beancounter saint

That's good - haven't seen that one before. Is that Chris Packham taking it in the foreground?!

Wasn't the 5-0 result at home? If I remember rightly, we got wopped away at Huddersfield last season.

Don't you mean treatment table rather than bench?!

Didn't one of Westlife play for Leeds youth sides as a goalie?

It's an awful lot easier to look good (and relatively pacy) when you come on for 20 mins at the end of a game than if you start, as we've seen before, notably with Waigo and Wright Phillips. Having said that, he probably does deserve a go, given the way some of the other players are performing. I wouldn't hold my breath though!

As has been suggested I would hope it is fairly well weighted towards performance related incentives though it's probably quite difficult to get prospective managers to agree to these as they cannot control what resources (players) will be at their disposal at the end of a transfer window. I think we can safely say it's more than Scunny pay though!!

I was glad I went today, even though I ended up tucked away at the back of the church where I couldn’t really see anything. Within the watch story was some information about how Markus flew over to watch the Plymouth game but was unable to attend in the end due to his health. Made me wonder whether there might be some credence to the theory that the photographers ban may have been at least in part due to concerns for his privacy. Anyway, whatever the truth or otherwise of that, it all just confirmed my honest belief that Cortese is really the strongest link to the vision of Markus Liebherr for the Saints and I, for one, am prepared to give him the benefit of any doubt in his dealings on behalf of the club.

I don't quite follow as he is supposed to have gone from Saints for £6m having barely played in Prem up to that point. As for sell on, if there is one, surely that would only apply to the profit on the deal (compared to £6m purchase price) which sounds like it's not a lot?

I agree entirely about Antonio. However, perhaps the "no gossip" bit is a positive sign of something happening given the new regime!

It may be that he will take a big pay cut to bring his wages down from West Ham Prem to Saints League One levels but he would be in a very small minority amongst footballers if he chose to turn down higher offers to do so. My guess is that he will get a contract somewhere in between, at a smaller Prem or larger Champ club but may continue to struggle to fulfil his early potential. From what I saw of him at Saints (admittedly a few years ago now) he doesn't really have the dominance required to make a high level CB.

Even disregarding his recent off-field problems it's going to be difficult for someone like Davenport to be successful now at any level. Having been such a bright young prospect and then failing to make the grade in the Prem, there is likely to be a gulf between the player's attitude and the reality of where he should be playing. This is then compounded by the other issues in his case. I think it would be a massive gamble for Saints to take on someone like that.

I don't suppose Liebherr is planning on consistently making a loss but generally I agree with up and away's assessment. Unlike those with the opposite view on this thread he has actually posted some examples to back up the suggestion that most clubs don't make much profit, even in the Premier League. I'm sure it can be argued that clubs such as Pompey and Hull have been horrendously mismanaged and bled dry of money by various parties so they might be bad examples, but the fact is that very few of the others are making much money either. It doesn't seem to make sense to argue that, on one hand, the removal of the instalment plan means that Cortese has no clue how to run a football club and then to imply that he will magically find the formula for making a fortune out of it where most appear to be failing.

Fair enough, you have obviously done a bit of research and argue well. I'm certainly not claiming to be an expert on this type of arrangement but I do have enough general knowledge and experience in finance to be confident that the information you have been given does not spell out the whole story in terms of costs/risks to the club. What I would be genuinely interested in is if anyone has any first hand experience of avtually running this type of arrangement in practice and can confirm or deny this.

Whatever you say, you are obviously the expert. I love the way you gloss over the issue of defaulters in point 5 and point 6 doesn't to make any sense to me. However, as I say, you are obviously the expert and I am merely a mong.

I don't understand how the fact that the club has not approached Premium Credit this season (if it is even true) means they have not looked into the costs. The fact that they have used them in previous years means that they would have a pretty good idea of the costs involved I would have thought. If I owned a company and outsourced the debtor book to a factoring company in the past I wouldn't have to ask them again to have a very accurate idea of the costs involved. And, for the record, the initial premise of the thread that having an instalment scheme costs the club nothing is blatantly nonsense, as has already been pointed out. The costs involved will be one or more of the following (plus probably others I haven't even thought of yet): 1. Club accepts a lower figure from finance company than the face value of ticket 2. Admin costs of time taken dealing with finance company 3. Potential loss if defaulters' debts revert to the club and admin time in dealing with this Despite what the finance company may present in a preliminary discussion, there is no way that the finance company would accept the risk of defaulters, unless this was compensated by a punitive interest rate (and probably accompanied by credit checks at least as stringent as getting a credit card anyway). The scenario where there is genuinely no cost/risk to the club and the finance company will provide the service at a reasonable rate of interest, without stringent credit checks is a utopian ideal which doesn't exist in this world I'm afraid!!

I hope you're right. I like your logic in terms of comparisons to previous year though I'm surprised Saints managed £13m in revenues to begin with. Though I haven't looked at the accounts so may be talking a load of old cobblers, I assumed that the bulk of the revenue now comes from tickets. £13m, or the majority of it, adds up to an awful lot of tickets over the year even you take, say, an average of £300 per person per season which is probably optimistic once you take account VAT and reduced rate tickets (mitigated by higher rates for non-STs).

Is this based on insider knowledge or just speculation? I would be surprised if it is the case as the wage bill must be towards the very top end of the division and, as you say, the transfer fees paid were much higher than any others I can think of. Whilst the attendances have been good, ticket prices are not that far above the average for the division and quite a sizeable proportion of the tickets included in the attendance figures are either at reduced rate or given away (Under 8s). Coupled with the fact that running at a loss is pretty much the norm anyway in the division, it makes me expect a loss here too. Happy to be proved wrong though, I guess we will find out in due course!

Alain Perrin is right. Despite the "professor"'s assertion I thought that Saints were actually the better side on Tuesday, but it was far more marginal than the dominance we enjoyed against Walsall, Huddersfield and even Leeds. Some people seem to want to draw conclusions by working backwards from the result when in fact a lot of luck comes into play on any given day. Unfortunately the position we are currently in means that any slipups are magnified. The best we can hope for is to hang on to as many of the decent players as possible over the Summer ready for a good campaign next season.

Sounds good. Just don't tell Aviva about it!

I hope you are right - I guess we will only know for sure when we get to see some accounts!

I'm going to sound like a right geek here, and I know the figures you have used are very rough, but just the Employers NI (12.8%) on the stated wages would take them above the income figure. There are an awful lot of overheads involved in any business that people don't always consider. Guess what I do for a living!!

And I'm sure you would tell him that to his face!!

Agree with those who believe there is some sort of Wotton witch hunt. Looked to me as though the new boy Otsemobor was the one who really should have done a lot better on the equaliser.

It's obvious to me that the solution is to get Liebherr to pay off the league to allow us to play 12 men in a 452 formation, thus having the best of both worlds!

The thing about the 10k STs sold is that you can't really compare numbers directly with last year as the pricing structure is quite different. The tickets are cheaper to start with and they are literally giving away the U8 STs. I would guess that these are included in the figures and that they are quite high in number, as well as the ones for older kids which are not free but bring very little income. Who knows??