The9

I like to throw something in there for the observant.

Curtis Davies must be wondering what the hell is going on, having been in the bottom half of the Championship for most of the season with Birmingham. Chris Burke, as mentioned already, not doing as well as last season. Joe Bennett, then-of Boro has been pretty poor for Villa this season, and Peter Whittingham can't even get in Cardiff's team now after being immense for them last year. I thought Pugh at Bournemouth looked excellent when we were in L1 and there was a whisper we might have signed him in the early Pardew days, but he's still down there - and Cox of Leyton Orient gave Butterfield a hell of a time when we played them but still shuffling about too. Suppose Lallana's been doing ok ! You wonder if we were saving up Oscar Gobern for the Championship, but he's now in the relegation zone there with Huddersfield, having only been playing since Feb this season. Dale Stephens was meant to be a bright talent we were lucky to get on loan, but is scuffling around with Charlton in mid-table Championship. Blackpool haven't made much impact for a side with Matt Phillips and Thomas Ince playing in it... and Ross Wallace and Marvin Bartley looked excellent for Burnley against us at the start of last season and are just... still there.

I'd love to see how you would perform a sliding tackle with your foot on the ground and the studs fully engaged with the turf. That's a textbook sliding tackle, toe is pointed down so studs are not "up", and without the kicking leg off the ground (and clearly playing the ball), he would have stopped short of the ball. As for Forren's arse, he's no Kenny Dalglish.

Just done Saints, an average position of annoyingly just Prem-relegated 18.4 ! So, for the last 40 years we've averaged finishing 18th in the top league, and they've averaged 16th in the second tier. However, let's not forget that they are the bestest, and really huge, and community owned, and we are jealous of their bestest super-loud fans who definitely didn't all bugger off when they plummeted down the leagues and all that stuff. I wonder how many turn up tomorrow and decide they're not coming back until they're playing some decent teams, rather than tiny clubs like (top league one attendances in 2012/13) Sheffield United ?

Oh, and for those still paying attention, I just chucked some data into a spreadsheet and Portsmouth's average league position since 1973/74 (i.e. the last 40 years) is 36.3. With 20 teams in the Prem, that's the equivalent of a hearty 16th in the Championshi That's 30 places above where they currently are, and 33 places above the best possible position they can achieve next season. . Ours...? I didn't check, but with 29 years in the top flight compared to their 8 in that period, it's going to be a lot higher than that.

The club has been taken over, but the share hasn't been transferred, we're awaiting the FL to confirm that. They have said on 10th December 2012 that "these conditions would include a deduction of 10 points (applicable at the point of transfer of share)". And in February : http://www.football-league.co.uk/footballleaguenews/20130207/portsmouth-statement_2293334_3068475 Now they have avoided that problem by exiting administration before the end of the playing season (note emphasis on playing which would have answered all of the "do they mean April 27" arguments if people had noticed!), but they've only got to the point of the FL Board evaluating their new owners and whether to accept them as members of the League. I suppose there's nothing stopping the FL Board looking at it all and saying "we'll transfer the share on these conditions" and still hitting them with an actual punishment if they want to. I'm like a bloody yo-yo on this, truth is, I'm pretty sure the FL will do as it's said with the -10 for being in L1, but we still don't know whether the FL Board will choose to impose additional conditions on their receipt of the golden share.

I think with their average position in the past 40 years being somewhere around the ar5e end of the second tier (must check that), it'll be at most 3 years before they're back in L1, assuming they stick within the FL's conditions and are responsible with their finances. Of course, that would be unprecedented. Theoretically, they have finally found a level where they *are* a big club, and Luton-sized crowds of 10,000 in the bottom league (which will grow at a sniff of success) should be enough to give them a legitimate competitive advantage - assuming of course that they don't have to spend every spare penny on paying back the debts they supposedly don't have. I'll be interested to see how long it takes for the PST to get bored or infuriated and sell up to the first dubious foreign warmonger claiming to have 10 bazillion dollar dollar and needing to launder some cash, though.

As for the OP. Our first choice left back is 17. Half the team is under 25 and most of them have under a year's Prem experience. How are we meant to improve on that in terms of blooding youngsters ? I suppose we could throw Targett in, but if he's not ready yet, why risk ruining him when the first few appearances are very significant in a player's development in terms of confidence and comfort at that level ? In addition, for as long as he's in the youth structure and has NEVER been in contention, he's not getting frustrated with a lack of opportunities and threatening to leave. If he gets a sniff and then nothing it could also damage his chances - but hopefully Shaw's sticking around and will be tough to displace. Also, blooding new players is a dodgy game when the difference in prize money from 9th to 16th positions could probably pay for a significant chunk of the cost of running the Academy. That said, you have to do it at some point and I wouldn't be surprised to see Ward-Prowse getting a start or two in the last few matches.

Didn't someone not a million miles from here mock my policy of "having better players to be better" in reference to Lambert a few weeks back ?

Well that's just a vicious rumour. Besides, I thought that was Jimmy Somerville and/or Marc Almond ?

Should have seen it coming with Roland Rat as well, frankly.

