Fowllyd

Word on the street is that it's this Friday, the 10th August. Which just happens to be the day I chose in the sweepstake - and also the day I get married...

True, but this time there's an externally imposed deadline to consider - the Football League's date to hand over (or not) the golden share.

Just had a look. Remarkable paucity of posts in favour; in fact, I don't remember seeing any. Wonder how Meridian Tonight will be reporting that then...

Reading the Ben Haim statement and Birch's response, this looks like being an entertaining little sideshow - Birch and Andronikou taking pops at each other, albeit by proxy. Should be good for a few laughs over the next day or two...

I'm guessing when you wrote these: you were referring to this post quoting Neil Allen's tweet: If so, the odious Mr Allen was tweeting about Tal Ben Haim, not Trevor Birch. Hope that helps reduce your confusion!

It can stay like that as long as you like; it'll probably get worse over time though. Given that you won't need the heating before it gets fixed (well, probably not, anyway!) you can just turn off all the radiators so they don't warm up.

Most likely it'll be the zone valve; this is the device which controls the flow of hot water from the boiler through the heating system and hot water cylinder. Put simply, water from the boiler is pumped through the zone valve into either the hot water circuit or the heating circuit (or, of course, both at the same time); if the zone valve is faulty then it may allow water to flow into the heating circuit when it should be stopping that flow. If this happens you'll find that the radiator closest to the valve will warm up when the water's being heated - which is just what you are finding. To sort it, you'll almost certainly need a new zone valve; it'll need to be fitted by someone who knows what they're doing though.

Judging by a lot of the comments on the News web site and elsewhere, it never, ever will. Sure, they'll get to watch their club suffer a long, lingering decline - and quite possibly die altogether after some time - but it will always be somebody else's fault. It could be the Football League, the players, Chainrai, the council, even the trust should they succeed (unlikely in the extreme, but you never know - Phil's thoughts on that could have legs I think) - but it will never be the club itself or the wonderful fans, renowned worldwide as the best there are or have ever been. The capacity of some Pompey fans for self delusion seems almost limitless; you only have to read FMPR's recent posts on here to see that. They are, it seems, capable of justifying anything, believing anything, and questioning nothing - as long as what they're being told feeds into the popular myths.

I remember the poster they took to one match (or maybe more than one) towards the end of last season, which proclaimed something along the lines of: For Sale - Portsmouth Football Club World's best supporters come free! So yes, they do indeed see themselves that way. If anybody on here has a link to the picture (Lord Trousers perhaps?) they might like to post it...

Supine? Those porcine chappies are all standing up.

John PFC Westwood. Has to be.

I particularly like the headline: "Balram Chainrai close to securing rescue for Portsmouth" As rescues go, it's hardly the stuff of dreams, is it? Like seeing a large St Bernard padding your way in the frozen Alps, only to find out that the barrel round its neck is filled with p1ss...

Prepare for Spit the Dog to be installed as the new manager, with Cough the Cat as head coach. Bit of a shame for poor old UnAppy and his bestest mate, but when there are candidates of that quality available it really is a no-brainer.

Much as I like to picture the golden share as an actual object, made of real gold, which is handed to each club in a magnificent ceremony, it's actually just a concept - a virtual membership card, if you like. The Football League allots the golden share as it sees fit; I think, though I'm not certain, that it is withheld in the event of insolvency, but is given back to the club as and when a satisfactory conclusion to said insolvency is reached. I assume that when a club enters administration during the season the golden share is then withheld at the end of that season, allowing fixtures to be completed. It may be the case that a club ends one season in administration and is still there when the next season starts. The FL may then choose to allow them to compete, though I'd guess that they'd want assurances that the club would be able to fulfil their fixtures at the very least. Presumably something like this happened the last time Pompey were in administration, as they didn't exit until after the season had started (although a CVA had been agreed, which certainly would have helped their cause). The FL's current stipulations apply to new owners of Pompey, whoever that may turn out to be. Meet the conditions, you can be in the club; fail to do so and you can't. It doesn't matter here whether a new company is formed (and if Chainrai takes over it will pretty certainly be the existing company which continues, not a new one); the League's conditions apply to the football club, as this is the entity which is a member of the League.

Whatever your day job is, you're wasted doing it!

It's perfectly possible for both comments to be correct, of course. Jackson is right in that the players won't be protected by the football creditors rule; however, Hancock may well be right in that they'll get their money directly from the Premier League, who control the parachute payments. Whilst Birch, Jackson, Allen et al would like everybody to believe that the former point means definitively that the players get nothing in the event of liquidation, the truth is that it's by no means definitive.

I rather think he has - just wait now for hasty corrections, explanations of what he really meant to say and the like!

