Ken Tone

Yep. The only one I got through had typos

Appalling isn't it? This article is supposedly a heart-warming story about a little girl taking her Mum to the match for £1, with a picture of said charming little girl, her Mum, and her disabled sister -- but hang on ..read a bit further ...and disabled little girl has ticket, but disgraceful club haven't even told her whether their crappy facilities will allow her to actually go with Mum and sister. The bit in bold would be a negative 'what a dreadful club' headline story in any other world but Portsmouth' . Still, they did win the family club award, so that's ok.

The article itself, that Allen says is a good read ..... "What is Pompey's biggest problem? The prospect of relegation to League One? No at all. Quite simply it is Portpin and their claimed £17m debt. Fans keep on saying that someone ought to strike a deal with Balram Chainrai to repay his debt over a long period, as Antonov and CSI agreed to do. No businessman with any sense is going to do this though. Here is why: ..blah ..blah.. blah.. Portpin has no money in Portsmouth FC. " ..... completely ignores the charge on the ground that Portpin hold. It doesn't matter how they got where they are. The bottom line is somebody has to give Chainrai £17 million (or if they're really lucky, merely a significant proportion of £17million) , or he takes the ground, and presumably sells it as a building site.

Well that will really bring down the wage bill! Meanwhile rumours about Ings signing for them persist.

I've been thinking about what Birch said on Solent on Saturday when asked who owned the ground if the club was liquidated, he answered along the lines that he did as administrator but would then have to sell for what he could get, to give Chainrai as much as possible of his £17 million 'charge'. The Solent guy let it go, seeming to take this as reassurance that Chainrai would not take the ground. However surely if Chainrai thinks the ground is worth money to redevelop as housing or a Tesco's, he can take it, unless he is given his full £17million? eg Unknown weirdo and/or pompey trust etc, offers £2million for Fratton Park to Birch as liquidator. Chainrai then 'offers' a higher bid of £3million. Birch is forced to accept this better offer. Chainrai passes £3million to Birch, who then passes it on to ... Chainrai. Result - Chainrai has spent no real cash but does now actually own the ground rather than a debt secured on the ground. This applies all the way up to £17 million, or until Chainrai decides that whatever lesser figure that has been offered is better than he'd make by re-developing the ground for other uses. (There really wouldn't be a long term problem over planning for other uses, whatever Goebbels Ho ands his mates say about covenants etc. There is no covenant, and city council local plans etc would be easily overturned once the football club goes.) If I've got this right, then liquidation will mean losing Fratton unless someone raises quite a bit of money to pay off Chainrai.

So the reductons were already in place all last week? And still they've only sold about 10,000 home tickets!

Fair point -- as long as any propsective buyer doesn't look too close!

Lol I just don't follow Birch's reasoning in reducing tickets to £9.50. It's going to **** off season ticket holders and those who have paid full price, which might be worthwhile if it meant theyd really 'pack the park'. But surely any decent PFC fan (I know, I know ...) would already be going to this game whether it costs £9.50 or £25. It's pretty much the most important game of the season so far for them. Are they going to refund the difference to those who have already paid more? Even if not, £9.50 will hardly cover the costs of stewarding and extra police etc. .. oh and errm cleaning the toilets.

Think it is luck of the draw. Picked up extra tickets bought on my season ticket after the tuesday night game, armed with ID ,visa card etc, but in the end only had to give the order reference number and answer 'yes' to 'Are you Mr Tone?

What the hell does 'paid for by club partners' mean? If it means a sponsor, then that money could have been used for something else anyway in the club.

He shows a fine grasp of football finances. I doubt any member of' the smallest squad in the league' (tm PFC ltd 2011) is on less than £5 a week, and of course Ben Haim is on nearly £150k a month

I was surprised Adkins brought on Connolly before Sharp, but less so that he was not in the starting 11, given Lee's form. I thought he had a very promsing first game for us, apart from the one miss that can happen to anyone, but looked off the pace in his second start. I noticed he had some strapping on his thigh. So whether he is carrying a slight niggle or just isn't quite up to scratch yet I'm not sure. Thought he looked fine on his brief appearance on Saturday.

Can someone please explain that logic to me? After the club ceases to exist, the council may consider buying the ground. Presumably this would be to preserve it as a football ground , rather than Chainrai etc overthrowing the planning constraints and building housing or a Tesco's? But then the council would be tying up a chunk of its capital for no noticeable return. (Does it even have any capital reserves or might it have to borrow to do this?) Any 'phoenix' successor club after liquidation would be in non-league , so could not afford to pay anything like a proper rent to the council. They'd be wasting public money.

