Stickied Transfer Rumours 2024/25

[EnglishRed]

I agree with this Harris was easy motm I love him already.

I was gutted when Harris left. He's been a bit patchy for us the last two seasons but when he's on it he's a top player at this level. Epitome of a midfield terrier. And he can play a bit too.

 

[Son of Cod]

I agree with you 100%, and there are plenty of our own fans who feel exactly the same. One of ours has been writing these kind of comments on our forum very frequently & he also challenged the manager about it, at a recent fans forum, where this guy put the defensive statistics direct to the manager and owner who where taking questions from fans. Mr Hill said outright that he disagreed and felt he didn't need a new center half and he was happy with what he has at his disposal. So if the manager can't see it and doesn't feel a need for strengthening the defence, then that either makes him a very bad manager, or none of us know what we are talking about. Seen as his record with us is second to none, it's a tough one to go against him on. When it comes down to it, the manage will fly or die by this decision, as i agree with you that we will do well just to finish top 5, but if i were the owner and have spent what he has spent, then anything outside of that has to be seen as a bad season and a backward step. As you state, you only have to look at how many goals we conceded last season to know where the problem lies & if anything our defensive unit is weaker at the moment & as i said earlier, 3 of the back four (4 of 5 if you include the keeper) are injured.

Thanks for the response. Wasn't expecting it to be quite as affirmative, to be honest! You're right about not really being able to call Hill out too vehemently, considering how well he has done for you. Quite how long he can sustain this bubble should performaces drop and how the board react are both things that could affect Eastleigh's next few seasons. However, he is safe from that for the immediate future. Looking at the first manager to get the sack thread, there are a couple of bosses in similar positions within the division. These manager/fan relationships are certainly the most interesting to me. I don't adhere to this notion that Eastleigh would be a horrid addition to the Football League, either. Other than a few Hill snidey remarks, I was pleasantly surprised by the club and fans throughout the season. Definitely not in the Fleetwood/Crawley mould, for me.

Haha, very similar to what I was getting at too Luke.

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

Hill will be gone within 2 years, but that will be his choice. He has already had 2 football league clubs approach him, but turned both down after talking the offers through with his current owner/chairman.

Glad to hear someone that isn't anti Eastleigh purely based on all the crap they read and hear on football forums, without really knowing anything about us or our owner. Gone are the days when these long established traditional clubs ruled the roost. They all had their chance and blew it, with quite a few going out of business or coming back as a renamed club. Why shouldn't other clubs show them how its done and surpass them...cue the haters who will just throw up the usual bankrolled club, will go bust in 2 years blah blah blah. Those are the ones who are supporting clubs that had a chance and blew it & are now jealous of all these newer clubs going above them. Fleetwood & Crawley will both be in the football league for a very long time. As will Eastleigh & FGR when they get there..

 

[MTFC_07]

Hill will be gone within 2 years, but that will be his choice. He has already had 2 football league clubs approach him, but turned both down after talking the offers through with his current owner/chairman.

Glad to hear someone that isn't anti Eastleigh purely based on all the crap they read and hear on football forums, without really knowing anything about us or our owner. Gone are the days when these long established traditional clubs ruled the roost. They all had their chance and blew it, with quite a few going out of business or coming back as a renamed club. Why shouldn't other clubs show them how its done and surpass them...cue the haters who will just throw up the usual bankrolled club, will go bust in 2 years blah blah blah. Those are the ones who are supporting clubs that had a chance and blew it & are now jealous of all these newer clubs going above them. Fleetwood & Crawley will both be in the football league for a very long time. As will Eastleigh & FGR when they get there..

I think Crawley will get relegated next year back down to here and hasn't the Fleetwood guy started to pull the plug?

 

[The_Boss]

Hill will be gone within 2 years, but that will be his choice. He has already had 2 football league clubs approach him, but turned both down after talking the offers through with his current owner/chairman.

Glad to hear someone that isn't anti Eastleigh purely based on all the crap they read and hear on football forums, without really knowing anything about us or our owner. Gone are the days when these long established traditional clubs ruled the roost. They all had their chance and blew it, with quite a few going out of business or coming back as a renamed club. Why shouldn't other clubs show them how its done and surpass them...cue the haters who will just throw up the usual bankrolled club, will go bust in 2 years blah blah blah. Those are the ones who are supporting clubs that had a chance and blew it & are now jealous of all these newer clubs going above them. Fleetwood & Crawley will both be in the football league for a very long time. As will Eastleigh & FGR when they get there..

Knew this sensibility was too good to be true.

 

[Son of Cod]

Knew this sensibility was too good to be true.

