Daren W

Exactly. I couldn't possibly say that our league position is in any way shape or form better than Pompeys but in terms of hope and the immediate future I think we're in the better position long term. Perhaps i should have say L O N G T E R M but then you'll always get one person....

yes mate, it is... People seem to be completely missing the point. A choice... A league One club that has come out the other side and is optimistic, stable and secure, albeit it starting with -10 points but now on the way up. Compared to a club in a higher league but in total meltdown, players leaving in their droves, unable to balance the books, in an antiquated ground, no infrastructure and no direction and very much heading towards administration and relegation, regardless of where they finish in the league... Now bearing in mind they struggled last season and are now seriously weakened and the clubs coming up and the ones above are strengthening, it doesn't take a football genius to forsee a season of struggle... at the very best. Now seriously I would rather be our position as a club cleansed of all the crap and looking forward than feverishly looking over our shoulders. That's over, that part of our club is now history. Now if people think just being in the Premier league is all it's about then good for them but this thread was about the state of the clubs not the rather vacuous option of what league they're attempting to compete in... Now, can people address the question....

So it's all about the opposition then? Riiiiigghhht...

Again, do people not atually read the question. It's not about position.... It's about where the respective clubs are. One secure and stable but in a lower league The other insecure, unstable and in real, real trouble... Jesus, do people actually read stuff before they go off on one, or is being an abrasive internet personality more important than actually debating?

Neither are blinking, neither gives a stuff! One is selling anything that he can to get his money back and is rumoured to have loaned his own club money at 15% pa!! The other is sat in the wings watching the club fall apart and doing nothing. Why would you considering buying something that is worth less and less by the day? There will come a point when he will be purchasing a championship club and that's a fact. Pompey struggled last season, the clubs coming up are strengthening and they're weakening. It doesn't take a genius to see how their season is going to pan out... All fo a sudden I feel so much better about football. Now all it would take is a mass sports recession and Chelsea, Man City/Utd to go out of business and I'd be happy...

But is it as ridiculous as you think? I thought our situation was bad but when you look at the fire sale at Pompey you have to ask yourself what self respecting businessman would buy a club that has sold/is selling anything that's not nailled down? I feel some sympathy for the proper Pompey fans, we all know it's soul destroying.... However, the **** taking ****s can **** off mind you.... lol

Without a competitive game under either clubs belt, what position would you rather be in? Ok, so I'm slightly biassed but.... Saints. League One club. Starting on -10 points. Feel good factor. Out of administration. Financially stable. Good stadium. Good academy. Good training ground. Pompey Premeirship club. Sky/Premeirship money. Finacially unsure. Poor moral. Poor ground. No academy. No training ground. If I'm being really, really honest I wouldn't trade places with Pompey. They have a chairman who wants his money back and is pillaging the club for all he can get and an incoming chairman who is letting him. If the papers are to be believed Gaydamak loaned the club £20million on interest of 15% pa, that's £3 million a year! Makes Lowe look like a choirboy Compare that to our situation and I'd take League One with real hope over Premiership with those shady monkeys any day... Discuss* *(without it being dumped to the lounge)

You know, Nick, now Lowe has gone you are bloody funny.... really.. All this Pompey stuff is making my day...

If we believe the stories being generated by the press at the moment then the money being charged by Gaydamak for a loan to his own business is about £3 million a year! I just don't get it. How can he own Pompey and then loan it money at 15% pa? How can the FA jump down on us from a great height and then allow this sort of crap to go on??

....

But you are a Pompey fan, you're not that used to class....

... in the Championship... Even Steve Bull was class there... lol

As opposed to three men who could never agree... lol

But for every fairminded Pompey fan on a Saints messageboard you have a couple of hundred rabid thugs who hate Southampton with a passion. If you're a Pompey fan and post regularly on Saints messageboard, well I'd have to ask why? I take an interest on Pompey's comings and goings but purely to keep abreast of the last facts to wind my skatemates up with. If you have more than 50 posts on here I'd tempted to say you're slightly obsessed. No one wants to see Pompey out of business and as a Premiership club they probably won't be as administration will make them a much more attractive proposition. However I doubt any Saints fan will look at their plight and not feel a warm sense of "he who laughs last.." about the whole thing as I'm sure most Pompey fans took great pleasure in seeing us tumble down a league or two. Shoes on the other foot now, we're healthy and solvent and Pompey are facing relegation full in the face.... Oh dear,what a shame...

When you look at it like that then surely the minimum amount required to make Pompey anyway near a viable top five side is at least £100 million? A new stadium? A new training ground? 4 or 5 decent players? and that's assuming that a new ground would cost anywhere near what ours cost. I'm assuming a 35,000 seater has gone waaaay up in price since ours.. All in all, not a good time for Pompey methinks...

