St Marco

Put €30 on us winning. Even though we are mega **** and have been set up ultra defensive again. The law of averages says we have to win sometime. I just have a feeling this will be the game we get battered but somehow snatch it. I really hope that is what happens.

What would you consider a proper football ground then? The season we went down I went to every away game. Off the top of my head I remember Millwall (because it was dead and half full). Plymouth as that was actually a decent day out even though we lost. And Luton because we went 0-2 up and ****ed it up in the 90th minute and lost 3-2. Other then them I don't recall us doing very well away that season and didn't leave thinking "at least I got to experience some epic atmosphere". Turkish (don't know how to multi quote) - So if you appreciate other players that makes you not a supporter of your own club? Juventus the other day gave Ronaldo a standing ovation, does that make them idiots? At the end of the day football is a game. I want Saints to win every game no matter who the opposition is. If it is City or if it is Rochdale. You have a far better chance of beating those teams if you are actually in the same league. Since we went back to the PL we beat City three times. Remember winning 4-2? Winning twice at old Trafford? Thrashing Arsenal 4-0? Beating Liverpool at Anfield? Or possibly the game I will remember most when they were 0-2 up and we came back to win 3-2? Beating Chelsea away? Point being that as much as people want to bash the PL we had a team that could give any team including the big boys a game of football. The fact we can't anymore has nothing to do with the PL, it is to do with who runs the club and the decisions they have made over the past few seasons. Those things will not change one bit just because we are in a lower league. I wonder who would swap the season we finished 6th and finished just 3 points behind the Manchester clubs for any of the seasons we had in the championship including the one where we got promoted?

As I said at the start I can't watch games anymore in person. So I am looking at it in terms of how I can watch/follow us. That will be much harder without the ability to 'acquire' ways to do so. Just because I can't go doesn't make me less of a fan. I had a season ticket up until 2 seasons ago so I saw the vast majority of our home and away games when we last were relegated. And personally I didn't find it that much fun. My point was that even if we had **** players and the football from our team was not good. You could still see other teams with players who are world class. There is no shame in getting dicked by teams like City because we are not expected to beat those teams. How many teams in the championship will we not be expecting to beat? As you say that makes me a bit of a consumer but you expect value from what you pay right? The high ticket prices will still be there in the championship. The difference is you will pay the same for watching lower quality football. The players will still be on high wages, the difference is we will be paying them to players of even less quality to what we have now. Money has ruined the whole game not just the PL. To think things will be different when we are not in it is a tad deluded isn't it.

That will be interesting to see what happens with that. I know they paid a **** load for Helder Costa and Ruben Neves. Who are way better than that level. Can only imagine they are on monster contracts.

Living abroad obviously the main thing will be televised games. There will be zero streaming so being able to watch 38 games a season will drop down to a handful unless we get PL teams in the cups. - Winning or drawing against some of the biggest teams in world football. - Full stadiums and going to quality modern stadiums. And missing out on new ones ie Spurs. - If I still had a season ticket I would say paying £700 to watch some of the best players in the world. As I think I mentioned somewhere before people like to do the whole "**** the pl its all about money, the championship is proper football blah blah" when the reality is it is exactly the same. Championship clubs spent more than five times as much as all of the French, German, Italian and Spanish second tier clubs combined last season "Clubs spent an estimated £297.9m on transfers, with the equivalent clubs from France, Germany, Italy and Spain spending just £57.3m between them - five time less than their English counterparts". "Sides who finished in the top six spent an estimated £102.8m" Last season alone Newcastle spent £60m on players. Wolves spent £67m in the past 18 months. The idea that we will go down and money is somehow no longer important is a joke. Its going to be so much fun in the championship. The good old days where we won 57 of our 184 matches last time we went down. That season where we lost 21 games was so much fun....

Updated it for you

Fenway Sports loaned Liverpool money at 1%. That interest actually goes to paying back the banks and not Fenway themselves. They don't financially gain from the loan. They do however gain from the increased valuation of assets that the loan was spent on. Also didn't they write off a £70m loan? As for Man Utd I haven't got a clue about their finances and don't really care. But if you google football owners writes off debts I'm sure your find a whole load of them. In regards to the I want the club to spend, spend, spend thing I don't think nor believe that at all. Spending money for the sake of spending money is wrong. You have to live within your means. But when you look at our club and where that money is going you have to wonder what's going on? £50k a week for an inexperienced player like Stephens? New contracts being handed out even though they are not deserved? Is the club on a safe financial footing or is it relying on a strategy of player sales? The high finishes were great and showed that a club our size could compete. Look at Leicester winning it. But for me those finishes will mean little if we go down, are in financial trouble and in the wilderness for a very longtime like other clubs have. Simply because they could and should have been avoided. They came about because of the people in charge of the club totally ****ing up. And Kat was involved in those decisions.

