So you recommend giving up then? Easy to wimp out of things.......... but I'll keep the faith until it is mathematically impossible for Saints to escape from the bottom three AND, if that should happen, I will still continue to SUPPORT the team
I recommend continuing to support the team, to hope for the near impossible, but at this stage it would be our greatest escape. Of course I have a fools hope, but that's just being a football/Saints fan. Despite this foolish hope that I'll have until we're mathematically down, you've got to look at where we are at and say it's only a matter of time now. We are ****ed. Only blind optimism says otherwise, well...blind optimism and getting paid by the club to say otherwise.
Well if we do end up in the Championship I’ll be there for the first home match hols permitting. I’m thinking that there are many cities and towns with teams that will be wishing they were good enough to make a challenge for a PL place as we will be if it comes to it. However we’re not there yet!!!!
Your last phrase indicates just how SHORT-SIGHTED you are. Paid? It also suggests that you are one of those relative "newbies" who have now follow the Saints; but have not been thru the traumas of being potential relegation candidates for most seasons whilst in the top flight. My support for this team goes back way further than 2005 or administration and the like. So, like Mark Hughes said this week, battling against all odds is the ONLY WAY to get out of it; same as he experienced in his time here as a player.
I have no problem with someone having blind optimism. On one level, it's pretty admirable. I completely disagree with it, in our position, but I can understand some people still believing. What I can't understand is it being forced down someone else's throat. Have blind optimism (or whatever you want to call it), fine. But given this entire season, and our current position, I think it is absolutely fair and understandable that many others don't have that faith. This isn't some sort of Puel-In/Puel-Out, Davis-Good/Davis-Bad debate.
Good lad Orow, if you see us over the line to safety this season you will be a Saints Not606 Legend!...
Mine went following the 3 game run of Stoke, Newcastle and West Ham. One point from those three games was the moment for me.
Indeed. I think I said on here that four points was my absolute basement amount from those games (but with a target of seven). Even with those four, we'd still be in the bottom three. But at least we'd still be right amongst it, and with a kinder remaining set of fixtures than some of those around. The entire season (right from game one) set this up, and those three games nailed it in.
Yeah, we knew that we needed to get points on the board prior to our stretch run, and instead we lost ground. That was where our chances came crashing down; the remainder is mostly just epilogue. Even a win today wouldn't have made us likely to survive, because we pissed away 'likely' weeks ago. We have 12 points in our last 20 matches, surrendering 38 while scoring 20. A bit of pessimism is well and truly warranted about our chances of winning three in five to save this.
I dunno, I'm the one saying that I'll have hope until it's mathematically impossible BUT I can see the position we're in, and for us to pull ourselves out of it will be near miraculous. Given what I've seen, I don't believe we're going anywhere but down and I reckon that's a pretty normal reaction among saints fans right now. You're the one with the blinkers on. You can have your blind optimism, but even the optimists among us can see that we're done for. That doesn't mean we're wimping out, short sighted or that we'll stop supporting the saints, it means we can see what's happening before us and be realistic about our chances.
Every team thinks that they're going to be a big fish in a small pond. Next year, our goal isn't promotion, it's survival. Not survival in the Championship: the survival of our club. Our owner is now going to have 200m in debt on an asset worth half that, and even with relegation clauses our wage bill will be something like 200% of our turnover. We need to sell more than we have ever sold before, because we do not have the financial security to gamble. Results on the pitch are going to be secondary.
I don't see that as in any way inevitable. We'll have parachute payments, we - the club - won't be in debt even if our owner is leveraged. Maybe Gao will gamble on getting us straight back up. Results on the pitch will be everything.
Parachute payments don't amount to all that much, not compared to our overall financial picture. We're extremely deep in debt, because whether that debt is applied against the club or our owner, it's debt that needs to be repaid, and he doesn't have any liquidity outside of China, which is why he took on the debt in the first place. Gambling on an immediate promotion would be suicide. We need a reduction in the wage budget of 60%+, and we need to use the profits from sales to keep us afloat. These are the consequences of having been stingy: our financial picture is truly bleak, and we need to be far, far more stingy.
