Frank's cousin

Big difference though Chez - Skates were simply spending on wages for assets that no longer had any value and inexcess of annual revene - with their 'plan' relying on annual cash injections from their numerous owners to make up teh shortfall - without ever being concerned with that money being there or where it came from from, or eeven if there was ever any intention of paying it intothe club - and over some 7 years! By all sensible accounst it 'appears' that we have operating costs within our revenue forecasts, but needed a short term cash boost to cover some captial expenditure and player transfer contracts that were outside the norm (money up front rather than spread over 2 or 3 years) - so its quite a different scenario, even if teh skates like to think its the same. Not saying its not something we should discuss or ask questions about - that is right and proper, just think in this case and at this time, the 'conern' over it is probably not necessary. If we end up having to do this every year with the amount owed growing year on year, then we MUST be concerned and prepared to voice that concern, but for a short term loan against guarranteed earnings, I must admit seems a big fuss over nothing IMHO.

...does anyone still believe this immature ****** exists - There is no such thing - there is what is right and what is wrong and thos who continually spot the PC card are usually doing so because they can think of no other logical argument to justify their outdated or prejudiced POV. There are bigger brains than you or I that can debate the ethics of whether 1 life is worth more than many, and only those brave folk who have sacrificed or risked their lives to save many, are really in a position to dicuss the morality or altruism of their decisions. Thankfully we still live under a rule of law that states innocent until proven guilty and whilst it would add weight to the argument to justify torture if guilt is 100% proven, your suggestion that those who feel it would be barbaric to use torture on potentially innocent people is somehow a 'PC' issue is as pathetic as it is insulting. At one time in our society, slavery was acceptable - would you consider those early pioneers who felt this was morally wrong to be 'PC'? Its how society evolves to be more civilised - 'outrage' at injustices from a minority that eventually -thorugh education - lead to a moral shift. Sadly, too many have been hoodwinked into believing PC exists by some politically motivated bull shiedt about ba ba green sheep (a story made up by the way) and other Daily Mail columnists spouting prejudiced ignornance badly disguised as journalism. These issues are not about political correctness or otherwise, but about what people believe is 'decency and integrity'.

Naturally if any business runs at an operating loss for years and the level of accumulated debt is greater than the asset value of the company (the pompey model) then the business becomes insolvent. There is a difference though between looking towards financing growth - standard business practice - or it used to be before the 2007 mare an d banks stopped lending to companies... Seems to me, going by what little factual information is available, that this is standard case of the club needing cash NOW to cover investments that would normally be spread over 3-4 years (as most transfers are, or infrastructure developments etc) - possibly Bologna and the Staplewood development are being paid in full over a short term - so the club has 'borrowed' this cash from another source to ensure these bills are paid. I suspect that had the transfers been paid over the contractual length, we would probably not have needed it. The only time to worry is when the level of debt is in excess of the asset value surely, of if the debt is being accumulated not on assets but on excessive wages etc - eg our liabilties exceed our revenue year after year. We dont know the resons, the amount etc, but we do know the time frame is 1 year, and that includes 1 year of parachutes which means the borrowings must be under 16mil - which would seem about right if we have been forced to pay for Ramirez up front. That 16mil against a club worth around 40-50mil, but with player assets that would more than cover that should it ever be needed... So the borrowing does not worry me, but its likely that it was a late decision based on the terms of the Raierez transfer chaging from the expected norm. The time I will woryy is when our annula cost exceed our annual income, not when we have had to fund 100% of projects or players in 1 year when they would normally have been spread over 2 or 3, from income we are guaranteed whether in the prem or from parachutes.

