rallyboy

I've got better things to do than read a thread and put up a pointless comment.

It was nice to see there is a team out there with much-higher paid players than ours and who care even less about their club. That must be the best squad on paper to ever go down (?), and they deserved it with consistent apathy. As for Shearer coming here to work for maybe 1/20th of his current salary, I think he may feel he has unfinished business up there.

I think we may have covered this already.

Give me £14M and I will take Eastleigh, Havant or Salisbury into the Championship, that is how overpriced our club sounds. Let's remember that this particular money will be going out of football, not into the future of the club - some people are still confused thinking that we will be able to spend £14M on players... Fry - stop faffing about and get it sorted.

No one in their right mind is going to clear the debts discounted in one hit, and no one will clear the lot by paying £14M up front and restructuring the rest so Mr Fry is either a raving lunatic or there is far more to the deal. It sounds like a ridiculous figure. You need £14mill to buy, the same again to restructure debt, the same again to run the club for a year, the same again to overcome points penalties. That's a lot of money to stand still. Another £14M to get into the Championship and double it to get into the Prem and we are looking for an investor with an enormous amount of patience and £100M to hand. (you picky people - don't bother disputing the figures, they are approx!) If you are in that league you would buy the reasonably-priced Reading or someone like that, not a failing Lg One team on minus points with an awful squad. Any new owner will be looking at the future cost as the main barrier, not the relatively cheap deal to take the reins, and that ain't cheap. Nice that Mr Fry is following his brief to get the best for creditors but on current form he is heading for getting them nothing, so if he is the only one who makes any money, in the traditional way of the banking world it will be a reward for failure. Let us hope his brinksmanship is the right side of the line that separates idiots from shrewd negotiators, the jury is out.

Looks a bit odd to me. It appears that the main investor is using his loans to take full control of the club. The club will NEVER repay that amount without getting into the Champion's League and increasing the stadium size, so in a few years he will force the other shareholders out through default of repayments, and on top of that they don't even own the land!.... IMO it's not a new dawn for them, it's a 22,000 seater can of worms.

Owing someone £100K is your problem, owing £24M is most definitely THEIR problem. I don't see how the main creditors could benefit from the club folding, there isn't anything worth selling. Barclays are at the back of the queue so they will get nowt, Norwich Union might get a stadium that is worth 3 or 4 million if they can sell it to someone else like the council, but even they need a club to cover some rent so without a club there is little hope of selling SMS - NU's best deal is getting maybe a million a year for the next dozen years. Common sense says they must agree debt-restructuring with new owners to have any hope of getting some money back. If I was a consortium I would play hardball because these two creditors have got nothing to bargain with, you could tell them how much they are going to get or they could whistle for it, and this has become less-risky since relegation. Lg One or the conference? We ain't talking about the Prem so close us down and wave goodbye to the whole lot the pair of you if you want to threaten the only people likely to give you some of your money back, could be one hardline approach. Good luck with planning for the stadium Mr NU, you will be the proud owner of a white elephant if you don't accept new terms, welcome to 2009! Hopefully it won't come to that and they can all get together and play nicely but a few financial institutions have to re-position themselves realistically post-crunch. And on a PR level, if it all goes pear-shaped and the two main creditors are one day shown to have closed Southampton FC, their businesses in the city could be shot to bits for a generation and beyond.

Dealing with figures and expectations Mr Fry should be adept at being VERY precise with anything that he says. He has stated quite clearly that he thinks that completing a deal for the club is unlikely, not that he can't come to an agreement with Pinnacle. Either he is as poor at using language as he is at selling things, or he has come over all vague at a vital moment.

It would be news if a potential owner hadn't approached a manager. If someone is planning to take over within a week or two they should have a full infrastructure ready to go so there must be a few people out there with half a job offer on the table.

Reading release players too expensive for the top of the CCC, and we are in a relegation battle 40 places below them. We can't afford them. They don't want to come. Next!

you've ruined my takeover now, I was just about to announce it, but now we are doooooomed. Got to go running out in the street to spread panic...

they haven't noticed, leave them to chat about fashion. And don't let on we were relegated....