Why though, really? It's really not that much of a radical view. While I personally don't agree that Crawley and Fleetwood went/are going about their business particularly endearingly, there are plenty of clubs who have been ran without vigour and determination who don't deserve to have stayed in the league.

With regards to Hill being gone in two years, I think this season might decide that. Well, in terms of going up or not at least. Again Eastleigh Fan(s), any input into whether or not there are any personal reasons stopping Hill from getting a job outside of the South? Strikes me as one of those whose managerial career will be determined almost as much by location as it will skill level. I mean it makes sense to stay where you know and everything and maybe he'd take a job in the Midlands, but up North? Highly doubtful. Kind of like Still.

 

[EnglishRed]

Hill will be gone within 2 years, but that will be his choice. He has already had 2 football league clubs approach him, but turned both down after talking the offers through with his current owner/chairman.

Glad to hear someone that isn't anti Eastleigh purely based on all the crap they read and hear on football forums, without really knowing anything about us or our owner. Gone are the days when these long established traditional clubs ruled the roost. They all had their chance and blew it, with quite a few going out of business or coming back as a renamed club. Why shouldn't other clubs show them how its done and surpass them...cue the haters who will just throw up the usual bankrolled club, will go bust in 2 years blah blah blah. Those are the ones who are supporting clubs that had a chance and blew it & are now jealous of all these newer clubs going above them. Fleetwood & Crawley will both be in the football league for a very long time. As will Eastleigh & FGR when they get there..

Had a chance and blew it?

What do you mean by that?

 

[Gladders]

Had a chance and blew it?

What do you mean by that?

The year you finished on 98 points and failed to get promoted

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

SOC - regards Hilly, he is very much a family man and although he hangs around after games and talks to fans etc (whether we win or lose), his wife and kids attend pretty much all home games and his 2 boys go to most away games aswell. Once he's had a pint and had a few words with fans in the clubhouse, he & his family go back home quietly without any fuss or fanfair. Even at away games, the very first thing he does after an away win and is come over to the crowd and hug his sons. The reason i bring this up is that when you look at his football history as a manager/coach, he has worked all over and also in the Middle East as no.2 to John Gregory. However, i think working away from home, gave him a sense of perspective and at Eastleigh he knows he can be back home in Oxford in under 2 hours after the game has finished, and as a strong family man, that's the ideal job isnt it? Add to that, he has a rich chairman who hand picked him for the job, and will give him all the backing he needs, a fanbase who have seen nothing but success under him who adore him, then its the perfect job isn't it? Its a difficult job to fail at in all honesty. He could have taken either job he was offered in L2, but in 3 years time, would those clubs still be above Eastleigh? Would he have had the relative budget that allows him to be challenging for top spot at those clubs that he has at Eastleigh? i dont think so, so whilst i'm sure he would take a FL job that is further away from home, i think he would seriously weigh up the pro's & con's of doing so and i cant help thinking that it would have to be a L1 club, rather than L2 to tempt him away and even then, it wouldn't be an easy decision.
Now having said all that, you are right that he could have a poor season this year and get sacked. I don't see that happening, but football is a funny old game.

EnglishRed - What i mean by you "had a chance & blew it", is that your club for example, were in the FL for many years, but through either negligence or miss management, your club ended up be relegated into the non league world. So you had a chance to remain a FL club, but blew it. Now there are newer clubs, being run in different ways that are taking your clubs place in the FL, so why do fans of these relegated clubs despise them so much. Its not their fault that your own clubs blew their FL status is it.

 

[EnglishRed]

I jou

The year you finished on 98 points and failed to get promoted

Oh yeah. Due to a tinpot moneybags team buying the league. The glorious shape of things to come apparently.

I thought he might have meant we blew it by being ripped apart by asset strippers.

Serves us right for having a fanbase?

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

Asset strippers who were working on behalf of companies/people who were owed money by your football club, you mean...?

So having a home average gate of 3200 last season, versus our 1700, gives your club a vastly bigger fanbase than Eastleigh?
Does it really?

 

[yellow]

Or people who take ownership of a club with no intentions of making it successful, apart from personal gain, perhaps?

 

[GTFC1979]

Asset strippers who were working on behalf of companies/people who were owed money by your football club, you mean...?

So having a home average gate of 3200 last season, versus our 1700, makes your club a vastly better supported club than Eastleigh?
Does it really?

Yes, It does.

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

Absolute crap!
It's pointless having a perceived massive fanbase at this level if they don't go to games.
It's like me trying to convince you that Eastleigh have a fanbase of 50,000 but we only get 1700 through the door. What would be the point in boasting about the larger fanbase if all you get is 1500 more than most other clubs..

