The Sunday Times: Saints up for sale

We've reached a fork in our crossroads.

 

The lights have changed from red to red with a hint of amber...

 

Did he have a financial ares hole to fill?

 

All for it.

Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Be careful what you wish for though.

Some ares times ahead!

 

Naming a hedge fund after Ares really is the "we just plucked a historical name that sounded cool" level decision-making. Yeah neat I want my money managed by people named after the god of wanton, unthinking slaughter.

 

As long as it’s not a fork up

 

The words hedge fund send slimy shivers through my body. However the name Gao leaves me empty and hollow wondering what the point of this existence is or even if there is any point at all.

 

Without doubt it is a flip of a coin which way this could go.

With Gao we know exactly where we stand. He puts bugger all in to the club and takes bugger all out - he is also quite open about this.

With DeGrosa we really don't know. His stated intentions of developing a similar model to the City Football Group sound great on paper - but could also a tad pie in the sky.

His only other stint as a club owner turned out very badly and he is despised by Bordeaux fans.

Either way you'd expect more drama and activity than Gao has provided; whether that be for better or worse we will have to wait and see.

 

My only issue is he is not buying it because he loves football and wants a plaything. It is purely financial. That is the only worry.

 

Pretty sure that's just Boris telling us where we are on his Covid Alert system?

 

That's the vast majority of owners though. Including Markus.

 

Absolutely. Multi-billionaires don’t have piles of cash lying around waiting to spend on new capital assets. Most of their wealth is tied up in stocks and shares and property, which is used as security when they need to borrow money for a new venture. The other thing is that at this time, borrowing millions is relatively cheap, so it makes more sense to borrow to buy, say, a football club, rather than liquefy some of your other assets.

 

We were only ever treading water with Gao. I don’t think you can tread water forever in the PL and we do need some level of investment into the squad. But as others have said, it really does sound like a flip of the coin whether this will be a positive for us or not. Interesting times ahead!

 

However, he seemed to enjoy the journey. I just get a gut that this is 100% a business transaction. All head no heart. Hopefully I am wrong

 

Depends how you look at it. If it's purely business then he'll want to make money from it, that's only going to happen if we're successful.

 

Lol seems funny me being the negative one on here

 

Markus had no interest in Southampton. That was all Nicola. It was purely a money thing.

 

I suppose that hindsight has shown us however, that Markus as well as being a business man was a lovely guy that cared about his businesses. He really became one of us in his far too short time here.

 

I read that as ‘Arse Management’.

Edit - thought I was the first to mention a joke about their name, but just caught up with all the other jokes. Silly arse.

 

Bold 1: so what does he actually gain from owning us?

Bold 2: it may be a pipe dream or it may become reality, but having the ambition to create something similar to CFG at least shows they are committed to investing (fingers crossed)?