With all due respect I think you don't know what you are talking about. She LOANED the club money. This MONEY was on condition that is was paid back with interest. The loan went on improving the clubs facilities which increased the value of the asset. So not only did she get the loan + interest back she also benefited from the assets being included in the sale. Thus as stated she didn't put a penny of her own money into the club. That would have been if she did it interest free or didn't expect it to be paid back at all. Which is what most owners do. I agree with a lot of what you are saying but Kat really has ****ed us over. As you mention there were unlikely many options for her to sell as nobody seemed interested. So she sold us to the only serious buyer. The first one that came along regardless of who they were. For me that will be her legacy. She is entitled to do whatever she wanted with her club, sell to whoever she wants. But by doing so she showed little care for the future of the club, the fans who follow it etc. She put herself and her wallet ahead of that. The fact she pushed the PL hard to accept Gao after his initial rejection shows she only wanted the money. She spun a lot of lies in trying to justify the sale whilst keeping her image of 'responsible guardian' in tact. That image is in tatters. People complain a lot about mercenaries who are only in it for the money. How they will move onto something else with their pockets lined whilst the fans are the ones who remain and pick up the pieces. Kat is no different. I have huge respect for her father and the team he brought in. They genuinely seemed to care. History will remember them well. How will it remember Kat, Les and co? That we got a few top 8 finishes? Or that they were responsible for the decisions that lead us to where we are now and the direction we seem to be heading in?

She has not put anything into the club. She loaned the club money with the condition of paying 5% interest. Which she took back from the club before the sale to Gao.

The sad thing is as much criticism he is getting it isn't actually his fault. He doesn't get a say in how much a club pays for him. What baffles me though is how we actually got to that number. This season he made a grand total of 2 starts in their league. And the season before a total of 5 starts. So in 2 seasons he started 7 games in their league. He was a back up player who seemed to do ok as a sub. Seeing as they paid around £6m for him, had his value actually increased that much in that time? It's like the negotiations went like this Monaco - We hear you are interested in Guido? We are interested in selling maybe we can do a deal? Reed - We are yes, how about £10m? Monaco - For Guido? Reed - Ok £15m? Monaco - You sure you're looking at the right player? Reed - Ok £20m? Monaco - Er yeah we are happy with that..... Reed - Nice doing business with you! Monaco - Hahaha thanks for the money we are just off to get Pietro Pellegri with that money who is a 16 year old wonderkid! Cheers!

Maybe it's just me but I thought Cedric and Tadic were very good today and don't deserve the abuse they are getting. If Austin had scored that chance late on it was a clever Tadic flick that got him in. I felt everyone played really well apart from Hoedt, Bertrand and obviously Stephens. Everyone else put in a shift and were trying to be positive going forwards. The central defence has been a huge problem for us this season and sadly Stephens just isn't at this level. Having him banned could be a blessing in a way because Yoshi will come in and put 100% in and with his experience will be more of a leader which we really have lacked. We have let in 9 goals in our last 3 pl games, that shows the defence is all wrong. Totally gutted to lose that one but overall we played well with what we had and if it was not for poor individual defensive performances we would have got something. We sold one of the best defenders in the world whilst in a relegation battle and didn't replace them. Instead the powers (or power) that be deemed an inexperienced, un-proven defender on 50k a week was all we needed.

That doesn't make sense? They are 4 points ahead of us already? You say they will be in the mire and their fate will be sealed if they fail to get 4 points from Everton and Watford. But what games is it you see US getting results from exactly? If you are suggesting they will get nothing against Chelsea, Arsenal and City what makes you think we will? They have 3 points from 27 against the top 6. We have 2. WE are the ones who need to gain points on them. If we are being honest Arsenal, City and Chelsea are games where a draw would be a great result normally. Nobody expects us to win them. Bournemouth at home is must win. Swansea away is must win. Either Leicester away or Everton away is must win. We need bare minimum 3 wins from those 4 games. My opinion is if we fail to win either game against Arsenal and Chelsea and they then win against a Watford team who have lost 8 of their last 10 away games we will be down.

He has only played once in serie a for Lazio since moving.... He will never get ahead of De Vrij, Radu, Lulic, Bastos etc. Even the youngsters Felipe, Patric and Wallace get games ahead of him. We may have a lot of problems here but Caceres was only signed as a back up and will probably be released at the end of the season.

