Liverpool's Premier League Trophy Revealed
Norwich away but before that, board level matters at
Southampton Football Club.
There have been a few rumours about Chairman Gao putting the club up for sale for £250 million quid. I’m very, very cynical about this. I think there’s a big difference between actively looking to sell something and just putting the word out that maybe, if anyone has £250 million quid and fancies buying a football club, I might be prepared to listen. If he really wanted or needed to sell it for some reason, like the Chinese government having his nuts in a vice or whatever, then I think the asking price would be less than £250 million. None of this logic or logic like it has stopped the Twitterverse throwing up mocked up Red Bull Southampton kits and rebranded stadiums and the like and in classic fashion, people have been getting very very angry about what is obviously someone pissing about.
The accounts got published and without going into specifics, probably gave a good indication as to why Chairman Gao wants shot of the club as everything was worse than it was last year with the headlines being that we lost £39 million compared to the previous year and our wage bill was 77% of turnover which seems very high – apparently the UEFA warning flag is thrown at 70%. This is us still paying for the shite recruitment of the latter Les Reed years, work that was continued by Ross Wilson who apparently was 100% responsible for the Carrillo panic buy.
There have been a few rumours about Chairman Gao putting the club up for sale for £250 million quid. I’m very, very cynical about this. I think there’s a big difference between actively looking to sell something and just putting the word out that maybe, if anyone has £250 million quid and fancies buying a football club, I might be prepared to listen. If he really wanted or needed to sell it for some reason, like the Chinese government having his nuts in a vice or whatever, then I think the asking price would be less than £250 million. None of this logic or logic like it has stopped the Twitterverse throwing up mocked up Red Bull Southampton kits and rebranded stadiums and the like and in classic fashion, people have been getting very very angry about what is obviously someone pissing about.
The accounts got published and without going into specifics, probably gave a good indication as to why Chairman Gao wants shot of the club as everything was worse than it was last year with the headlines being that we lost £39 million compared to the previous year and our wage bill was 77% of turnover which seems very high – apparently the UEFA warning flag is thrown at 70%. This is us still paying for the shite recruitment of the latter Les Reed years, work that was continued by Ross Wilson who apparently was 100% responsible for the Carrillo panic buy.
Having five big earning players out on loan, namely Forster,
Lemina, Elyounoussi, Carrillo and Hoedt is undoubtedly a major factor here.
Saints put Baldrick up to be interviewed (they changed his name to Toby Steele)
and he explained away the losses by saying that we could’ve sold those five
players if we wanted to and then in the same breath he said that we couldn’t
sell those players because there was no market for them but the loan market is
very buoyant. He was also asked if there was any truth in the chairman putting
the club up for sale and he answered a different question, given the answer
that no one was interested in buying the club as far as he knew. Nothing to
worry about then with guys like Baldrick pulling the strings. Baldrick, like any man with a cunning plan that cunning,
did not fill me with confidence.
The hole in the accounts Sir - I have a cunning plan!
However,
in Baldrick’s defence, you have to wonder what he or anyone else on the Saints
Board knows about Gao and his intentions. If we are to be sustainable and want to
strengthen the team then we have to stop making such a balls of our
recruitment. Aside from these five on
loan, we have the expensive Boufal, Vestergaard and Adams – none of whom are
first team regulars. It does worry me
that if a bid does come in for the likes of Nathan Redmond, who we really don’t
want to lose, then we may find it hard to turn down. If we do end up weakening the starting XI
going in to next season then we’re in trouble on the pitch and where then for
Gao’s investment if the worst happens. Apparently, we would like some investment but who the hell is going to invest in Gao's club who is not from China as you can rule out any Chinese associates he has due to the government not being too keen on Chinese money leaving the country.
Anyway... back to Norfolk and a rather important game.
Think of Norwich and what do you think of? Personally, I think of Alan Partridge and Grant Holt for some reason. During our ascent of the leagues when we were competing with Norwich who made the same journey as us, Grant Holt was their talismanic striker in the same way that Sir Rickie Lambert was ours. Whilst Rickie lost weight to play his best football, Grant Holt remained a big fat bastard but he was effective for a short period of time.
