Verbal

I don't get it. Isn't the time for humble pie when the deal is done? Otherwise one is liable to discover egg on one's face rather than pie crumbs. Still, I hope SOMEONE buys the club soonish. And would it really be such a bad idea for the other moneybags behind the rival bids - if there are still two - to say who they are? The secrecy in all this is a bit odd.

I think you missed my point. As for the money (which I didn't comment on), we'll see.

'As far as I am aware' is hardly a ringing endorsement, is it? Precisely translated it means: 'To the limited extent of my knowledge.' I take it to mean that Fry actually had no idea of Fialka's family situation - living at home, Dad a taxi driver, Mum a small shop owner. It seems entirely possible that the 'cursory look' was a little closer to home.

Perhaps Fry can sell enough exclusivity periods to get us through the season.

So Jackson has either lied about approaching Peter Reid or tapped him up. Brilliant! I'm starting to wonder if this club has been relegated to some sort of plot twist in a Samuel Beckett play, because it's becoming increasingly hard to believe that we could have accumulated such a prize collection as LLS, tommac, HMR, (not forgetting Lowe, Askham...etc.), without someone just making up characters so utterly monomaniacal, vain and witless. Waitig for Jacko. Oh god, please no.

Morph, I've always been interested in what you say, but I've noticed a pretty firm trend setting in: you tend to be wrong far more often than you're right. Besides, Salz has an excellent financial pedigree of course - but isn't he a fairly precise definition of a tyre kicker? Someone who wanders round the SFC forecourt saying, in effect, 'I'm just looking - honest. But if you're desperate, I'll take this heap off your hands. Here's 50p.' As I'm sure any car salesman will tell you, anyone who, like Lynam, strolls up and splashes out bundles of cash with no guarantee of an end sale is about as far removed from a tyrekicker as it's possible to imagine. And it's not exactly cricket to compare Lynam with the incomparable MJ, is it? I'm not getting at you (actually I blame trousers) - but shouldn't you try a bit harder to come off a bit less than an unquestioning cheerleader? Salz must have a pretty badly bruised toe after all this time - IF what you say is true for once.

I wonder if you'd agree to be culled. Humanely, of course. And nothing personal. It's just that there are two many damned Frys in all this - bank managers, administrators and impersonators of Howard Beale. Or perhaps we could merge all the Frys into one super-Fry. A mad-as-hell human torpedo of businesses and forums. Just thought.

To say I'd be happy if you were wrong would be an understatement. In any case, Keegan and Wise apparently loathe each other.

If this is the comedy awards, there's no contest. Sadly it's worse than that though. MJ has the depressing capacity to be just as destructive as that dimwit tommac with his share-price ramping antics and fatuous pretence that he was Paul Allen's representative on earth. We should settle it with a penalty shoot out between the two.

This is just an appalling post. Attacking Pinnacle is one thing. Doing it by making supposition after supposition to show them in the worst light really brings your motives into serious question. How do you KNOW that there was no reason why this became a last minute issue? How do you KNOW that Pinnacle had not been in discussion with the FL (NOT the FA, by the way) How do you KNOW that Pinnacle ignored the issue and 'let it slip' past their exclusivity period. The answer to all of the above is that you don't. And yet each implicit claim to superior ITK is essential to your case that you appear to have known all along, at least in your own mind, that your 'doubts' would be realised. And all of the above are essential to your apparent belief that Pinnacle are exactly on a par with the cretinous Wilde. Surreal.

I think it's time to take a good look at 'Lord' Mawhinney's expenses.

If you travelled out into the universe fast enough, you could return the day before you left. That's probably what was meant by 'Thursday'. HTH.

Add another one to the list, um - the ‘Governor Eyre incident’ of 1865. Edward Eyre was Jamaica’s colonial governor, who directed a massacre against an uprising among the island’s peasants. Hundreds were killed and the survivors flogged. Defenders of his idiocy argued that black peasants were like British workers and required similar treatment. Shortly afterwards, Eyre was attending a banquet in his honour in Southampton - a city known then as the 'gateway to the empire'. But the dinner broke up in chaos because of a vast rally by Southampton’s dockworkers, among others, and led by the 'Jamaica Committee' (formed by the John Stuart Mill). It was at that time the largest public gathering in the city’s history. The Daily Telegraph, revealingly, moaned that ‘there are a good many negroes in Southampton, who have the taste of their tribe for any disturbance that appears safe and who are probably imbued with the conviction that it is the proper thing to hoot and yell at a number of gentlemen going to a dinner party.’ Of course, the ‘negroes’ were the very English and very white Southampton dock and factory workers, who won the day. Eyre never set foot in Southampton again. Here endeth the history lesson.

Quite agree. And the first thing we have to do is downgrade this forum. It's still Championship quality, with occasional bursts of Premiership class. What we need is a real League One forum, where we gaze with wonderment at a fixture list that has us matched against the mighty Milton Keynes Dons, and get all tingly about a trip to the football factory that is Brentford. If only there was a way to make it more crap on here. Or not. I'm sticking with my delusions.

Could you please direct me to a tosh-free thread? Tosh is what we do best.

Fifteen Love. Bit of a soft point though. Nineteen just lobbed that one up to you. Maybe being useless is infectious.

Pinnacle have never claimed that they paid £500,000 up front. Nor has Fry. Only some sloppy reporting by the Daily Echo gave the impression that they did.

True enough, Phil - although saints are common in Sufi Islam. (In fact, they're a defining feature of Sufism). Unfortunately, the oil happened to be under the feet of a narrow, unpopular sect founded by a violent misogynist, whose followers were driven out of Mecca, Medina and the Arabian Peninsula by the Ottomans, and who were put back into power by Lawrence of Arabia. Perhaps if we kept our nickname we'd avoid being taken over by the descendants of these charmers! Always look on the bright side...

Would someone mind summarizing the past 600+ posts with a simple answer to the original question? Thanks awfully. And by the way, why the mystery in the first place? Seems odd to me that we know the identities of the multi-billionaires bidding for that termite heap down the road and others, and yet we're still here playing a guessing game with contracts all but signed.

Strange. I had you down as more of an ar$e man - our very own Sacha Baron Canteen, landing upside down on the forum.

I'm not here.

Sounds like you've just experienced a Damascene conversion - because by the same token, the quality of the OLD chairman also set the tone for the long term future of the club. Hence we're where we are. Presumably then you'll now happily accept that Lowe had 'double relegation and ruin' stamped through him like Brighton rock. Welcome to the dark side (and sorry to bring up what now seems ancient history).

I suppose this shouldn't bother me, but it does. You're saying that you and a few others know what 'really' happened; that those being critical of MJ can't possibly have known what happened; we should all shut up, including yourself (but not on this occasion); and you're not going to tell the many critics of MJ why they're wrong. It makes me nervous. I remember all too well the tickings off initially issued by you and others to posters who criticised tommac. And look how that ended up. I also recall a certain trio on here who were told in advance by Wilde last year that he was going to get into bed with Lowe - but who thought it better to keep that to themselves. A little (often partial) knowledge really is a dangerous thing. Personally I prefer the leaks and misdirection of ITKs to the tut-tutting of ITKBINGTTYs.

KJ's last game, I think, and one of Hammill's first. That wasn't a pretty match.