I find this 'write off' thing quite interesting as she didn't really did she? She owned an asset and put money into that asset which increased the value of that asset. It's like putting an extension on your house and then when you sell adding the value of that extension to the house price. As others have alluded too when Cortese did that (training ground/youth set up) some see it as wasting loads of money that supposedly almost killed us. Kat does it and its all good. She owned an asset its normal for someone who owns something to put their own money into their own asset. We all do it with the various things we own. If she didn't do that then she wouldn't have received anywhere near the amount she has because chances are we wouldn't have been successful. So not only did she recoup the money you say she wrote off (in the sale) she also recouped +5% from the 'loan' she gave us. As stated in that report most football owners do that, it isn't anything new. But many do it interest free. The thing that worries me as I said in the les post before all these numbers came out was the amount of money we were paying players and staff (including Les). If we have the 8th highest Wage bill and below Spurs by £15m then whoever is in charge of contracts has been handing them out recklessly. Especially when the belief amongst the board is we are a 'small club'. If the worst happens and we do go down then we will not be able to pay the near £100m a season wages we are paying. In contrast if you look at these numbers as much grief as odd job got he actually made the club profitable without using player sales to do so (2012-13). He spent £30m on the whole new training ground/youth set up which is the basis for this 'killer loan' thing people use. But yet they fail to take into account the player wages for the year prior to leaving was just £27m and the year he left £45m. Not to mention very low agent fees. In the space of just 4 years since he has gone our wage bill has more than doubled. Increasing by 29% year over year last year alone. Kat would have known about these mega contracts being handed out and as the owner can only assume she supported them. If we go down the club will be in severe financial difficulty based on the decisions she and her chosen board put us in.

My main worry with IF (likely) we go down is the contracts of the players/staff. Les has been handing them out like a chugger over the past few seasons. Some deserved and some really not (he even gave himself one). If someone like Stephens is on 40k+ a week we really have to pray they all have relegation cuts in them or we are ****ed. Some of the gash will be easy to sell on but for many they will be on a lot of money with little prospect of making that elsewhere based on their performances. Redmond, Boufal, Forster, Hoedt, Carrillio, Long etc are unlikely to get better wage offers elsewhere imo. Players like Tadic, Bertrand, Lemina, Romeu and Gabbi would likely get more even if they are underserving. In the last financial results our wages grew by 29% on the previous year. And with so many new contracts handed out and crazy signings like Carrillio this season you have to guess that number will go up further. One thing is for sure right now we are paying nearly £90m a season on wages. There is no way we would be able to pay that in the championship. These long expensive contracts could end up being the most damaging part of Les' legacy.

Very poor performance. Players just don't seem bothered. Hughes has had no impact yet. Just don't see us winning any of our remaining games. Keeping mp for as long as we did has killed us.

How much was Corteses loan?

To be fair Newcastle are a premier league side. Wigan are in the 3rd division. We played so bad at Newcastle but imo I don't see any difference in todays performance? Have we even had a shot at goal? I would take Carrillio off and maybe bring on Long. Hit some balls down the wings for him to chase. We just look so predictable right now.

Playing really poor again so far. Can't keep hold of the ball. Carillio has been utter gash the first 15 mins.

Its some interesting stats there, thanks for posting! Win ratio Last 3 jobs (8 years) Fulham - 32% QPR - 23% Stoke 35% 277 games, 93 wins, 70 draws, 114 losses. 33% win ratio, 41% loss ratio. Assuming that bounces over to our 8 games we should win 2 games, draw 4 and lose 2. 10 points. 38 points total. Will be close but I think that will be enough to stay up this season.

Wouldn't have been my choice and I don't buy the whole 'he was all we could get' line people are already putting out. I don't think his style of football will be any different to what we have had over the last two seasons. However that said he has my full support and hope he can get the players motivated. Its going to be a tough job whoever took over due to leaving it so late. One thing I was surprised about is that there were no pics of him and Les, no Les comments, just two empty chairs beside him. Maybe, just maybe Les has realised he needs to back off and be as far away from the team as possible in this run in?

Totally disagree. In the case of AVB didn't he go to China? Was that because it is a good place to put on your CV? Money talks and if you offer enough of it you will get what you want. That doesn't mean we should do that.

Don't think he is a fit for us if I'm being honest. Maybe its just me but since we changed to this ultra defensive, fear of winning style it just has not worked. If we are to survive we need to change back to our old systems and actually try and win games. If we get beat then fine but give it a go. I just don't think Hughes is the type of manager to do that. It would probably be the same as before. I don't dislike Hughes and whoever is appointed (except Reed) would have my full support. But I just think we have a better chance of staying up if we go with someone known for attacking football/trying to win then someone trying not to lose. Who that could be I don't know. If we throw a **** load of money at Enrique/Blanc they may go for it until the end of the season.

It will be whoever is prepared to be told what to do by the chairman. Can't see someone like Silva/Billic who clearly have strong personalities accepting that. Whoever comes in we all need to back them even if they are not someone we would want. The club staying up is the most important thing. Point the finger at the end of the season.

11 points from the last 45 on offer. How MoPo and Reed still have jobs at Saints is mental.