I also remember Grant Holt falling over another guy who had a few weight issues as well (and still does) in Luke Shaw and he won a penalty off of Mark Twattenberg at Carrow Road. Holt missed the resulting penalty and we got a draw out of the game but I didn’t stop Mauricio Pochettino marching across the pitch to have words with Twattenberg after the game. Oh how I hated Mark Twattenberg but in the eyes of many, he was a decent referee who got selected to go to international tournaments, unlike any of the arseholes we’ve got refereeing games at the moment. Can we please have a game today where neither team feels like they’ve been fucked over either by the idiot in the middle or the idiot looking at the VAR screens. You have to say the chances of that happening are not very good because the man in the middle is Lee Mason who is usually shit. On VAR we have John Moss and the consolation there is that at least when watching a TV screen, no doubt with a pint and a burger, his lack of fitness shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Of course, Norwich have the legendary Delia Smith and “lets be ‘avin you” when pissed as a fart and all that stuff. Norwich have left themselves a mountain to climb if they want to not get relegated at the end of the first season back in the Premier League and this is a game that they must surely win to have any chance as banking on Coronavirus getting the league voided is a bit of a desperate tactic.
They have taken a few scalps at home but I see them as a bit of a soft touch and we should be confident about getting a result from this game. They have been described as the best team ever to have been bottom of the table. What a load of horse shit, said by people who in the next breath say that this is the worst standard Premier League of all time.
Norwich don’t have Grant Holt any more but they do have Teemu Pukki who for a while looked like he was going to keep them up single-handedly but his goal return has dried up and we could do with that remaining the case today. Todd Cantwell and Emiliano Buendia have chipped in with a few goals from midfield but just not enough and defensively, fuck me, they still have Grant Hanley in the team. I’m sure there are League 1 sides that he would struggle to get in. Tim Krul is in goal and he has always been decent and I like the look of Max Aarons at right back.
..... And I wrote all that for nothing because of coronavirus. I’ll probably use it again when the game does get played.
Anyway... back to Norfolk and a rather important game.
Think of Norwich and what do you think of? Personally, I think of Alan Partridge and Grant Holt for some reason. During our ascent of the leagues when we were competing with Norwich who made the same journey as us, Grant Holt was their talismanic striker in the same way that Sir Rickie Lambert was ours. Whilst Rickie lost weight to play his best football, Grant Holt remained a big fat bastard but he was effective for a short period of time.
I also remember Grant Holt falling over another guy who had a few weight issues as well (and still does) in Luke Shaw and he won a penalty off of Mark Twattenberg at Carrow Road. Holt missed the resulting penalty and we got a draw out of the game but I didn’t stop Mauricio Pochettino marching across the pitch to have words with Twattenberg after the game. Oh how I hated Mark Twattenberg but in the eyes of many, he was a decent referee who got selected to go to international tournaments, unlike any of the arseholes we’ve got refereeing games at the moment. Can we please have a game today where neither team feels like they’ve been fucked over either by the idiot in the middle or the idiot looking at the VAR screens. You have to say the chances of that happening are not very good because the man in the middle is Lee Mason who is usually shit. On VAR we have John Moss and the consolation there is that at least when watching a TV screen, no doubt with a pint and a burger, his lack of fitness shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Of course, Norwich have the legendary Delia Smith and “lets be ‘avin you” when pissed as a fart and all that stuff. Norwich have left themselves a mountain to climb if they want to not get relegated at the end of the first season back in the Premier League and this is a game that they must surely win to have any chance as banking on Coronavirus getting the league voided is a bit of a desperate tactic.
They have taken a few scalps at home but I see them as a bit of a soft touch and we should be confident about getting a result from this game. They have been described as the best team ever to have been bottom of the table. What a load of horse shit, said by people who in the next breath say that this is the worst standard Premier League of all time.