Pompey "stars" David Nugent and Marc Wilson are alledged to have been involved with a 5am drunken fight... They apparently ripped metal poles from their wardrobes and attacked each other... You can imagine the scene... "No you can stay and play for the tossers..." "No YOU can stop and play for the tossers..."

Don't beat around the bush... Say what you think... lol

Blooming heck! people, get a move on for those Portmouth relegation bets... If the bet didn't look good with the current fire sale and dwindling squad, the possiblity of administration would make it a nailled on cert.... Happy days...

Again the thing that really annoys me about posts like this is the lack of the words Rupert Lowe or Michael Wilde. It's certainly valid to criticise Crouch for his approach to the club and his way of dealing with things but let's not forget that the primary instigators of the demise of the club were Lowe and Wilde. Lowe, whose meddling got us relegated... twice. And Wilde who upset the applecart, promised much, delivered nothing. You can say Crouch has now hitched his wagon to two very flawed plans for the club but that's about it really. His brief tenure as chairman wasn't a complete failure, neither was it a complete success, it was decidedly unremarkable. The one thing that annoys me so much is the way that Crouch is painted as this great failure and Lowe and Wilde are almost painted out of the picture. At least Crouch has made amends and redressed the balance. Has either Lowe or Wilde made so much as peep when the club faced complete ruin? Put their hand into their pocket so much as once? Nothing. Wilde has done his usual thing of saying absolutely nothing and being virtually invisible and Lowe has denied any wrong doing and blames everyone else. I seriously think that Lowe and Wilde aren't mentioned by Crouch's critics as they're indefinsible. This non stop bitiching and sniping at Crouch is just a smokescreen to cover the three real villains in that piece. It shows a worrying lack of grace that protagonists just can't say anything nice about a person they've spent the last two years salgging off. Yes he made mistakes, yes he was culpable (but nowhere near as much as Lowe/Wilde and Askham) but his dedication to the club at the end probably helped save it.... whilst Lowe and Wilde did nothing.. and that is the most telling indication of guilt possible...

Well actually it was a good point. We shouldn't rush to buy a centre back. Whilst we all know we need players in certain areas I'd rather we found the right player than the right now player... We've wasted enough money on sub standard players who are no better than what we've already got...

Now that is a bloody good point....

Or more importantly, very difficult to prove... Another Pahars methinks, a good player who's spent too much time in the injury room and is almost afraid of first team football...

And some might argue that without Crouch's help over the last six months, there'd be no future...

Eastleigh... Ajax... Yup, you got us on that one, gold star. Must have missed Eastleigh's Champions League run....

Crikey, you must be getting worried if the old history debate rears its head again. How many titles you won, the fact that you had a bigger ground and therefore could fit more people into it argument, the old we held on to the FA cup the longest as the rest of Britain went to war.... You're trotting out all the good ol' favourites... You forget the fact that Fratton Park could hold more people. Let's take Mick Channons testamonial (the one following an FA cup win) in whch the Dell was absolutley rammed. We could have sold twice that amount of tickets. Then take Kanu's CHARITY testamonial (again following an FA cup win) and look at the shameful attendance figure there. You see the ol' attendance argument is that for a big game you sold out. Whoopee doo. The harsh truth is that when times are good Pompey fans rush to get tickets, when they're not they stay away in droves. Otheriwse how do youexplain the early 90's when Fratton park was two thirds empty? Hardly hardcore is it? Then compare it to us, still getting higher attendnaces than you whilst in League One. What's that? Our ground is bigger than yours? Haven't I heard that before somewhere? lolol Never mind, if you can't shine up your history you can still carry on making up ours, your claim that we rarely sold out the Dell is laughable. The moment it became all seater we operated at an average of 96% attendance. Not 100% admittedly but lightyears away from rarely sold out which is an out and fabrication... In the meantime enjoy a season of utter despair, I won't gloat as you never know what the next year holds. Your fans should have remembered that when they gloated over our demise. We're now solvent, relatively wealthy and on the way back up. Enjoy your "wealthy" Arab, let's hope he's better than your last "wealthy" owner who, despite owning the club lent it £20 million and is now selling anything that isn't screwed down to get that money back... And he still apparently wants half of that Premiership money that was "flooding in" lol In the meantime, enjoy the new ground that will never materialise, the training facilities in Southampton and the youth team set up that doen't exist... He who laughs last.... Vanessa Feltz is warming up her vocal chords... Oh you get the picture... Enjoy...