Not sure they do have enough yet to stop any more loans out. Birch's response when the £200k a month (subject to football debts) implied it would give them just about enough, with maybe another loan or two. I'll be surprised if Henderson or somebody else does not go. Not that that should be too much of a handicap for them on the field. After all their 2nd choice keeper is on £12 a week, so presumably he ought to be one of the best in this division ! But like you, I think their real problems will start in the close season. By then I hope they will be in L1, with no matchday income coming in, far fewer season tickets sales than usual - if indeed they have the nerve to sell any STs whilst still in admin - no buyer, and some of the loan players returning and all the players wanting paying 100% of their huge wages again. IF they make it through the close season, it is unlikely they will be financially 'clean' by the start of next season, so unless the FL has gone really soft since Mawhinney left, another points deduction looms, and therefore maybe another relegation Personally that is my dream scenario -- no clean death, but rather a long, slow, lingering, painful decline to eventual L2 obscurity.

Exactly. This is a new low by the blue few. To ask other clubs' fans to supprt them as many did Plymouth is an insult to Plymouth. How dare they compare themselves to a club that had been through the mill for years, dropped to the bottom of L2 because of its attempts to spend only what it could afford, and as you say even had their manager, not just work for nothing but auction off his FA cup winners' medal to raise money for the club? Meanwhile Ben Haim has possibly agreed to delay for a few weeks receving a small part of his nearly £1.9 million a year salary... and some rumours even deny that. It's like having a banker, "suffering" because of a smaller than usual bonus, asking for charity to keep up the payments on his Ferrari, and comparing himself to a homeless person.

Which of course is basically what ought to have happened last time they went into administration.

I have absolutely no idea but I'm 'bumping' this in the hope someone else might know, because to a layman this seems very odd.

How do you work that out? No one is going to take Ben Haim off their hands with him being on £36k a week, and his contract has quite a while to run yet. That one contract alone is enough to be a millstone round their neck ..the cost of 3 good championship players or nearly a full team's worth of ordinary L1 players. Add to that Kitson and others that no other club will pay the same wages to .. even their second choice keeper is on £12 a week .. and they will be paying way above their league status and income would imply, for 2 or 3 years yet

Hi Corp. Welcome back to the Goebbels of the internet, with your usual selective memory. A simple straightforward quesiton for you -- if, as seems likely, it is a choice between liquidation or Chainrai back as 'temporary' owner , which would you prefer?

IF HMRC win the case , will it apply retrospectively , or might PFC get away with things again , since their case pre-dates the court ruling?

What I've never really understood is why the 'Malvinas' matter so much to so many Argentinians. I can see why their politicians make big fuss....focus on outside enemy to distract from problems at home, plus possibility of oil revenue, .... but way before any talk of oil, to many ordinary Argentinans this was a really emotive issue, and has been from childhood. It seems almost as if they see it as an insult to their collective manhood. I know all the psuedo-legal arguments about who's right or wrong (backwards!) and I know the Falkands are relatively close to parts of the Argentinian coast, but a) at closest they are 300 miles away -- hardly next door and b) no Argentinian can possibly know anyone, or even any descendant of anyone, from their country who ever lived there. When the young conscripts of their army arrived on the Islands in '82 many were gobsmacked, both by the geography (streets not paved with gold after all) and by the fact that the locals were not welcoming them with open arms as 'liberators' as they'd been led to expect. As has been said before, 300 miles from the UK coast would include much of France , all of Belgium and the Netherlands, and even bits of Scandinavia. Yet even now it's a sure vote winnner in Argentina to claim the islands as theirs

Sorry if this has already been posted, but http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17191799 Jutkewitz is saying he especially wants Boro to beat Portsmouth this weekend because he is a Saints fan.

If you botherbto actually read what I said you'll see that I agreed with you that self-determination should apply whatever. I pointed out that there will be no mass immigration into the Islands so there is very unlikely to be any change in the view of those living there. I do know about the islanders' status. I have links with the Islands, have stayed there for an admittedly brief visit and know many islanders. They are as British as anyone living here. Some are even Saints fans!

I was following it ..and I agree with it. Self-determination should indeed still apply if the population changed, and changed its collective mind. However it won't change, at least not that much. The Falklands government has very strict immigration rules, and by the way as as a dependent territory is not part of the EU, so it does not have to admit immigrants in the same way as the uk. All the article you linked to is referring to is FIG giving itself more leeway to give citizenship, if it wishes, to those who have lived on the Islands for some time, eg on a long contract or as spouses of Islanders. Migrant oil workers will not be granted long term residency let alone citizenship... and besides most would not be based on the Islands themselves .. even IF the oilfields ever start producing.

I suspect that, underneath, even you realise that you are talking ********. The current islanders are mostly the descendants of the first properly established population there, settled in 1833 and living there continuously ever since. It is not universally accepted that the Fench first discovered the islands, and even if that were the case, there was never a real French settlement there. No French settlers' children have ever been born there for example. They did briefly have a small military presence yes, but not without British arguing against its legitimacy. We were after all at war with the French throughout most of this period of history. The Islands' goverment is NOT loosening its immigration rules in the way you imply, and certainly not in a way that would allow an influx from Argentina.