St Marco

No offence but these don't prove anything. Luton actually got docked -30 points because they exited administration without a company agreement (without the courts support). It is a rare case, in fact i think it is the first time it has ever been used. The problem is Luton were bought out by a group who had inherited a club in complete chaos financially. Luton are a prime case of what happens when you let your debt get out of control. So that actually proves the point i was making about leaving the inevitable too long. Getting further and further into debt is not the answer. If we get to the point where we are doing what we are now in division 1 then division 2 then division 3 im sure you will change your opinion. The club has been in this direction for a longtime. It is not something that has happened over night. As i keep stating if you have no money how will you pay the bills exactly? How long until your landlord is sick of being not paid and evicts you?

With the stadium it is more confusing. I am unsure if we actually own it or if it is owned by Norwich union? If we own it and go into admin it will be sold. The problem with this is anyone could buy it such as what has happened at other clubs i.e Leeds,Palace etc.. Whoever buys the club will not take it down for housing. They would become mr hated instantly if they did that. The reality is they would obviously have a stadium to rent back to the club. It might then also be used for other things i.e other sports. We could then buy it back once we are in a better situation. However if we don't own the stadium then that complicates things further. BUT if we don't own the stadium and we still have loads to pay off on it they might underwrite the stadium debt and keep it. Which they would then sell anyway. So if that was the case maybe losing the stadium and losing the majority of the debt would be the better way to go. That is on the assumption that whoever bought it would rent it back to us. Either way without money we won't change our direction.

Rupert puts JP's name on ze list

It is not assumption Nick it is fact. As i said it is basic maths. You have to get your outgoings in line with your income. If for a long period the outcome has been more then you get into debt. The bigger the debt the more you must pay back. It is a awful circle that you only get to by mismanagement. However in football this seems to be the system they all use. I think some lord guy the other day said english football clubs are in £2bn debt. So point is say you have an agreed total of say £20m debt with your creditors. The interest on that will go up and up. So add to that the continous costs where your outgoings still exceed your income could mean that within a year your debt has risen to say £24m. Now the following year you have even less income and even greater outgoings. The only way to make back that £4m is to get a wad of cash. If you don't have someone able to dip into their own pocket you have no option but to sell something. And in football that is players. This is the way the club has been run for so many years now. Now the fact is as Frank mentioned the income at the club is down. I would guess it is down a lot more then what Lowe and Wilde had in their plans with Barclays. The half empty stadium must be taking it's toll. Now we do know our debts, we know that as of last June 2007 it was £19.7m. Lowe has already said borrowing has increased to expect bad results when our new report is out. I think we can assume by that the debt has gone up. So all in all if the debt is increasing and the income is decreasing you cannot go that way forever. The bank will step in when they believe a line has been crossed where it is unlikley that money will be paid and they will ask for a gurantee it will be paid. This means a wad of cash to get it back to the agreed level. So the question is if we continue as we are now is our debt at the point where they are asking for money and does that mean we will have to sell in January? I think looking at the Stern John scenario would make me believe yes. The question then becomes "how much do we need?". This is the worrying question because if it is a lot we will not have any power to negotiate and could see players go for Davies like fees. If it is not a lot then maybe only one going will cover it. And that is what i think will happen. And no i am 99% certain Lowe will not be allowed to buy the club unless he can get money i.e a consortium. As i stated before the whole point of admin from start to end is to get the buisness running again. All the books are looked at and they will scrutinise every decision. They will then want the buisness to stay healthy. Meaning by handing it over to someone with no money is not wise. Lowe could do nothing for the club in that state unless he could gain money to buy players to fill the gaps left by those which had to be sold. Now the thing is if he could do that why has he not done that now? Why has he not dipped into his own pockets and paid for a few things? These are the things which will be looked at. Meaning if the club should get into trouble again how will it likely do under those circumstances? The reality is as we know, badly. So Lowe would not get the club simply because he is not rich enough to be given it. To use Leeds as an example. Bates was given it because he had more money. They had at the time £35m of debt and he offered 8p for every £1 of shares. They estimate the cost was about £7m-£10m. Now he did not pay off the full debt of £35m but they agreed to an amount. What that is nobody knows. So the point being because he had cash he got a club. He has now put more cash into the club and it would appear their slide into nothingness has ended for now. If you use that scenario and put Lowe in there instead of Bates how would he have done? The answer is he wouldn't as he couldn't afford it. And that as i said is why he won't get the buisness/club simply because he doesn't have the means to support it. The courts will give the buisness the best chance to succeed, that is their job to do. They will not hand it back to someone who just brought it to the brink trust me.

coudn't care how many we score as long as we at least score 1 and win.