No idea if unrelieable but it can be lethal... My twopenneth... Police have aways said that whenever a child goes missing in these circumstances, its usually the first 24 hours that are critical...after than and the hope of finding a child live dramatically decline... which which unblieveably worriying and sad. They do seem to release names in such cases, possibly as it may help jog folks memory if they know that person, as to when and wher they last saw them, rather than just a description... so can understand why, but given they said initially she got into a grey van... and then arrest a guy who has a blue landrover, not sure what to make of that... Torture - impossibily difficult as if they 100% know it was him, yoiu could make an argument for it, but as others have said , can be completely unreliable Death Penalty - As much as child abduction and murder seems to have a greater emotional repsonse from the general public (understandably so), not sure we can or should decide on punishments based on who the victim is... we in effect say one person or life is worth more than someone elses whether they be a child, a police women or just an ordinary bloke/women, surely all life is equally important? - I am not for it anyway, as a deterent it clearly does not work... there is no difference in murder rate in US states that have it v those that dont etc... so you have to ask yourself if it's right a civilised society with a legal system that is fair yet can always make mistakes, has this right. Might be a bit of an odd quote, but think Tolkien got it about right in LOTR ''many that live deserve death, just as many that are dead deserved life...but can you give it to them?'' NO doubt as with all these cases, there will be a public outcry for it - but death penalties are based on revenge rather than justice IMHO.

feck, do some of you guys not believe in the moon landings, or been watch Capricorn one again - Wa sit a CIA conspiracy to kill john Lennon and did George Bush order 9/11? Only those on SWF know the truth to these and other mysteries it seems....

Aye but the Swiss seem to have avoided the mess created by those investment bankers in the UK and US...

Ar but since when has factual information stood in the way of speculation, innuendo and panic! Like most I had hoped that borrowings if needed would be from the Liebherr estate, and the fact that w ehave had to go elsewhere, is surprizing, yet reasonable. I have feck all idea on whether to be worried, concerned etc, and like most would welcome mor information before reaching for the exploding head panic button. On the positive side though, the borrowing is secured a gainst a single season - that does not mean its 50 or 60 mil etc - its suggests the amount is well under that. Given that we have 30mil in transfers much potentially up front, + the staplewood development, I suspect that this is a short term cash flow supporting loan - in effect we have planned to spread the costs asssciated with thsi year over 2 seasons - this and next and given that it states its with the parachute amount, I suspect its only around 15-16mil or less to cover costs incurred this year. How 'normal' this is and whether we shoudl be worried is difficult as it all depends on the terms and conditions etc - In addition, its clear to anyone that once again we have invested in Infrastructure... and player assests that retain their value - rather than just old names on big and long contracts. I doubt this is totally risk free, what loan is, but I also dont think its of a level of risk that needs panic or major concern... More information would be nice, but is unlikely, and suggesting its a precurser to some pompeyesque financial meltdown is bonkers. It appears clear we have the means to repay it from existing revenues.

Dont be a pussy, stick it all on Red !

Very true, there must be a considerable amount of wasteage - yet w eare a nation of moaners - we say we want decent healthcare yet are not prepared to pay for it..as an example... yes there is a huge amount of administrative wastegae in the NHS for example, yet we spend about 1/3 per head per year on healthcare than Germany does, and wonder why their hospitals are sparkly new, less cancer deaths, less HF deaths etc... but they pay for it and are prepared to pay for it.... the problem with welfare budgets is that again ours is so complex - a single assessment of need and that should be it - yet we have so many ways to claim (and scam) it no wonder some take advantage, but we should not fall into the 'Mail' trap and think the burden is all asylum seekers and immigrants - those cliaming benefit is a tiny proportion of our welfare bill...

