happen, rather than raking over the hoary old stories about who did what to whom and who was more damaging, Lowe or Crouch. If a new board is coming along, as you clearly believe it is one way or another, will it take over before administration, or are we going to have to take the hit (and probably relegation) before the white knights step in?

I'd be very happy with that.

Well, you've got Long Shot's word for it that Crouch is not coming back in any executive capacity. So if he and his allies topple Lowe/Wilde, then I guess we will have made at least the first steps towards what you're looking for. I must admit, though, this does sound a bit puzzling.

As long as you're not optimistic, something good might just happen. Damn.

Probably the greatest photographer of all time, Henri Cartier-Bresson, shot pretty much everything on a standard 50mm prime lens, (really fast - a 1.5 Zeiss Sonnar) with the shutter set permanently to 1/125 and the focus at 4 metres. Take a tip from the 'capture-the-moment' master. (Him, not me.)

I think there is a point to it all, Phil, even if Crouch has no additional funds to invest. For one thing, the club needs a new injection of ideas from the boardroom about how to get attendances back up to break-even and above. Lowe is too divisive and (towards fans) blithely uncommunicative, to ever achieve that. For all of Leon's supposed faults, he does seem to understand the backs-against-the-wall, we're-in-this-together mindset that has been a traditional strength of the club. In this sense, you compare him to Lowe and he's like Henry V on St Crispin's Day. Secondly, for all the talk of cost-cutting, the Lowe revolution has cost money and points, at home at least. Not playing a better balance of experience and youth, and acquiring a baffling number of young squad players has come at a price. Third, I somehow don't think Crouch will move against JP and Wotte as Lowe did against Pearson. He's not a burn-everything, Year-Zero kind of 'revolutionary'. However, as I say, can you see Lowe going quietly, even in the face of the imminent (administrative) demise of the club?

I have a bad feeling about this. I get the impression that Crouch's in-house allies on here think the club is about to fall into his hands as Lowe simply runs out of options with administration looming. But Lowe is nothing if not resourceful in matters of boardroom politics - so I'll make a little prediction now that we could see the outbreak of yet more civil war quite soon.

With all the cryptic nudges and winks of old - except that Morph has the rather endearing manner of a whispering Jesuit priest as played by Rowan Atkinson.

No, it's a song title. The song's about a man on the run for the law. Terrible song, as well, Law Suit... I mean Long Shot.

Just a couple of questions: Crouch has his cheerleaders on here, as does Lowe. Who rattles the cage for Wilde? Anyone (apart from himself, of course)? Or does TSW not matter in the way that he clearly thought S4E did?

Well if his decisions are proving disastrous for the club, and his ego (really his stubbornness, I suspect) is as you describe, there's little that we as outsiders - or even you as a recent insider - can do about it. Which is why I still believe that the weak link in all this - in other words, the way to break the chain - is not Lowe but Wilde. Wilde has the power to remove Lowe by withdrawing his support. If things are as you say they are, then even the bank would favour that.

Exactly. Focusing on Lowe's ego is at best a side issue, and at worst is really misleading. I just don't follow the logic: if a large ego is a 'bad thing', and Lowe has a big ego, do we also conclude that the ego of others, like Alex Ferguson or The Chosen One, or even Flavio Briatore, are a 'bad thing'?

Yep, still don't buy it, JL, but unless I go to 16pt caps or something it's really hard to add to this without things getting very messy. Here's a suggestion: google 'Pahstunwali', and then try and see the movie through that prism. (It's the code of conduct that governs life in the Tribal Areas and in the Pathan parts of Afghanistan - including the Taliban. Pashtunwali dates back to Alexander the Great, and so actually predates Islam by a long way. You'll see what I mean about seeing the movie differently. But of course it's hardly the only warrior code out there. Samarai codes can sound very similar) I'm always suspicious of Freudian interpretations of anything, let alone fiction, since his analytic approach was always so circular. And (shall I whisper it?) I like Black Hawk Down - a classic Western transposed. Whether Ridley Scott is desperate for an Oscar is neither here nor there, I think - just as you should never for a moment take seriously how directors describe their own work, because for them most part the crap they talk has little or no bearing on the actual film. Even Hitch**** was prone to embellishing. Agree on one thing though: Spielberg should not even touch Oldboy, and I'm amazed he's even interested in it.

Which leads me back to the 'closer you are, the less you see' argument. I really think the personal attacks on Lowe, especially by people on here who knew/know him, are counter-productive. Firstly, it seems to me that the real focus for any criticism of Lowe should be his decisions - eg Lowe 'revolution' in all its odd guises. Secondly, Lowe is who he is - it's not as if he's a leopard constantly changing his spots. The real focus of criticism in my view should be Wilde. Lowe wouldn't be there without him. And after Frank's revelations the other day, it seems possible Wilde might have gone into that treacherous pact without even considering that Lowe would throw the baby out with the bathwater.