He didn't give a **** about the commercial side as it wasn't his money. He also pissed of a lot of sponsors. Of course he helped set up a foundation in which we could grow. But if he had been less up himself we would be at a better level of growth by now.
Ok i will take your word for it, although i have no idea why as i'm pretty sure you never discussed it with him.
As for the commercial growth is it really that much of an issue that it means you have this unhealthy hatred for the guy that saved the club.
This is the problem with discussing things on a forum rather than face to face. I know Beefy didn't hate Cortese, just the aspect of him that made him a cold hearted businessman who shafted a few local businesses (not to mention Le Tiss and Franny Benali). And, by the way, it was Markus's millions that saved the club, not Nicola himself.
Regarding shirt sponsorship, I remember someone putting a table up on this forum that showed Saints being equal second from bottom of the income derived from shirt sponsorship, From memory it was circa £1m and only Bournemouth were lower. Taking out the Big Boys, most of our main competitors were £5-10m but most were sponsored by overseas gambling sites and their like which KL has stated she will not tolerate as it doesn't fit within the brand image of the club. Something I would applaud to be honest. There must be a few quality sponsors looking for exposure willing to pay more than £1m somewhere out there? Come on RK!
Yeah suprisingly i am aware of that, however without Cortese Markus would never of known about us or been encouraged to buy us so no Cortese no saints. I do understand what you mean though about discussing things on here rather than face to face, I am not great with words so it often goes a bit pear shaped for me.
As Chilco said I don't hate Cortese. I just know how much of a twat he was. But then we kind of needed a up himself twat to steady the ship. It's just a shame he didn't care about how people working for or with Saints felt. I still thank him for what he did, but also I am glad he has gone.
There has to be something in it for a sponsor. Veho have gained name recognition in front of an audience likely to be interested in their product...not sure what Leihberr would get out of it. Would be different if KL actually owned a bit of the crane business as she could sneak money to us, but she doesn't.
Fair enough, i think he was great for southampton, what you have to remember is that alot of what he did he did with Markus's blessing, i know he maybe loved himself a bit too much and was possibly a little bit of a tyrant towards the end but he was very good at what he done and got pretty instant results. If and i hope this never happens KL decided to sell up i would be more than happy for a Cortese run consortium to take over.
We owe a lot to Nicola, but he made me uncomfortable some times....not a man of the people He was what we needed at the time, but he reached the end of the road and we needed a less maverick board for the next stage of our story. Tough on Nicola, but he knew when he had to replace managers, so shouldn't be a shock when it applied to him.
Spot on. With that wonderful talent hindsight I was musing recently that NC went at about the right time. It terrified me at the time but once KL made her commitment obvious I calmed down. I also felt the disconnect with some of the club's past servants jarred, as did some media relations (we're still suffering a little from that time). I'll cheerfully raise a glass of shiraz to NC for kick-starting the rollercoaster ride, but I'm glad he wasn't my boss.
I think the one thing you have to remember about Cortese is that without him SFC would be a distant memory, Markus Liebherr would be a deceased developer of transmissions and diesel common rail systems, that 99% of us would never have heard of, and we would be doing something else other than commenting on this. That's the essential stuff that needs be said about Nicola. I'm sure he would have got around to the commercial side, at some point. He did make comments about it for the future. His intent was on getting Saints up the leagues as fast as possible so as to maximise revenue short term, whilst planning for the long. Who here would have preferred he never put the scenario to Markus.? It's not a complicated question.
Sounds like we're likely to be using a sizable chunk of our cash on hand (not sure what it stands at right now; it was 26.1m after '13/'14) to pay back Leibherr in the near future...it's actually quite possible that it has already occurred.
Quite sure that Katharina will wait for her money....no point in pulling the rug out from under a major asset like SFC. I think Rodgers said when talking last year that the aim was to slowly reduce the debt.
There is so much **** flying around in professional football that I admire the man for not tolerating any of it. If he had still been here then Levi wouldn't have had even a sniff of Toby. The man had balls and that is what we needed then and what we need now. Someone has to have the courage to tell Van Gall where to stick it.
I always find the criticism of Cortese regarding commercial income to be a bit odd. His focus was always success on the pitch and I'm pretty sure Cortese's view was that commercial income would increase once success came on the field. It's an approach that works - in 2004/05 Man City brought in £19.7m in commercial revenue and Everton brought in £11.8m. Everton have been managed in a sensible and sustainable way since then while Man City have had money thrown at them. In 2013/14 Everton brought in £12.7m in commercial revenue while Man City brought in £165.8m. People will quite fairly point out who some of Man City's commercial partners are but their commercial revenue is at about the same level as similar clubs. The "speculate to accumulate" model works where no other model ever has. However competent the people who currently run Southampton are, without a fundamental change in the way club football works I struggle to see them achieving the level of success the club apparently wants while they run the club the way it is currently run.
Cortese's problem was not delegating. He should have found the right people and let them get on with it....a climate of fear never works. It's all well saying that he was concentrating on success on the pitch rather than commercial success, but he shouldn't have been trying to do it all in the first place. For instance, I don't imagine Kreuger has anything to do with the football side.
I don't think that she'll cash out the entirety at once, either. But we've been accumulating cash of a couple years without any indication that a massive spend is in the offing (the majority of the increase in our wage bill, per that snapshot, came from paying off the contracts of players we released). At some point in the near future, I'd expect a significant chunk of that money to go to Katharina, with the remainder held as a warchest in case events conspire against us. I'd also expect that the new TV deal that kicks in next season will make it far, far easier for us to pay off the debt in fairly short order.