Here's an article on this very subject - eleven years old, so obviously somewhat dated. Interesting to read the actual sums paid, what they would be in 2001 money, and estimated price for the same player at 2001 transfer prices. Turkish will be pleased to see that Denilson makes the list. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,6903,543912,00.html

The Redknapp stuff is just a rumour, nothing more than that. Can you really see him splashing millions of his own money on Pompey? He didn't get that nice house in Sandbanks by pouring money down the drain. If Chainrai does end up buying the club, he won't then ditch it until he's extracted every penny of parachute money - so let's call that two years. If anyone wants it in the mean time, they'll have to meet Chanrai's asking price and that most certainly won't be peanuts. Without serious external funding Pompey will never be better than a League One club or maybe Championship strugglers. Anyone putting money in to lift them above that status will never get a return. The only way it could make any sense would be if the club were used, as in the past, for money laundering. Given all that's happened, plus the strictures that the League are putting in place, I can't see that happening either.

Going a bit further back, Steve Daley's move from Wolves to Man City back in 1979 has been described as "the biggest waste of money in football history". It happened at a time when City were run by Peter Swales and managed by Malcolm "Big Mal" Allison and was a then record at just short of £1.5M. City signed a fair number of players at inflated prices at that time, with Daley being the most expensive and the worst. He was a major flop at Maine Road, and less than two years later went off to play in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Daley

I hate that one too - what the f*ck else is it going to be a moment in? I find the intransitive use of the verb 'enjoy' annoying, as in "Enjoy!" - to me it's a transitive verb, and so requires an object. I also dislike the use of 'as far as' without a corresponding 'is concerned' or similar; that seems to me to be getting more common. That said, as a linguist I know and understand that any living language changes and evolves all the time - only dead languages are static. Some changes stick, some don't; some one may like; others not. But there's nothing anyone can do to stop the process (the Académie Francaise have tried this to no avail) and I rather like the fact that language belongs to its speakers, not to any authority.

I'd hardly say it's looking certain. Norris has gone pending a medical, it's been reported that others may be going too. But the latter is yet to become material fact as opposed to reported interest; further, TBH and Kanu remain very much in the mix. Far from plain sailing I'd say. And, should they scrape through and avoid liquidation, what awaits them? Take your pick between being owned by Chainrai (who'll keep them on life support long enough to pocket whatever he can from the parachute payments) or the Trust (highly unlikely I'd think, but if they do succeed they'll have sod all to spend and will almost certainly be paying substantial rent to Chainrai for the dubious honour of continuing to play at Fratton Park). In either case, they'll be starting life in League One on -10 points (at best), with a tiny, low-quality squad and nothing to spend. Whoever owns them, they won't be able to overspend because no-one will lend to them. Successive relegations will beckon - quite possibly a few of them. I still reckon liquidation is a fair bet, but the alternatives look pretty good to me as well.

Of course he does - in fact, their position is better than that of ordinary unsecured creditors because of the football creditors rule. Birch's case is that, in the event of liquidation, the players will receive nothing (or very close to it). If the club is kept alive, they'll receive whatever they can manage to negotiate; a reduction on the 100% that the FCR says they should get, but better than the 2% all other unsecured creditors will get. And, without compromise from the high earners, the club will quite certainly be liquidated. The bit which nobody seems really certain about is whether or not the players will receive monies from the parachute payments in the event of liquidation. Birch's comments only apply to what little might be raised by a sale of assets in the event of liquidation and don't take this into account at all. So, the view put forward by Birch is that, by compromising, TBH et al will get some of what they are owed; without any compromise they'll get nothing or very close to it. I'm not defending this view by the way, just stating it.

Birch is an administrator. His job is to serve the best interests of the creditors, nobody else. Any other stuff he (or anyone else) comes out with is flannel. If he can get a better deal for the creditors by taking actions which screw lots of other people, he'll have done his job. If the whole game gets screwed as a result, he'll still have done his job. This is something that, like Gordon Taylor's comments on player compromises, gets mentioned all too rarely.

Only up to to a point, I'd say. The Trust may be enjoying a little media flurry at the moment, but a flurry is all it's likely to be. They've succeeded in portraying themselves as serious players, partly through their own press releases but mostly because the News has seen fit to portray them that way as well. Plus, of course, Trevor Birch has held meetings with them, which helps make them look serious - even though it's plain to see that Birch has done this for the sake of appearances and not much else. For many media outlets, the Trust story looks like a good one; club on the brink of oblivion could be saved by its own supporters banding together. Over the next couple of weeks I'd expect to see reality creeping in; some time soon the Trust will be asked for actual figures, at which point we'll see just how seriously they really should be taken. Up till now they've mentioned a "significant seven-figure sum" (which could, of course, mean anything from £1M to £9,999,999); I've yet to see anything which substantiates this in any real way. How much of this money is merely pledged? As we all know, for each unfulfilled pledge £900 needs to be removed from the total that they claim to have. At some point they'll be asked how much they actually have in the bank, as opposed to how much has been pledged. I don't expect the News to be asking questions like this, but if they ever get far enough to be properly interrogated then it will happen. And, if it's not the media it'll be Birch, in a meeting behind closed doors. Unless they have an absolute minimum of 5,000 backers, each of whom has parted with the full £1,000 then they're simply not serious players - and even then I can't see them getting far with £5M at their disposal (unless, as Phil has suggested, they end up buying what there is of the club minus Fratton Park, and rent that from Chainrai). Time will tell, and time is running out fast.