It is funny reading some replies on what people think admin is. Admin is a LEGAL term that places the BUISNESS in the hands of ADMINISTRATORS which are issued by the COURTS. The purpose of admin is not to destroy the buisness or even strip it for everything it is worth. It is a band aid to help get the buisness back on it's feet so it can make money by it's own means. The admin team come in and take over. All shares are dead. Meaning everyone who has a share loses. That is the gamble of being a shareholder, it is no different from betting on a horse race. If it wins your fine, if it doesn't you lose. The administrators will try and recoup the debts owed to the creditors. They will do that in various different ways but ultimatly the full sum is never paid off. In our case they will look at the players we have and say "well xyz are worth xyz so they have to be sold". Which means Davis,Lallana,Surman,Schniderlin etc.. will all be sold. Now a lot of you will be up in arms about that but the reality is this will happen anyway even if we are in admin or not. We are in a lot of debt, we are losing money and we are no longer at a point where we will get £10m etc.. for a player every year. If things stay as they are we are headed for admin there is no doubt about it. It is basic maths where you match your income by your outcome. If your outcome is a lot bigger then your income then your debt increases. That is what has happened at this club for so long. Now look at the club as of today. We have made a lot of cut backs. A lot of people have been sacked who work for the club. A lot of perks have had to be stopped and a lot of other things have had to happen. Namely the team. We have not picked the players we have because they are amazing. We have not used the reserves because they are great. We are using them because we are trying to get the outgoings in balance with the incoming. The harsh reality is the more you mess up the lower your income but the higher the outgoing. If we get batterd 0-5 at Preston the next home game against Bristol will have the knock on effect of having 4 loses in past 6 games, it will be a low crowd. But if we win then the crowd might increase. This does not mean the fans are glory hunters it just means they want to watch competative football for their money. So in reality without being biased our 1st team must now be amongst the lowest paid teams in this league. Majority of them have come from the reserves and had never played a full match before let alone a season. They were not in a position to say with their first contract "i demand xyz". They are on very small amounts of money, such is the manager and the new back staff. Now when the admin team have got to the point of paying the creditors an agreed amount any money left over goes to the shareholders. This rarely if ever happens. What normally happens is the admin team pay back the creditors anything from 25%-75%. In a football club scenario the creditors normally get around 50% with the other 50% getting wiped out or underwritten. Then the admin team will de-list the club and everyone who was on the board or had shares will be removed. Meaning Lowe,Wilde and Crouch will lose everything. They will no longer be in control or have a say in the clubs runnnig. Then the admin team when satisfied that the club can operate on it's own means will apply to the courts for a release. The judge will look at all the documents and either say yes or no. If no then they must do more. But majority of the time it is granted. Then once that has been done the club comes out of administration and get's put up for auction. Some of you think this will then allow Lowe to take control. That won't happen and the simple reason why is money. Lowe does not have the money to help the club if it goes in the same direction again. The last thing the courts will want is to put the company/club into the hands of someone who will in a year or two bring it straight back to them. With clubs in admin they look for people who have the best chance to support the club. Now if our club went into admin and we get put up for auction i can gurantee you now people we have never heard of will come out of the wood work with money we didn't know they had and make bids. In the grand scheme of football buisness £1m is nothing. Lowe could not afford it and neither could Wilde. If it was £2m they both would be out. This is what people don't understand. In the world of buisness that money is tiny and someone would get a football club on the cheap. Now people compare things to Leeds. They say were do a Leeds etc.. The thing is Leeds went into admin and then things got better. Rather then the prolonged drip of selling anything that has value everytime they miss a payment etc.. they just prolonged the inevitable and that hurt them more in my book. Now they are bouncing back and are i think 3rd in the league. Now the problem with clubs in admin is they used to do it and get rid of all their debts without anything bad happening to them. This is another misconception people have. Going into admin used to be a way to free yourself from debt. Loads of companies and clubs did it. But now to stop people doing that point deductions were brought in. This is the real punishment. It can mean you get relegated by having a minus 10-15 start. If you use our position now as an example would mean we would be sitting at the bottom of the league on 3 points. 12 points from getting out of the relegation zone. Now it is possible to get out of there but if you have a team of nobodies as we do then it becomes too difficult. So i think you have to assume if you go into admin you will be relegated. Now a lot of people talk about the bad side of admin but neter really talk about the positives. Lets look at a team flying high shall we. Hull City. In the 90's they were struggling to survive. They had even been handed winding down orders. They suffered relegation after relegation and finally got to division 3 in 2001. Anything that had value was sold of every year to ward of the company going into oblivion. That just prolonged the inevitable. But after reaching the bottom the club were put into admin in February 2002. Adam Pearson then came in and bought the club and helped bring it back from the brink. He put his hand in his pocket and helped to ease the financial situation. He helped to get a new stadium. In 2004 they finished 2nd in division 3. And then 2nd in division 1 in 2005. When they got to the CCC Pearson sold the club to a consortium because he said his small funds had got the club as far as it could. If they wanted to stay at the CCC level they needed funds. So in 2007 he sold them and the new guys put the money they had in the side and they reached the playoffs and were promoted to the premiership. Now the point being in just 5 years after being in admin they had gone from the bottom of the league to 3rd in the top league. The lesson there is if you keep selling and keep staving off the inevitable without any investment you will just go down and down and down. If we get relegated next year the same thing will happen then. We will have to cut even more costs to be able to survive in league 1. The problem we have had is that since we have been relegated things have not been settled. We have had the cloud of admin over us the majority of it. The team has had to be changed every year and the board has changed every year. You stand little chance of getting anywhere if you don't have a settled club. So my opinion is that right now we are in admin if not for the title of it. We have sold off all we can and no doubt in January one of the three (Davis,Surman,Lallana) will be gone. We have had to loan out anyone with a high wage rather then think of paying them for something i.e paying £300k for the goals that might keep us up. We have sacked a lot of people and more and more will be layed off. The only people who are un-effected are Lowe and Wilde. They should of been out looking for investment then trying to gain control of a club with no money to put in. The club was settled and again now it is not. This constant change is a reason the clubs go from bad to worse. Without money in today's football world you will struggle. Without the cash cow of the premiership you will struggle. Having a chairman who has put no money into the club you will struggle. And that is why if we find ourselves driffting further and further into the relegation zone i will think offcial administration will be our only choice.