Uhm...Tax, everyones favouraite subject Part of teh problem is transparency - we have so many 'taxes' as a result of various Governments trying to hoodwink us into believeing they are reducing income tax... and letting us spend more which is then taxed - in other words we have choice... which is fair enough, but trying to figure out exactly how much we are taxed based, income, council, NI, VAT, pension taxes, savings taxes, duties, Stamp etc as a percentage of you income, and then trying to figure out which political/economic system works out best for us all is not something I would like to get my head around. I think those suggesting the system is way to complex have hit the perverbial nail. We need simplicity - get rid of NI for a start and add it to the TAX system - it all goes in the same pot anyway - VAT was supposed to be for luxury items, diamonds, gold, etc... now on everything virtually and at 20%... I would like to see a simplified system - the onus should be on the parties to provide a simple transparent 'total' of estimated revenue, and spend, with details on how the revenue is collected and from a simple number of sources. Ultimately, all depends on what we want from our society - one in which its dog eat dog, or where we look out for the week and vunerable and ensure services are efficient, high quality and available to all equally. Its not as simple as suggesting its a left v right philosophy either - those old fashioned ideals were born in differnt times and are frankly outdated - We live in a Global economy, in which we must play our part, yet we need to recoignise that without a closer eye on those willing to exploit the rest of us, we wont have a society worth living in. We need a more progressive and simpler tax systen that is fit for purpose in teh modern economy - I dont know what that is and what bands should be applied, but the current one is fecked and ridiculous.

Just as Dalek is typically ridiculous, suggest yours is also an over reaction 'disaster' it is not - if anything the prem is probably come a year too early in he squad development, but the test of Adkins is how quickly he and we learn - we are 6 games in - 32 to go - we will get better, will it be enough? Who knows, but what is it with fans that want everything instantly? we criticise young players for leaving for instant rewards or success, yet some fans expect the same. We all knew it would be a long hard season, and if these players and manager want to saty up then they need to graft and learn - they do that we survive, they dont we go down, but get all drama queen about relegation is a bit OTT. Surely teh last few seaosns have shown us that we can enjoy football whatever league we are in?

when Rickie Lambert was 21 - he was nowhere - lower league - he took a while to get to teh top of his game - we have bought in players like JRod, because they are young and promising - we work with them - and hopefully it works out - We seem to have a prob;em of having a 20-30 minute spell in everygame (ebven against Villa) where we seem to switch off defensively - this may be a legacy of teh NPC when in most cases we were not punished... but this is a different class... we are not there yet - we seem to let in 2 or 3 before we wake up and by that time its over bar the shouting. Depends what we are happy with - enjoying the ride and experience of watching what is pretty good attacking play, knowing we are going to be in for a few drubbings, or want 'grinding' out 0-0s away that entertain no one... I know which I prefer... and I reckon we will sort out the back eventually.

MSC did not need the money, just missed teh challenge I guess - was hoping to do for Mercedes what he did at Ferrari, but its not worked out - Think his age is catching up with him but also he has been quite unlucky with many mechanicals etc... Think the wages are excessive.... but not when put in contect of the what the teams budgets are and what the sport rakes in from commercial and TV sources.

Matty loves the club, was happy to help in anyway he could and act as a figurehead as it was at the time the only bid in town - I think he wa staken advantage of, or he did not fully appreciate the lack of substance to the bid... maybe h should have done more homework, but then again he should not have had to. Great he got involved, shame its was such a crap bid...

Think it was beaten by teh Bayern friendly when they seemed to open the gates...

True, no denial from me there, I just find it a bit indulgent that fans have this slightly over the top estimation of what they should expect and also immediately assume that where the customer service levels fail or fall short of that expectation, its because the regime dont give a feck - rather than than accept the more probable explanations - admitedly the club is not very forthcoming with their explanations, but come on, we are we grown ups or kids expecting everything to be aimed just at us?

That is true of course, and ultimately any club/business or whatever must deliver on customer expectation, or else they lose customers. And certainly there are things such teh practical issues with ticketing etc that need resolution - its teh assumption that the reason its poor is because the does not give a **** that is perhaps self indulgent. You can bet the club is seriously pished off that revenue is lost because of it, but the need to feel 'loved' I guess is what I find a little odd - I dont need my club to love me, just score some fricken goals and get points/trophies! Or am I alone in this?