There is the club on the brink and we are mulling over whether we should go for grey or yellow next season. Do you reckon they gripped on to the rails of the Titanic as it started listing and discussed what they would have for dinner the following night? That elephant is still sat in the corner, and he is wearing red and white so you can see him.

Three things might be pushing it but I suppose the relegation wages and sell on clauses were shrewd.... Then again, Harold Shipman cured a few people and Fred West was behind the wheel for some incident-free hitch-hiking journeys.

I think the council are missing a golden opportunity to claim a cash cow disguised as an act of help, and as for the paper clips tycoon, he is going to be gutted if his due diligence didn't pick up that our franking machine is knackered. I keep hearing residents banging on about how they don't want their money used to bail out the football club through buying a really cheap stadium that can create huge profits, thus reducing the pressure to increase council tax. Safer in an Icelandic Isa, cos you can trust banks. And MPs.

I was getting genuine sympathy from a Man Utd fan for our plight and I pointed out to him that we are going under with approx 1/25th of their current debt. It is as mad as a box of frogs out there at the moment, more clubs will go to the wall. One day we may even be seen as trend-setters, an example of how to phoenix.... as long as Fry pulls his finger out.

presumably some chancer/white knight is poised in the background offering to buy the stadium off new owners, doing them a favour by reducing their debt while making shedloads from concerts etc. I'm no expert but I think if you were buying the club you would plan to keep control of the major asset! And if you couldn't afford to keep it you can't afford the club.

It sounds like Swansea are trying it on with a rushed bid, and they must realise that a new well-funded owner coming in next week would ask them for a million. Yes we are desperate for funding to get us to a takeover date but we aren't simple, not even by Resolven standards.

the Nick Leeson link has been fairly well-documented hence my occasional reference to Rupert as the Frank Spencer of the business world. He was all over the show long before he stumbled into Hampshire.

I think we need to stick to facts. Anyway, my mate saw Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Mark Fry and Pele at Aldi yesterday etc.......

for a man of his 'skills' Lowe wasn't on a huge wage though I bet his expenses double the £100K. Another reminder of why the stayaway fans refused to finance his lifestyle as he let the club decline. The few who still accuse plastic protesters of putting the club into trouble should remember that the 'lunatic minority' didn't stop supporting the club, they just stopped paying Rupert, and that was the only way to stop him bleeding the club dry attempting to recoup his shares value. He came back to protect his own money, and like everything else he has attempted, he failed. Can we move on yet? Surely everyone must see him for what he is by now.

I think some people have missed the point, yes we would all want the wages we were due if our company was in trouble but this is about someone earning £17K a week watching working people putting a decent chunk of their cash into helping their club, people who may not be able to afford much but who have donated tickets, bought shirts etc. It's about guilt and that comes from within. I would like to think that most people would contribute if they were the high earners in that situation, rather than sitting quietly sqirrelling away every penny, bleeding the club dry. (and as an aside - not even earning it!!)

Barclays do seem to have panicked and their timing was very poor BUT if Lowe was treating them with the same arrogance he displayed to fans you can understand why they pulled the plug when he gave them the opportunity. The polite description is, he has an unfortunate manner about him - and if you treat people with disdain they will bear it in mind when you ignore their instructions and bounce cheques.

If this is a thread revival to show how people were wrong - I seem to remember us all being excited when Wilde appeared, and then even more so when Skacel appeared, I even recall thinking Lowe was doing a good job at one point - silly me. Anyway I have been away for a while, anything happened? Who have we got in the playoffs or did we get automatic promotion, has Lowe given the dutch anymore licence to raid youth acadamies to strengthen the team for the Prem?....hello....anyone there....

saw Monkou play for Chelsea old boys last year, he was the best player on the park and could do a job for us now.. he is as fit as he was when he left. (in the pre-Milliennium meaning of the word!)