 

[JE93]

SOC - regards Hilly, he is very much a family man and although he hangs around after games and talks to fans etc (whether we win or lose), his wife and kids attend pretty much all home games and his 2 boys go to most away games aswell. Once he's had a pint and had a few words with fans in the clubhouse, he & his family go back home quietly without any fuss or fanfair. Even at away games, the very first thing he does after an away win and is come over to the crowd and hug his sons. The reason i bring this up is that when you look at his football history as a manager/coach, he has worked all over and also in the Middle East as no.2 to John Gregory. However, i think working away from home, gave him a sense of perspective and at Eastleigh he knows he can be back home in Oxford in under 2 hours after the game has finished, and as a strong family man, that's the ideal job isnt it? Add to that, he has a rich chairman who hand picked him for the job, and will give him all the backing he needs, a fanbase who have seen nothing but success under him who adore him, then its the perfect job isn't it? Its a difficult job to fail at in all honesty. He could have taken either job he was offered in L2, but in 3 years time, would those clubs still be above Eastleigh? Would he have had the relative budget that allows him to be challenging for top spot at those clubs that he has at Eastleigh? i dont think so, so whilst i'm sure he would take a FL job that is further away from home, i think he would seriously weigh up the pro's & con's of doing so and i cant help thinking that it would have to be a L1 club, rather than L2 to tempt him away and even then, it wouldn't be an easy decision.
Now having said all that, you are right that he could have a poor season this year and get sacked. I don't see that happening, but football is a funny old game.

EnglishRed - What i mean by you "had a chance & blew it", is that your club for example, were in the FL for many years, but through either negligence or miss management, your club ended up be relegated into the non league world. So you had a chance to remain a FL club, but blew it. Now there are newer clubs, being run in different ways that are taking your clubs place in the FL, so why do fans of these relegated clubs despise them so much. Its not their fault that your own clubs blew their FL status is it.

Hello traditional FL team here now stuck away in non league. Have you not noticed that teams come from FL to non league after quite often suffering the effects of 'mismanagement'. This mismanagement normally means that the club for years has spent above what its made in revenue which in its self is an unsustainable practise.
Now we poor ex-FL clubs look on at teams like Eastleigh, Fleetwood etc with contempt as at some point in our histories we have been the subject of such 'vision' shall we say (darlo know this best of all, one chairman built us a 25,000 capacity ground for the championship football he wanted us to be playing in 2014). And we have watched as crazy dream chasing practises have failed and the ones to suffer are the fans as we rattle the buckets and turn out our pockets to save our clubs.
The reason clubs like us make reference to things such as attendances, are because attenances give a basic idea of revenue, and the higher the revenue the more sustainable the club.
We want our chance to get back to league football doing it the right way. Not watching hobby clubs have 5 minutes in the sun before they crash and burn.
The Eastleigh way is in no way new, teams have bought success for years, but can you really afford the bill? Clubs like AFC Wimbledon, Chester, Halifax. This the new way

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

i think the biggest misconception about Eastleigh is that you all seem to think the club is a one man money show. It is not, we have several other extremely wealthy men on the BoD. nearly all of which were at the club before Mr Donald came in. We also have several large revenue streams that bring money in outside of football gate receipts, which as has been said on here many time, gate receipts are less than 10% of most clubs total income.
I do remember the Darlington rise and fall and remember them signing Marco Gabbiadini to try and achieve the dream. Assumably the moneyman ran out of money or gave up and pulled out, so that was the problem, your club had, that we do not have.

 

[The_Boss]

Asset strippers who were working on behalf of companies/people who were owed money by your football club, you mean...?

So having a home average gate of 3200 last season, versus our 1700, gives your club a vastly bigger fanbase than Eastleigh?
Does it really?

Well 88% bigger for starters.

 

[JE93]

i think the biggest misconception about Eastleigh is that you all seem to think the club is a one man money show. It is not, we have several other extremely wealthy men on the BoD. nearly all of which were at the club before Mr Donald came in. We also have several large revenue streams that bring money in outside of football gate receipts, which as has been said on here many time, gate receipts are less than 10% of most clubs total income.
I do remember the Darlington rise and fall and remember them signing Marco Gabbiadini to try and achieve the dream. Assumably the moneyman ran out of money or gave up and pulled out, so that was the problem, your club had, that we do not have.

While it might not be one. Its still money men. There is still the possibility that if they leave things will explode in your face and you'll be saddled with debt and a team you can't afford. People always off field revenue streams but without evidence of what that it and its potential value its all a bit meaningless.

Ahhh our former chairmen. Do you mean the safe cracker who was put in prison for money laundering, the american business man who wanted to turn part of the colossal stadium into a hotel a la stamford bridge or the care home magnate who sent us to the northern league by not selling us the golden share.