That is indeed a good thing and I dont think anyone has any objection to any organization that represents the rights of fans - but is it really any different to any other consumer organization? The 'standards of expectation' is the difficult one as 'expectation' will tend to be set by those actually involved, rather than say the average punter who may have very different expectations?

Fair point but Charters etc are often not worth the paper they are written on , the actions and realty is probably more important. I appreciate that 'how fans are treated, respect and service' is important - but no more so than any customer experience - maybe some still have that belief that 'fans are the club' and so its more important to them etc, but I think that feeling is probably now reserved for a smaller minority - I would suggest most fans, look at the league table, the signings the quality of the football and general feelgood factor - eg the performance and rate their 'experience' based on that, rather than booking fees and parking costs etc - Most are realistic and understand that things like ticketing issues are part and parcel of newly introduced and overhauled systems etc and take a while to sort themselves out etc The tit for tat 'the club is doing this wrong, and that wrong' tends to be mostly from those who wish the club were still 'more community' with greater fan involvement, than the corporate nature that football has become - fair enough, but that is the reality of the modern game - we can afterall vote with our feet, its a product, we should be enjoyinging the experience, we dont, we stop paying our money. With most fans though, the stop going tends to be linked to league position, division, quality etc rather than the fan 'related issues' I can understand that for some a their club means so much more than for others - although the extreme cynic might comment that when t borders on obsession its possibly reflective of something else that is missing - but that obsession seems a more modern phenomenon tha say the more saturday faternoon generational thing that it was say up until the late 60s - how many saints fans now go and see Pompey at home when we are away for example?

Its all semantics though is it not? Debt v investment? If you define it, as debt is what the club is left owing to various creditors - if the owners pull out or stop injecting cash, and thus we end up increasing say an overdraft to pay the weekly bills - al la Portsmouth. On the other hand if an owner says 'for the next 5 years, I will personnally inject 10mil or 200 mil a season which will fund our campaign over and above our normal commercial revenue, and that it will be converted as equity (rather than accumulated loans due back to me), then whilst not 'self sustaining its also not 'debt' accumulation - but you are right in that whether its NC doing it with The leibherr 'provision fund' or chelski doing it with Abramovic's money there is no difffrence in the principle The problems occur when an owner ceases the annual cash injection leaving the club with contracts or transfer installments to pay in excess of the the normal revenue streams - the pompey case seems to be slightly different in that they had no owners who ever seemed to inject any cash to cover their spending in the first place with a strategy based on 'next years income being higher to cover last years bills...or not'...cant quite figure out their model at all.... I would still say though that its been mentioned that we have an AIM to eventually be self sustaining - Whether this is at all possible will depend on what sort of player contracts we will have under those circumstances and what sort of revenue from player talent sales is posssible whilst wanting to be 'competitive'... I suspect our eventual model will still require us to sell prize assets, but hopefully AFTER they have provided 2-3 seasons of contribution on the pitch, not before. Again its all speculation, but its possible that the total cash Markus was willing to inject would be roughly equal to what the club would be worth once that injection had placed us back in the prem as a stable and reasonably competitive club? I dont think he ever envisgaed making a profit out of saints, but break even naturally. The advantage we do have is in the type of player we have spent the money on - younger players with the potential to have a higher sell on value than what we paid, thus protecting us to some extent form a financial melt down on relegation - selling ramirez if relegated for even 15mil (more likely 20 after a good season) would keep us on an even footing. The club/NC is naturally quiet on the details - but I do think this is controlled spending in line with a sensible model. Blackpool invested a big chunk of prem cash in their infrastructure so could not afford to splash out on players, nor did they have the backing we have. Norwich are also looking at infrastructure investment so must assume they are also being tighter than their revenue would allow them to spend - all about what the clubs priorities are - and we have our infrastructure in place with the aim of not just staying up, but building a squad that can be top 8 regularly in the next few years...subject to the vagaries of sport/football. Guess time will tell, but I would not be overly concerned just yet - Bankers tend to run pretty tight ships. My guess is it wont be long before some fans are complaining that we are not spending enough!

