Michael Wilde last night totally rejected the possibility of "pointless" further talks with Rupert Lowe.

The under-pressure Saints chairman yesterday revealed that Wilde, the club's largest individual shareholder, had turned down the opportunity to sit down with him and major investor Leon Crouch in an attempt to avert the July 3 EGM.

Lowe said was STILL hopeful a solution could be reached that would avoid the need for the EGM called by Wilde to remove Lowe and four other board members.

However, Wilde has rejected that idea out of hand ... claiming that the failure of protracted negotiations with Lowe led to the need for the EGM in the first place.

A spokesman for Wilde said: "Michael has spent many hours over several months attempting to agree a deal with Rupert Lowe.

"It was not because of Mr Wilde that that deal did not happen.

"Any further discussions with Mr Lowe are almost certainly going to end up in the same way and are therefore pointless."

Crouch, who has yet to publicly declare whether he will support all Wilde's recommendations on July 3, told the Daily Echo the meeting could still be a good idea.

But he was quick to confess that did NOT mean he was going to support Lowe, the man he has continually criticised in the Echo even before he paid £1.6m for a nine per cent stake in Southampton Leisure Holdings PLC in early April.

He said: "I feel that Michael Wilde has nothing to lose by sitting down with Rupert Lowe and myself.

"I am not siding with Rupert, I'm just saying we all haven't sat down in a room together to discuss things.

"At the end we can all go our separate ways, but at least we would have done it. It takes three, though."

In a statement, Lowe insisted that his door will remain open for talks that could avert the EGM.

Lowe said: "Leon Crouch tried to call together all parties in a bid to unify them and to provide the stability George Burley and Clive Woodward have asked for to give us the best chance of going up.

"He attempted to set up a meeting on Wednesday and it ended up with Andrew Cowen and I meeting Leon as Michael Wilde and Patrick Trant did not turn up.

"Leon subsequently suggested another date and I have kept my diary free. But Michael Wilde appears to have rejected the idea again.

"The plan was to discuss adaptations to the board structure in order to create unity for what is a vital season and give the club the best possible chance of promotion.

"We have always said that is the single most important factor in all of this and it is clear Leon has the club at the top of his agenda as indeed have I.

"If Michael Wilde has the club at the top of his agenda then hopefully he will change his mind and come to the table.

We are ready to negotiate up to the 11th hour and 59th minute to try and find ways of unifying the club.

"We have already held extensive negotiations with Michael Wilde before he called the EGM.

"These involved myself and Michael but he also had talks with other board members quite independently of me.

"However he still opted to call an EGM which we believe could be very damaging for the club at such a delicate stage of pre-season."

Lowe's comments came on the day that multi-millionaire Gavyn Davies spoke for the first time in years, the lifelong Saints fan and former BBC chairman urging shareholders to back Wilde's proposals a move which delighted fans.

In an exclusive Echo interview today, on pages 24 and 25 of today's Daily Echo, Wilde hits out at Lowe.

Following on from Lowe's recent open letter to Wilde asking him to answer a series of questions which the latter has attempted to do in his manifesto released earlier this week Wilde has now posed a series of questions for the chairman.

Wilde accuses Lowe of "cliches, rhetoric and barbed comments" and asks him: How are you and your board going to ensure the long term survival of this club?