Will not be going this year. Last year was bad and while i think the result will be much better then that game i just can't be arsed. The Swansea game has put me right off away games for now.

To be honest with you i think we stand a better chance going out with our buckets and spades looking for red and white beards long lost treasure then getting any investment!

We have a debt of £19.7m from the last annual report. I think we can assume that we have gone over £20m if Lowe says our burrowing has increased. Now im not sure if that money is all owed to Barclays but a fair chunk of it must.

So Barclays would be happy with us having less and less income due to dwindling fan support at the games? They would be happy with the current direction we are in which looks like admin meaning they lose pretty much all of their £20m they lent us? No offence but if you think they would be happy with the current outlook then you don't know much about how finances work. Signing a petition won't make an ounce of difference to what happens at the club. This forum is just a tiny tiny tiny minute % of saints fans. However at least people are trying new things to gather support. It is so easy to sit at a computer and give it the "your all a bunch of morons" speech but those people are the ones who are trying to change things even if the method won't. Which again no offence but they stand a better chance of changing something by doing that then sitting down on a forum criticsing every little thing. That is easy, we can all do that. So they/we might be morons but at least were doing something more constructive then you in regards to finding ways to bring this whole dark cloud over our club to an end. But hey keep critiscing, that will change so much!

Not read it but i can guess he is probably talking about how he overcame his injury even though he is injured etc..? I got mad respect for the guy but i would have more respect for him if he could play more often.