The problem that you do not have... yet

 

[Southern Shayman]

By your logic, I played football in my garden yesterday and 6 people watched. And well, Eastleigh only get 1694 more fans than me, so Southern Shaymen FC are basically as big as Eastleigh.

Sounds legit.

 

[luke_imp]

I can't hold my breath any longer.
Eastleigh Fan is a deluded wanker.
Never wanted a club to fail so badly.

 

[Mr Scooty]

Asset strippers who were working on behalf of companies/people who were owed money by your football club, you mean...?

So having a home average gate of 3200 last season, versus our 1700, gives your club a vastly bigger fanbase than Eastleigh?
Does it really?

They took the ground ownership from the club to make money for themselves, while at the same time building huge club debts and were on course to make a big annual loss. The supporters turned that situation around. If we'd had to rely on a fan base the size of Eastleigh's the club would have been doomed.

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

% stats dressed up that way mean F all.
If 1 person is joined by 1 other person, that's a 100% increase and difference on one person.
No matter how you dress it up, having just 1500 fans more than a new club like Eastleigh, is paltry and embarrassing.
So basically, it's taken you 100 + years of existence to get only 1500 more fans than Eastleigh.
Good for you, you must be proud.

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

I can't hold my breath any longer.
Eastleigh Fan is a deluded wanker.
Never wanted a club to fail so badly.

Is that the best you can do, after holding your bad breath for so long?
Perhaps you should change your diet.

 

[Sparrow]

Never wanted a club to fail so badly.

They will, just like all the other Hobby Clubs gone before them. Infant, they're already failing after not gaining promotion last season with their extortionate budget. It's an absolute blessing Richard Hill is in charge. It makes it even funnier when they underachieve.

"Don't forget, it's Eastleigh again, isn't it? Eastleigh are in town. I want to play well because the manager might come and sign me."

 

[GTFC1979]

Good to have the 'real' Eastleigh fan back and doing what he does best........ talking absolute bollocks!

 

[GTFC1979]

Absolute crap!
It's pointless having a perceived massive fanbase at this level if they don't go to games.
It's like me trying to convince you that Eastleigh have a fanbase of 50,000 but we only get 1700 through the door. What would be the point in boasting about the larger fanbase if all you get is 1500 more than most other clubs..

So do you think if roles were swapped and that if Wrexham had a season getting in the play-offs, instead of the awful season that they just had, and Eastleigh had a season stuck in mid-table with no hope of the play-offs, that Wrexham would have "only" 1500 more fans than you?
If your answer is yes, then it means you have less braincells than teeth.

 

[Eastleigh Fan]

They took the ground ownership from the club to make money for themselves, while at the same time building huge club debts and were on course to make a big annual loss. The supporters turned that situation around. If we'd had to rely on a fan base the size of Eastleigh's the club would have been doomed.

It worked for the Glaziers at Man Utd....weren't Wrexham in the same division as them at one time?
Are you seriously trying to say that Wrexham ARE NOT doomed?

 

[EnglishRed]

I rh

It worked for the Glaziers at Man Utd....weren't Wrexham in the same division as them at one time?
Are you seriously trying to say that Wrexham ARE NOT doomed?

I think we are heading in the right direction personally. We are 100% fan owned and not reliant on the whims of a rich benefactor.

As you are throwing attendances about, we may have 'only' got an average of 1500 more than you last season (a poor season as far as we are concerned) but that was without throwing about free tickets and recent attendances at our wembley appearances and our own play off semi finals (6315, 9087 and 7211 for the three semis at the Racecourse ) bode quite well for the future if we start to get success.

If the future of football rests on the boom and bust nature of vanity teams then god help football.

 

[Mr Scooty]

It worked for the Glaziers at Man Utd....weren't Wrexham in the same division as them at one time?
Are you seriously trying to say that Wrexham ARE NOT doomed?

We are all doomed.

No we've not met Man United in the league, just in cups. You are probably thinking back to the time when we are in the second division for a bit around 1980. Chelsea the most notable team in that league. Followers of non-league football might have heard of Shrewsbury, Cambridge, Bristol Rovers, Luton and Grimsby, who were all in there with us too.

 

[PaulHaddock]

Crawley bought the league in 2011 and achieved double promotion. Now, they're sinking back to their natural level after their funding stopped. When the current Eastleigh owner gets bored and fucks off completely to Oxford, Eastleigh will too start to slide down the leagues. If Eastleigh can become a championship club with Richard Hill as manager, he should be classed as the greatest manager ever, as the thought of taking that flat pack stadium and its 'vision' that high up the pyramid is laughable.