I think it was mentioned in one post/email/tweet/ that the intentions was to pay it off over 4 years at 2mil a year.... which was fine for year 1, when they had the paarchutes, but suspect even BT and certainly the FL, might struggle accepting that the projection of a fortnightly gate of 20K+ neede dto cover that in L1/2 might be pushing the boundaries of what is possible. I knw we enjoy laughing at their 'fag packet' maths, but IMHO tehir problem always stemed from, not being prepared to work out a manageable debt repayment schedule that was acceptable to both Chinney and the FL (Football creditors) - acknoledging that this would leave them uncompetitive for many years. They owe 8mil to fooball creditors, and I suspect that Chinney would have accepted around that as well - with parachutes and a 10-15 year repayment plan and a shoestring budget, it could be done and the club, would be theirs and debt free by the end of it - sure they might be in the blue square, but their history would be theirs. I would have thought that given they have 200,000 bestest fans, who would support the new fan owned regime, getting more than 5000k in L2 or the conference would not be a problem? Seriously, yes it would be very tough to pay off 500,000k a year if relegated to the blue square, and if Chinney was a normal decent bloke, it would/should be possible to have a sliding repaymnet schedule that was based on a percentage of revenue until the debt was repaid - but chinney is not a reasonable bloke, he's a 'loan shark' and interest on interest is his bread and butter - but if you swim with sharks... etc. ... to ensure BT also did what was best for unsecured creditors, they could have factored in a longer term repayment in excess of chinneys 0.2p -but all we have seen from the PST is the constant undercurrent that reflects the average fans wish to remain competitive as they are owed this fo some reason being the Real Madrid of L1 and so special favours shoudl be granted that allow them to ignore debt and pay wages.... now where have we heard that before?

Nice summary, Being a little younger, first match was November 75, home to Forrest - remember being in Germany (army kid) having watched Hamburg and Keegan, and being stunned when he signed, the 2nd plave year in 84, is always a highlight... but i think you might have a few things mixed up on teh crumble front, as I recall it was Crouch/tangoman/wilde that sanctioned the the 7mil spend on the promo push which saw wilde ousted from a control - good intentioned as it was, Lowe and Wilde joining forces to save tehir crumbling share value may be true, but they at least did try and halt the financial slide, which was necessary whatever their personal reasons behind it. Then Fry and admin and the farce that was several mythical and some not so mythical bids - Paul Allans yacht, barry briefcase, and the bloke living at his mums... when the first rumours of the swiss bid starte, simply thought it was another of those made up things form an ITK... Markus and the new dawn - and how lucky we were to attract such a decent bloke with integrity to match his money. There remains some cynicism, not helped by some 'non-fan-friendly' decsions (ticket taxes, car parking charges etc) - but what a 3 year journey - bottom of L1 to spenidng 30 mil in our first transfer window back in the top flight - thats some change. Some stil moan about defensive frailties - which do exist, but we need to acknowledge that some of these guys were playing L1 not so long ago, and you cant change the whole thing overnight, despite money - if anything thats the only downside of our rapid rise - teh fact it probably takes longer than that to get the squad to the same level as the division we are in... but not a bad situation to be in, especially when we see the type of football we aspire to play and have played to get us up the ladder.. Surely on the brink of our best times?

Nuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnezzzzzzzzzzz

UHm - so The PST need Chinney to either sell them the ground for a couple of mill or lease it to them at a sustainable rental... now maybe I am being disenguous to Chinney, but given the pST are now looking to scupper chinney with the FL through a legal challenge, might Chinney not get a tad pished off with them and then maybe not be quite so willing to deal with them at a rate that the PST could afford?

Kracken matey - not one to normally go on about it, but my typing is shiedt re RA in right hand... and then cant be arsed to run the whole spell check thing given its never off for work... letters get mixed up as left hand sort of over takes the right.... Left hand has the pace of J Rod, right is kind of Lambo