I said in a thread before the Swansea game that the next 3 games (Swansea,Coventry,Preston) would be vital for us. If we come out of that period with nothing i would switch from undecided to against. So going into Saturday i have it down as a must win game. If we win i will see 4 points from 9 as the bare minimum of acceptability. If we draw i will see it as not acceptable. And if we lose then for me that is it. I will think it is time to go. Our best chance for survival is to win our home games and get something from the teams who are around us. Only one win at home is not good enough and if we go 4 losses in the past 6 matches that would be a total of 13 points from 45. However you look at it that number would be truely awful and would have no option but to go. Now changing the manager with someone else with no experience won't change the sitaution, changing the manager for someone who will be another Lowe yes man won't change the situation. What we need is someone who can come in and change the system to a more positive one. Someone who can take the players under their wing and help them, someone who can get the best out of them but more importantly understands the league. Understands it is tough and you have to be positive in your set up and understands the fans will not be happy if you looklike your playing for a draw with 3 mins to go by bringing on a striker for a free kick who is smaller then the guy yo taken off... So we will see what happens and i hope we win as i feel sorry for Jan. But he does himself no favours with his tactics and decisions. You must live and die by your decisions as they say. This is a results buisness, if he is here to get no points then give me the job, i can do that for half the salary!

ah, i probably wouldn't notice anyway just like other games that supposedly have better graphics. As long as it isn't full of bugs im happy

Nail on the head. Lowe doesn't need to be there in the dressing room giving a prep talk while we are preparing for the game, he doesn't need to be on the touchline while the players run out to warm up. He doesn't need to hand a piece of paper to Jan saying this is the line up (players to pick from) etc.. and the fact he is doing that makes me feel even worse for JP. He really is in a horrible situation and he must think he is being undermined by Lowe. I have no doubt other chairmans come into see the players and wish them luck but from what i hear this is now a tradition at our club. It is an every game thing. Can you imagine the Glaziers coming into the Man U dressing room? The Liverpool owners? Levy at Spurs? etc.. etc.. it reminds me off the scene from Airplane when Leslie Nileson keeps coming into the ****pit every few mins saying "i wish you the best of luck, were counting on you" while they are trying to concentrate on the landing. I think that by doing that must break the concentration that the playing staff are trying to get. Ultimatly if it was working then i would be fine with it. If Lowe came in and gave a Churchill type speech that ment they would go out and "do battle on the fields, we will never surrender" then i think we would all be for him doing it. But it is more like watching a slaughter waiting to happen. So Lowe needs to back off and be behind the scenes. Needs to stop putting his face in a place to get publicity. He cannot help it as he thinks he is a celebrity. But overall he needs to let the manager manage and from what people are saying it looks as if he isn't doing that.

for some reason Fallout 3 has been getting slightly worse reviews on the PS3. I have not read why and would not say it is a reason not to get the game. Gamespot gave the PS3 version 8.5/10 and the 360 version 9/10. Maybe someone who has bothered to read them can fill us in. Still looks an amazing game for all formats and has over 30hrs of gameplay. Will hopefully pick this one up when it comes out this week.

Agree I think it is obvious we have 2 premiership players in our squad. Davis and Lallana. We can't afford to lose either of them. As you said he didn't have his best night but he gives his all and chases everything he can. Sometimes he does make the wrong decision when he tries to do too much dribbling wise when a simple pass to the right would be easier. But he will learn and get better and better. Even though this is his 1st season in the team proper he does looklike he has been there for years. I just hope he doesn't go the Surman route where he kind of faded away after his good season. Also thankfully he wasen't hurt in that tackle he had last night as i was worried he could of been injured the way he was moving on the ground.

