Lots of passionate posts on here and a great thread,for a start lee radford has taken us backwards,and worryingly has had and still has the full backing of pearson,with a team pearson said would be top 4 or better.Our saviour this season has been our captain gareth ellis,who on his return from injury turned a certain middle 8 situation,into scraping into the top 8.
In all seriousness how many games are we going to win in the super 8, possibly 2 imo,so the season is going to end in with a few defeats,probably a couple of good hidings.Hardly a good advert for next season and encouragement for fans to go out and buy a pass.
The signings started off well with scott taylor who will iam sure be a success,but since then has been a bit of an anti-climax and our signings (who may turn out to be good) dont inspire me personally.
Fans who have stopped coming after many seasons,either for financial reasons or just want entertainment,have as much right to voice their opinion as anybody else,we all want success for our club which Iam afraid under the current regime it is as far away as it has ever been.
Pearsons blind faith in radford and our signings other than taylor are underwhelming which to me along with the merger,leads me to believe pearson has also took us as far as he can, and its all about cost cutting and no doubt pearson will be pleading for us to buy a pass and merchandise like this season.It worked with me this season and the standard of rugby this season has been dire and totally boring most matches.Well adam and lee,you keep churning the same stuff out as this year and the fanbase will shrink even more,you have lost 3 passes from our family for next season and I will pick my matches next year and Iam sure plenty will feel the same.coyh

Winning will obviously increase gates but the coup for Pearson would be to appoint a first class coach.That would have a bigger impact on fans buying a season pass than signing The likes of Pritchard.It would also show fans he has admitted his mistake appointing Radford.
Apart from Pearson there are very few people who have any faith left in Radford as a coach.

No. Saints have no bank debt, and was majorly financed (currently £15m) by a friend of Eamon McManus who also happens to be a Saints fan. The club can pay this back at any rate, and any debt remaining at the end of the 2018 will be liquidated into shares (or postponed) and the club will again be completely debt free. It will all come down to whether McManus wants to retire, and if he does the baton will be passed into a fan whose already proven his commitment financially (or at least that's my current understanding)

Interesting. If that's the case, how come saints were so skint during the build process?

Mcmanus still poured a lot of his own funds into the project, as well as modernising the training and youth facilities as an aside, and paying off directors loans we had outstanding from the early days of SL at the same time - i think McManus + sale of kr made up the remaining £10m for the stadium. I also think an element of idealism (a saints team in a saints stadium) meant we could have invested more in the playing side but chose not to - but that's more personal conjecture than what the accounts say.

I'll have a closer look on the saints accounts when they're published like I always do, but I'm 95% that's what was gleaned from last years accounts, and presume the accounts this year say the same...

Whatever, you're in a much better financial position than us