yorkiesaint

Looking now I think I agree but would argue that the board put themselves in trouble the moment they made the ill judged comments about finances when they came in. This was untrue. Yes Cortese had committed £22 million in future payments, but had assembled a squad surely valued at £150 million+. So this was down-right dumb. This surely had an unsettling affect on the players and contributed to all the wanting out. Losing confidence in the board at this stage was reasonable. Hats off to Les Reed who was presumably the key figure for turning it around.

Become?????!!!!

I don't know why Cortese's throwing his toys out of his pram really- his 5 years are up. Presumably he has begged for time to find investors but he either has none, or he a Katerina disagree as to the value of the club.

About the disagreements in May, just guessing. I can't see any evidence that the Liebherr family have put any money into saints other than the original £33 million loan that was converted into shares. If anyone else knows any different I'm happy to be corrected. The whole 'here's a wealthy owner thing waving from stand', that's just PR for the fans who are all to willing to put 2+2 together and come to 5. In my view we always have been Cortese's project, I guess that Markus invested cash for 5 years (5 year plan) after which time he was promised a return on this investment, leaving saints a sustainable premier league club. Now the Liebherrs are withdrawing money. I'm totally fine with this and don't think it's negative and I support what Cortese is doing. I am guessing his plan is to use efficient tax planning to pay wages through offshore trusts, offshore loans to avoid corporation tax and so on and all the other things which major investment banks are good at to keep us one step ahead.

This looks fine to me too: -------------- Osvaldo ----------------- Lallana ------- Lambert -------- Rodriguez ------- Wanyama -- Schneiderlin--------- Shaw --- Lovren ----- Yoshida ---- Clyne ---------------- Boruc ----------------- but will we also see this? -------------- Lambert ----------------- Lallana ------- Osvaldo-------- Rodriguez ------- Wanyama -- Schneiderlin--------- Shaw --- Lovren ----- Yoshida ---- Clyne ---------------- Boruc -----------------

Agreed. Anyone who thinks we are bankrolled by the Liebherrs is wrong. They have spent their £33 million and are now pulling slowly out. My guess is that the debate in may was about the timetable.

Osvaldo would do for me, plus a two footed full back as competition/cover for shaw/clyne.

Well Sinclair and Rowe look pretty tidy. Whoever was in goal for us, well, he did his best to make himself irrelevant as possible for the liverpool goals!

Cork>Cleverly is clearly crazy. I guess the jury's out on wanyama for now. Carrick has nothing to prove, unlike MS. Cork is intelligent but too slow on the ball and doesn't have the technique of the other players. I'm sure that's why Poch wanted a replacement. Saints they fizz the ball around, it gets to Cork and the extra time he takes on the ball allows the opposition to reorganise.

I guess footballers want money and trophies, and they care what others think of them. We might be able to offer money, but nobody outside of the UK has heard of southampton and we don't win any (meaningful) trophies. The best we can argue is that we are a shop window to the premier league big boys. Although southampton has little going for it as a city i don't think this would stop people coming if we were the champions league winners.

Are our agents fees especially anomalous? I know some figures were posted on here but they seemed to be from the season in the championship. If they are anomalous another reason could be that the Don is trying to structure the deals according to some tax minimising strategy, and for some reason payments for agents aren't recorded as such. Perhaps the reason for deals falling through is that many agents or players are not happy with the structure. Alternatively he could be getting the player to pay the agent's fees, but then setting up some structure to help the player avoid tax. In this case maybe players aren't happy. They don't want to end up like Messi.

I had one of those yellow and blue away shirts. Now that looked naff wherever i wore it. I totally agree that football shirts in general look naff unless you are playing football. But seriously, is not the reason us and cardiff are now in red because of all those studies that show that the team in red wins more often: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4559071.stm This is no tin pot science story, it is published in Nature magazine, the world's most prestigious science journal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/expat-money/7465517/Non-dom-status-do-you-qualify.html I think you need to revise your estimate of ramirez's gross income based on the fact he may enjoy non-dom status and may be exploiting various available tax efficiency strategies- all speculation off course. Given Cortese's background he will have good knowledge of the tax system and how to manage tax. I have often wondered whether Cortese's skills here might be a factor in enabling us to compete with bigger clubs on wages.

I think this sums it all up very well. If we can just hybridise Jos and Jose we'll be in business.