Nickh i think you may have misunderstood what people were thinking. Most people including myself could not see us winning the game. They didn't win the game. They in my opinion didn't deserve to win the game neither did Coventry. So in comparison to my prediction and others gaining a point looks better then losing obviously. But that doesn't mean we should be happy about it because we didn't lose. We should of won the game and that is why people are unhappy. In Jans interview he said "im happy about the performance but not happy about the result. If you have 20 draws in a season it makes things difficult". That is how most of us see it. If we had won then i would as im sure others would be happy, but we had to win that game, it was important to. So while i agree those who had us down for like 0-5 will be happy with a point, i'm not. Preston and Coventry and really the only 2 games we can look at and say we could get something. The rest i think our misfiring will cost us. The team need to start proving the people who say they can't win wrong and right now they are not doing it. Lets hope they get something on saturday because if we go 3-5 points adrift in the relegation zone i can't see where the goals,points will come from to get us out of it. That is why home games especially against the teams around us is vital to win. We will just run out of games if we keep the "always next week mentality".

Sorry but that is wrong. The name of the game is getting points. Teams like Coventry at home you have to get those points. To win only once at home in what 7-8 games now? Is bad bad form. We have Preston which is a must win game then it is 3 tough games. Meaning if we can't beat a side like Coventry who had only won against us, at home then where are the points going to come from? So i understand your point but if you feel 1 point at home to Coventry and the performance was something to be happy about then your be happy with relegation. We need wins and we need them bad. There is a chance we could be 5 points adrift this saturday in the relegation zone. Then if we go into those 3 games and lose all 3 we could be anything like 8 points adrift etc.. which if that happens all the draws in the world will most likely not save us. We have to win and win our home games. I don't know who said it but "draws are the killers".

Crouch is the south's second biggest earner this year, he has more money then Wilde and Lowe combined. At this time there is not much he can do because as Um Pahars said he would be seen as a hypocrite if he came out and slagged off Wilde and Lowe like they did last year. The facts are the club is in melt down in all areas. I think he will probably join with a consortium and oust Wilde. Crouch has no bad feelings towards Lowe, they are both buisness men. But Wilde stabbed the shareholders in the back. He is the only reason Lowe could return. He made that choice. So it would not surprise me at all to see Lowe sell his shares to this consortium and Crouch proxy his and other shareholders do the same i.e Corbetts and remove Wilde. Then the consortium will have control and hopefully the funds. Then we can get on with the football which it should be about. Now i hope that happens. The longer we stay as we are the closer we come to admin meaning the closer Lowe comes to losing his shares. I can't see him risking everything he has on Jan and the direction he has taken this year.

signed

4-4-2 is a more positive formation as it means you have 2 people working the line. When you have just 1 up there it means the opponents normally have 4 defenders watching him. Thus means it is harder to have through balls. The striker has to work twice as hard. If you play the ball up to the striker he has nobody to link with fast, he has to hold the ball up until someone can get forward and support him. But in my view the main difference is congestion. Having 5 in midfield means there is a lot less space to pass into and is more predictable to deal with. Having 2 up front means you have more options to pass the ball. For example if you want to play with width having 2 players who can move to the wing to recieve the ball from striking positions helps with that. It also then enables more players to get into the box as the forwards normally are man marked. But the main difference i think is the nuisance level. If you have 2 of them constantly harassing the back line and trying to counter break past them it means the defenders have to do a lot more running which wears them down. The problem with 4-5-1 is the midfield is packed so it is hard to get out on the break, you have nobody to pass to and the one guy up front who you can is surrounded by normally a line of 3-4 defenders. Unless he is someone with amazing ball control skills he will lose the ball pretty easy. There are many reasons why 4-5-1 should be dropped but i think the main one has to be that it simply doesn't work IF you want to create a lot of chances. Swansea showed us how to do 4-5-1 right, they all move about into space and get into the box asap. We don't do that as were too far back.

I think good managers get good results from poor players, think that is more about being a manager then being at a club able to spend £xyz on great players.

Can you imagine if he did that at St Mary's though. The stadium would implode.

No way there was 14k there. It was practically dead. I could hear the Chapel even singing!

If that is what he did why did he need to do it a few mins before the match? Couldn't he have told them the day before or maybe at the Swansea game after we loaned out John? I agree with you 100% that if these players were feeling "am i about to be sold?" type mentality then reasurring them that they won't will boost confidence. That would be fine and i think all of us can agree on that. But i don't think that happened. I think he went in there and gave a pep talk i.e you can do it lads. Which is wrong for him to do. Jan should be the guy doing that. And if he can't then why is he the manager?