It will be interesting to see what the financial restrictions the FL place on them as per "a range of other restrictions on playing budgets, future borrowing and loan repayments for the next 5 seasons." But before that, what if the PDT haven't met the FL's conditions for "agree[ing] only a limited proportion of the secured debt from the previous club can be carried forward into the new company as secured debt" ?

Gee, if only they'd realised that they'd be happier in the League One relegation zone with no money, when they were running up massive debts spunking money on players they couldn't afford. They could have just not bothered to enter the Prem or the FA Cup in 2007, asked to be moved to League Two with some local businessmen and a property developer running things, and saved themselves 6 years of wasted time pretending to be gloating about cheating to win things and playing in tournaments they really didn't care about. Either that or he's talking absolute b0110cks.

FWIW here's the full text of the conditions of Portsmouth playing in L1 in 2012/13 again : So other than the FL Board "considering the application for transfer of membership" - which I believe was covered in December : ...I think that's the end of it. They've managed to sound like they've protected the League's integrity but will have completely failed to actually do it. However, it has taken the Skates being relegated anyway to dodge an effective punishment, and that's not such a problem.

1) Football League, nothing to do with the FA and hasn't been since their Prem relegation 2) If you don't know which organisation to sue, I suspect the case would not be that successful. 3) They haven't been deducted the 10 points yet so you'd be jumping the gun 4) Our case was completely different. Other than that, good luck !

Bear in mind that when they put the club into admin in 2011 they knew they would have only 18 months or 1 close season and until the end of the next season. The 18 months expires about now, funnily enough. Can't find that rule at the moment. Slightly bothered if they do get the -10 this season by this in the FL Rules: They already had the -10 for entering this admin in the Championship. The -10 now is a condition set by the FL of them playing in L1, and they won't be in admin when it comes to starting L2 (and if they're screwed they won't be telling anyone until after the season has started). So I guess it will come down to whether the FL treats the failure of CVA1 which has now happened due to the agreement of CVA2 as a separate insolvency event, which much as it pains me, is what MLG said. On the bright side, one of the definitions of insolvency event in the FL rules is (see i) Court order, 2 weeks ago... effect of failing a CVA...

And, OldNick, THAT is why there is now a cut-off date for admins long before the end of the season, which is the deadline we missed with our (unexpected) admin, and why we got -10, due to Leeds and Boston bending the rules which the FL had changed by the time it happened to us. I seem to recall Wrexham being poised to go into admin during their last game at one point too, but they won and stayed up, so carried on.

They haven't been lenient, they've applied the punishments they've said they will. This statement (as I said in this thread yesterday) specifically states the -10 would occur in 2012/13 as it's a condition of them playing in L1 this season. Whether they decide to add another punishment before allowing the taken over club to play in L2 is another matter. Our points deduction is completely irrelevant, it happened due to us going into admin after a given deadline and is a league rule. This isn't covered by any league rules, and there's nowhere in the rules that refer to this -10. So, as they're making it up as they go along, there's no real reason they couldn't get another deduction.

Schneiderlin and Shaw, followed by Lambert and Clyne, then Boruc and, um, Rodriguez. What's the criteria for "young player" ? U21 ?

http://www.sportsclubstats.com/England/Premier.html The probability is based on a count of the 433million outcomes based on a specific model, but as well as a "weighted" model which is the one I've taken the probability from which reflects points scored and opposition faced already, there's also a 50/50 model, which, because it has no form factor at all, is just based on splitting the remaining results - that has us as 99% safe but needing 44 points (W1 D3 L1) for mathematical safety (specifically because it estimates the bottom sides will get more points than they have been getting). Actually they explain it : Sports Club Stats calculates each team’s odds of winning the title, how each upcoming game will impact those odds, and how well they have to finish out to have a shot. It knows the season schedule and scores for past games. Each time the league owner sends in new scores it simulates the rest of the season by randomly picking scores for each remaining game. The weighted method takes the opponents record and home field advantage into account when randomly picking scores, so the better team is more likely to win. The 50/50 method gives each opponent an equal chance of winning each game. Both methods let an appropriate percent of games end in a tie or go into overtime in leagues where that matters. When it’s finished "playing" all the remaining games it applies the league’s tie breaking rules to see where everyone finished. It repeats this random playing out of the season million of times (try it yourself), keeping track of how many "seasons" each team finishes where. Finally it updates this page with the new results for you to read with your morning coffee. To help flush out each team’s highest and lowest possible seeds, I force them to win or lose all their remaining games for a small percentage of the simulation runs. All the change columns are since the end of yesterday. The biggest movers up and down are in bold. The teams are ordered by their odds of winning the title (more interesting than their record.) Click on a team to see its big games and what if scenarios.

Thinking about it a little more, staying up WITH the team that went straight through the Championship is an enormous achievement. Though a little closer look suggests we've added a few.

I'm mildly amused that no-one yet has pointed out that the 4-4-2 and the 4-2-3-1 are basically the same formations above. .

I'm sure it will have happened at Staplewood in some form already...

I assume you'd be asking Lambert to take them all then !

Which is why it's specifically an English team (and Fox wouldn't get in the English team)...