Shocked and appalled at your cavalier approach to selling the good name of your family, for what amounts to just loose change. Mrs Hitler and I would never stoop so low. 
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One snippet in this.
Payment has come from Hong Kong, not China.
This 80/20 business, the talk of partnering, the management team staying in place makes this sound more like a franchise deal.
As far as I understand it all loans have been paid off. The equity wonāt require dividends anyway (ordinary, not preference shares) so shouldnāt really matter either way
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Ok, so on to future investment from Gao, and I use the word advisedly, because as Phil from Dubai has pointed out itās unlikely that the Ā£210m goes anywhere but Family Liebherr.
Unless there is a structure that I donāt understand where the football club company is different from a parent company, then if Gao does want to fund transfers that 80/20 ownership surely makes things difficult.
He might offer loans as Liebherr did, but when those are settled weāll either be poorer- likely very much poorer given todayās transfer market, or those loans are converted to shares. If that happens then the 80/20 split will change. Unless of course the owners plan to jointly invest at a ration of 4:1?
Lots of confusing stuff for us geeks to ponder. Letās just hope it doesnāt matter because weāre ripping the big clubs a new ahso.
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Bung us another Ā£5m and I will throw in the Ayatollah
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I know nothing on the matter.
And as I am at home have no technical instruction vids to help the investigation along.
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Iāve always had a theory that all those player āfireā sales over the years were aimed at clearing Mr Cortesesā debt.
I hope Mr Gao is not like Mr Plow from the Simponsā¦
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No fanfare or bullshit on a furthering stratospheric rise to win the Premiership for 10 years on the spin or to make us a World power in 5 years which is something but at the same time this reeks of asset stripping and terms used like
āUsing the academyā
āSell to buyā
āLive within meansā
āNot reliant from TV moneyā
Modern football is shite.
Reasons to buy Saints
#1 Ego - leave that to you lot to discuss that one
#2 Global Branding - As evidence MāLud I present Citeh and PSG. The Citeh you lot see is very different from the Cieth that we see. FanZones, Shirts sales, Meet & Greets during the season, training camps all come into play, and it is fair (in Marketing RoI terms) that investment gets results.
#3 Money.
I very much doubt this is a āHedge Fundā or asset strip deal. While Kat may not care where she makes her profit from I do not believe that Ralph would allow his name to be attached to somethin g so odious when he personally does have a high Brand Value (Olympic Coach etc)
So where is the Money?
Think back to the days of steveweb.
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Staplewood - it was reported we owned some and leased some of the land. It is hugely desirable. I donāt know if we bought out the other owner or not but IF politics were in play, just imagine the value of a gated community property in that locationā¦
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Jacksonās Farm had absolutely no ācommercial valueā - did we sell it? give it back? Although the original Rupert Rescue Business Plan did IMPLY that the farm site COULD have value if considered in part of an Airport Expansion - as for example a āFree Zoneā or āTech Areaā on that side of the airport - a LOT of political hurdles would have needed to be jumped through for that to happen - even (for example) rotating the runway and allowing larger planes to use the facility were āideasā mooted going back to the days of Peter DāSavarayās grant delusions
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SMS & Gasometer - Tainted Land (ie contaminated) - as such impossible to apply for permission to build āpermanent dwellingsā upon it. However perfectly acceptable to build (for example) Hotel
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The Industrial Area - rumoured back then to be owned by a Pension Fund. With the āAir BnBismā (gentrification) of that part of Southampton, converting the Industrial Estate to Highly Desirable Urban Living Spaces is evident all around
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The Ready Mix Port - simple maths - deep water mooring point making it prime focus for a Waterfront Development and much needed additional Marina / Boat Parking space.
Now link these in with the Hotel and the Casino and Bazza & RB would start to see how that could be sold with the trickle down rejuvenating the surrounding area.
How would you put these pieces to a Council to break planning regs - assuage Business Owners etc? Improved Road Access, give the business owners reduced rents and rates to move to Jackson Farm??
Now NONE of this has ANY implication of ANY link to Gao.
But the basics of those ideas WERE in a drawer in the Office of the CEO of Southampton Holdings when they went bust.
WE also KNOW FOR A FACT that NC created āredevelopment plansā we all saw the picture of that Star Wars Crawler thing that he dreamed up
They were dreaming back then it could be used to entice investors to save the club.
And now we have a property developer using his own money to buy the club and invest.
I do know one thing. There ARE opportunities.
I do also have one concern. How the HELL can you talk a mega successful Businessman into ābeing a committed Football Fanā in a matter of months
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Bazza, what assets do you think the club has to strip?
You hate each of our first team squad, you hate the management team, you hate the commercial staff of the club you hate the stadium, you hate the training ground and you hate modern football.
What do you think they could strip, that youād actually miss?
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I doubt it srs. We bought a player only last week for Ā£18m or whatever. It reeks of see if we can make the club more Valuable by continued Good Management & making inroads into Chinese markets or whatever.
Edit: @pap I appreciate that by nature quoting barry is always gonna be a bit ugly & weird, but can you investigate why the formatting is always fkd up too pls?
2 Likes
Think this must have been written by one of us for a poster on here 
(nicked from Granty on Twitter but seemed an appropriate moment)
Quit the cliches and embrace modern football
Friday night saw the return of the erroneously-proclaimed ābest league in the worldā to our TV screens, as Arsenal and Leicester served up a seven-goal thriller, which owed as much to a defensive horror show as it did to anything resembling actual quality.
The frailties of the recent Arsene Wenger-era were, unsurprisingly, all too visible once more, as a patched up defence struggled to cope with the early delivery of the likes of Christian Fuchs, Riyah Mahrez and in particularly, Marc Albrighton.