Norwich don’t have Grant Holt any more but they do have Teemu Pukki who for a while looked like he was going to keep them up single-handedly but his goal return has dried up and we could do with that remaining the case today. Todd Cantwell and Emiliano Buendia have chipped in with a few goals from midfield but just not enough and defensively, fuck me, they still have Grant Hanley in the team. I’m sure there are League 1 sides that he would struggle to get in. Tim Krul is in goal and he has always been decent and I like the look of Max Aarons at right back.
..... And I wrote all that for nothing because of coronavirus. I’ll probably use it again when the game does get played.
Thursday, Norwich - Game On!
So on the Thursday before the game, Norwich said it was all fine and the game was happening with fans watching and everything and neither the Government or the Premier League were saying anything different and then shit got real with high-profile figures like our former player Manolo Gabbiadini, Mikel Arteta and Callum Hudson-Odoi testing positive for the virus. There are lots of rumours kicking around at the moment about what is going to happen to the league and the forthcoming European Championships but typically, Europe are a long way ahead of the game then we are in the UK and they are cancelling things and playing matches behind close doors where is in good old Britain with our Islander mentality, we were just carrying on as normal and waiting for everybody to catch it..... and then we decided to do what everyone else was doing and cancel everything, initially until April 3. Chances of restarting on April 4th – Zero.
There seems to be a few schools of thought regarding football. One is to cancel the season altogether and pretend it never happened which would be fucking hilarious because Liverpool would not win the league again, Leeds would not get promoted and Pompey wouldn’t get promoted either, nor win the Football League trophy again. This won't happen though speaking as someone who remembers being really excited about Saints qualifying for Europe in 1985, it's a good job my bitterness towards Liverpool hasn't lasted 35 years.
There is talk of taking the current league positions as the final
positions and giving Liverpool the title and relegate in the bottom three -
lawsuit central if that happened. The rulebook does appear to have mention of
75% of games being the cut-off point but this is for if a team dropped out of
the league. This means that if a team dropped out of the league having played
75% of their games then the results of the clubs got against them would still
stand. The said rule doesn’t make it clear though if the league would then be
decided on average points per game or whatever because you clearly couldn’t
have some teams having played extra games purely because they played the
disbanded team earlier in the fixture list.
Representatives of certain clubs have suggested canning the league,
relegating no one and promoting the top 2 from the Championship and having a
bigger division next season. Brighton
and West Ham are up for this – I wonder why. I wonder if they’d be so keen on relegating
all of the current bottom 6 as they’re all shit and having a smaller league
next season. I really hope that when /
if the League resumes, Brighton and West Ham go down for even suggesting it.
There is also been talk of cancelling the Euros and pushing them back a year and hopefully finishing the Premier League and the EFL in the summer. This is what I believe will happen but what that means for the transfer window and players contracts and all that is anyone’s guess. With roughly 10 games left for every team, it needs at least six weeks to finish the domestic season so all the problems will really start if the fixtures don’t restart by the middle of May. The Premier League in particular will want the games to be played, mainly for reasons of money and this is either revenue from broadcasting or the potential threat of being sued by various clubs if everything is cancelled. Games behind close doors have already proved to bring crowds to hang around outside the stadium so from a safety point of view, playing behind closed doors is not the answer but I see this being the way forward if we approach mid May and the green light has not yet been given to restart all matches in the usual fashion. Basically, it could turn into a real fucking mess.
There is also been talk of cancelling the Euros and pushing them back a year and hopefully finishing the Premier League and the EFL in the summer. This is what I believe will happen but what that means for the transfer window and players contracts and all that is anyone’s guess. With roughly 10 games left for every team, it needs at least six weeks to finish the domestic season so all the problems will really start if the fixtures don’t restart by the middle of May. The Premier League in particular will want the games to be played, mainly for reasons of money and this is either revenue from broadcasting or the potential threat of being sued by various clubs if everything is cancelled. Games behind close doors have already proved to bring crowds to hang around outside the stadium so from a safety point of view, playing behind closed doors is not the answer but I see this being the way forward if we approach mid May and the green light has not yet been given to restart all matches in the usual fashion. Basically, it could turn into a real fucking mess.
Anyway, football is not the priority right now as everyone
knows. We will all miss it and it’s
going to be a great day when it comes back.
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