The9

Yeah but so am I at the moment.

Yup. Maybe he's been expecting some money from the August PP and Birch has given it to Ben Haim and co instead.

Ok, it's a wind up. Hilarious.

They've got the Golden Share with PFC2010, they only risk losing the Golden Share when there's a new owner after admin, so for as long as they're still in admin ( until NEXT pre-season as you're not allowed 2 successive close seasons in the same admin) they are free to compete in the league. Of course the problem is that PFC2010 can only last for so long losing the amounts they are, and the culling of the high wage earners has come after 3 months of paying wages but not getting any money in.

The statement just got a mention on SSN, no additional details.

How would he know, I didn't see him at St Mary's and we've been crap on telly...?

Oh, and I've just been reminded on another thread that Ajax's manager picked out Lallana as one of the best players on the pitch against them.

I completely agree.

Again, this is part of the problem. We don't have to be awful to lose by 4 goals to good teams, and some of those good teams are now in our division.

Yeah, this is true. We confidently beat a world class team consisting of D James, S Jihai, R Dunne , S Distin, M Tarnat, S Wright-Phillips, P Bosvelt (C Reyna, 61), A Sibierski, S McManaman (T Sinclair, 11), N Anelka, R Fowler (P Wanchope, 60) SUN JIHAI, PAUL BOSVELT AND THINGY TARNAT FFS, HOW CAN WE LOSE ! I think I'd rather A Niemi, P Telfer, C Lundekvam, D Higginbotham, G Le Saux, D Prutton, Y Folly, R Delap, M Pahars (A Svensson, 84), J Beattie (F Hall, 89), K Phillips than the current side (Folly aside). PS We also lost 2-1 to them the following season, so we didn't win the last time we played them (though we did the last time I went, like you).

Thing is, I didn't see Gary Neville on tv once last season because I didn't have Sky Sports and I was going to Saints matches a lot of the time when he was on the telly, so how the frick would he know ?

The optimism was based on not looking into things too deeply, and now we're looking at the reality, there are plenty of areas people can see we need to improve. We're all pretty resigned to losing 3/4 at the start, and then it's about retaining confidence after that. The stuff about Lallana suddenly being rubbish however is in a completely different league of worry and panic to "our defence looked a bit vulnerable at times last season and we should sign some CBs".

Barcelona have played numerous games with 3 at the back using defensive midfielders in defence as well, not something we've done that I can remember...

We're calling it 4-5-1 for the sake of argument here, though with 2 defensive midfielders in a 4-4-2 (or 4-4-1-1) the only difference to 4-2-3-1 is how deep the second striker sits anyway. It's just nuances of positioning, the days of rigid lines are long over. Hell, I managed to get a Meon Valley Div 4 team to play 4-2-3-1 just by telling them it was 4-4-2, so as not to freak them out.

Well I'm glad at least one person understands what I'm getting at ! One of Sharp's most useful traits was the way he made runs to drag defenders away from Lambert - difficult to see how he's going to be able to do that if he's on the bench or 15 yards back towards his own goal. Though something has just occurred to me - we've been talking about Lambert dropping deep (maybe as a false nine) and pulling into midfield to link play, who's to say that our wide strikers/midfielders haven't been told not to make the runs forward in the friendlies so we don't give away our pattern of play - everyone "knows we're a one man team" (lol) so having Lambert come deep, pull defenders with him and pushing pacier players into the space he creates could be what we're aiming for. Why give it away pre-season, they could still be working on it 5 days a week in training ?

No, he was a right back, and despite a tendency towards facial hair, this bloke's just had a haircut and everything.

Having not seen him much in pre-season I'm not able to comment on that, but any player switching positions is likely to show a little dip in form - which is something I don't think happened in the second half of last season. I thought he'd struggle with the pace of the Championship but his skills always made him space, and I'm pretty confident he'll step up - has much more workrate than the previous season's Championship Player of the Year, Adel Taarabt, who is the definition of a luxury player and didn't really do anything last season for QPR.

Oh, and their U-18s have fixtures on these dates. I suspect they may need to rearrange them all seeing as their first team have fixtures on almost all of those dates plus 14th and 21st... Skate U-18s 18/08 H Aldershot Lg 25/08 H Gillingham Lg 01/09 H Crawley Lg 08/09 A Bournemouth Lg Skates Plymouth Argyle v Pompey 14/08/2012 19:45 Capital One Cup 1 Pompey v Bournemouth 18/08/2012 15:00 League One Colchester United v Pompey 21/08/2012 19:45 League One Carlisle United v Pompey 25/08/2012 15:00 League One Pompey v Oldham Athletic 01/09/2012 15:00 League One Crawley Town v Pompey 09/09/2012 15:30 League One On an unrelated note, that last match is meant to be on tv, it'll be tremendous for us to see them get rolled over by Crawley.

Just realised why I recognise the name Djalili. Hopefully it's him.

So, their 22 person squad - without triallists - and with the U-18s (who have their own fixtures) is going to be something like Eastwood, Da Costa; Magri, Grant, Butler, Warren, Medway, Whatmough, Triggs; Colson, Wallace, Maloney, Awford, Branford, Kim, Close, Hartson; Higgins, D.Thompson, Tarbuck, Horsburgh, Field. Whoooooooooo the fuuuuuuucking hell are yooooooooooooouuuu...?

This is their U-18 team (11 August) : Pompey: Da Costa; Medway, Warren, Whatmough, Triggs; Maloney, Awford (Close 56), Branford, Kim (Hartson 80); Tarbuck, Horsburgh Sub not used: Field

Cheers, I had heard of Djilali but didn't know why. Still don't know why.

For the lolz, their first team squad page on their website now only features Adam Webster and Ashley Harris. I'd absolutely love them to spawn past Plymouth and draw us in the second round. http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/squad/first-team.aspx

This is their team against Salisbury - which featured "a handful of triallists" : Pompey: Santiago; Magri, Ifil, Grant, Butler; Compton, Colson, Wallace, Djilali; Higgins, D.Thompson Goals: Compton (pen) 80 Subs not used: Warren, Maloney Penalty scorer Compton was a triallist, as was keeper Santiago, so that's two they can't pick - but they've sorted the keeper issue by signing a reject from Conference North. "Players such as Brian Howard and Izale McLeod, along with former Chelsea left-back Jon Harley, could..." NOT feature.

Which of course any decent manager would have done all pre-season to have the best chance of preparing them...