Petr Cech behind them too appears to be a shadow of his prime self and the groans from a weary Emirates crowd were only stifled by the impact of substitutes Aaron Ramsey and the eternally under-appreciated Olivier Giroud. They remain, however, bubbling away below a cracked surface.
Also simmering away are the ever-present murmurings of discontent about the dictatorial role which TV bosses play in our national sport, resulting in matches such as these being beamed to us over a pint in the pub or the comfort of our armchair on a Friday night, or any other time of the week, to suit their own agenda.
We want it all
Many supporters are waiting patiently for the day when football finally implodes, as they insist it must, owing to the spiralling costs that enable clubs to buy and sell the average at extortionate rates. It is, after all, the supporters who pay ā be that in pure monetary terms, or by way of the upheaval they face as fixtures are altered little more than a month in advance, to satisfy the demands ofā¦.well, people like me.
Long ago, I accepted the obvious consequences of sport and TV being the closest of bedfellows, and it amazes me that we still see so much resistance from fans who want televised matches to be picked using the power of hindsight, so as not to con us with a dull āSuper Sundayā or have us moaning about the bus being parked, therefore ruining Monday Night Football.
We want to get to the pub in time to see the early Saturday kick-off ā the starter to our own teamās main course, before getting back just in time to enjoy the footballing dessert of the tea-time kick-off. We want it all, but we still want to moan about it as and when it suits.
In todayās society, we saturate absolutely everything, with 10 copycat shows springing up on the back of any semi-successful venture, yet it seems that only sport ā and overwhelmingly football ā draw such vehement opposition to its āsuccessā.
The gameās gone
Social media is littered with clicheād phrases like āThe gameās goneā and the ever-irritating and tiresome āAgainst Modern Footballā. Why not simply āagainst modern lifeā at a time when people donāt flinch when paying staggering prices for a pint of beer ā even moreso if the barman serves craft beer and has a twizzly moustache and a man-bun ā yet canāt wait for football to eat itself?
The aftermath of any bubble-bursting will be felt all the way down the footballing pyramid, with the traditionally rich clubs the best-prepared to absorb the blow, emerging in much better shape than those clubs further down the food chain who people feel should be the eventual beneficiaries.
Twenty-somethings get misty-eyed when speaking of a time that they never even knew, but one which was supposedly infinitely better than the present day. When the average fan actually meant something to the club they support and the players they cheered for.
It is nothing but rose-tinted nonsense! The truth of it is that you need to be of a ripe old age to recall anything even remotely resembling that which people long for.
Understand your relationship with your club
āDetachedā is a word which gets thrown at clubs left, right and centre by people insisting that they once felt as though they ābelongedā and were a valued part of the club they love, which again, is simply rubbish.
Iāve been a match-going supporter for over 30 years and today, the club I love contact me as and when they have something to sell, or at times that it is to their benefit. Not once have I ever been considered a family member and neither do I expect to be.
It isnāt that type of relationship and it wonāt be at any club which is any more than a group of mates having what is not much more than an organised kickaround about a dozen steps down the pyramid.
The choice is yours
Iām as much to blame as anyone else who chooses to watch whichever match the TV bosses have hand-picked for the resulting swapped shifts and annual leave being taken in order to keep up our obligation as supporters. In my case at least, I enjoy watching football, and feel slightly lost on the rare night that there isnāt anything other than 700 channels of utter bilge to flick through.
We all have a choice of how much we watch and how much we ignore, yet to listen to some people, youād think that Rupert Murdoch himself was strapping them into a strait-jacket before forcing them to watch every second of the wall-to-wall coverage that, like it or not, people like me demand.
If you canāt set and maintain your own filters on life and what you cram into it, youāre going to be unhappy somewhere along the line.
Embrace modern football
Against Modern Football or not, the game certainly hasnāt gone and it wonāt be going anywhere anytime soon either in my opinion ā and even if there was to be a footballing apocalypse, the landscape thereafter would still see the traditional āhavesā rise up far above the rest of the āhave notsā on what would still be nothing like a level playing field.
It isnāt the best league in the world at all, but it is certainly the best at self-promotion, so get yourself comfortable, because the games are about to come at you thick and fast.
Oh, and be sure to keep a couple of days holiday up your sleeve for when the inevitable happens, because like it or not, we just canāt seem to say no.
This is barry
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Just read through all that shite, I am old enough to remember it was better.
For all the money what part of the football has improved?
With all that money what has improved?
The stadiums?
No
The atmosphere?
No and theyāre reneging and having safe standing now as its shite.
Prices.
No
National Team?
No
Big club monopolies?
No bar Leicester so a shock once every 25 then.
Ownership?
No
Thatās about right.
Yet people still turn up in their hundreds of thousands or hand over their hard earned cash for SKY.
Bollocks to that millions buy a box that can stream it or have something that uses kodi, Sky were charging me Ā£125 a month for watching , halved that and some with BT.
TV companies whoring themselves to the World to sell our game for their benefit.
For that kind of money you couldāve bought a season ticket and had enough left to cover train fairs.
Still, if you would rather give it to Murdoch than the club, thatās your choice.
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Forgive me for being a bit blunt, but Barry, stop being such a fucking dick about thisā¦ its football - just a stupid fucking game of a ball being kicked about by men who were in he past poor and who are now rich for the entertainment of peopleā¦ meanwhile there are racist cunts killing poeple in the US and you tinnk the owership of a football club is something to get all wound up about ā¦ it is just a fucking game and no its not more important than life and deathā¦ its not even close.
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I can hear the rumble of Shankley turning in his grave