I agree that some poor recruitment from that period has hurt us. I don't like how a lot of the current situation is still being deflected onto that, though. The cost of those players and paying them off is consistently highlighted as something Radford had to deal with. Now, had we been better this year I could have gone along with that and attributed last year to it. However, the fact that last year an alleged small fortune was spent on getting rid of those players and replacing them and this year we're no better than we were with them, has me personally thinking that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. We have Gentle/McRae being ripped apart for signing expensive players who were supposedly average, yet Radford/Pearson spending a further fortune on getting rid of them and signing expensive replacements (whom we are told are better, but don't really get better results) to still be no better overall by the time those other players would have been on their way out of the club for free still seems to be a legacy of Gentle/McRae. It makes no sense.

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