Fowllyd

Extract from the Land Registry entry: Proprietorship Register Title Absolute (10.01.2011) PROPRIETOR: PORTSMOUTH FOOTBALL CLUB (2010) LIMITED (Co. Regn. No. 07264768 ) of Fratton Park, Frogmore Road, Southsea, Hants PO4 8RA. (05.11.2009) RESTRICTION: No disposition of the registered estate by the proprietor of the registered estate is to be registered without a written consent signed by the proprietor for the time being of the charge dated 6 October 2009 in favour of Portpin Limited referred to in the Charges Register or without a certificate signed by each conveyancer of the Charge that the provisions of the Charge have been complied with or that they do not apply to the disposition. (10.01.2011) The price stated to have been paid on 7 December 2010 was £7,042,000. Charges Register (03.06.2011) Proprietor: CONVERS SPORTS INITIATIVES PLC (Co. Regn. No. 07375628 ) of 2nd Floor, 159A Chase Side, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 0PW. So, it looks to me as if the ground belongs to PFC, but has a mortgage against it; this mortgage being held by CSI. I'm not a property lawyer, so if anyone on here can interpret this further PM me and I'll send you the full LR copy.

Have I missed something? What bygones?

Very well put.

As a member of the penultimate grammar school intake, I remember feeling most hacked off when the last lot didn't have to wear that uniform in their final year (my first in the 6th form). I'd been looking forward to going in wearing jeans etc while they still had to wear blazers! You might find yourself in a college photo here http://www.bartonians.uni4m.co.uk/ if there was one taken of your year. I'm in the 1978 one, and a gruesome sight it is too!

Having been at Barton Peveril at that time (ah, those green blazers! the badge that looked like a cabbage!) I can only agree.

Here's an example which I encountered at St Mary's. I was watching the JPT game against Norwich way up in the Kingsland stand, and had been chatting to a few other supporters who sat there regularly. Come the penalty shoot-out, Michail Antonio had a chance to win the match with his kick - he didn't. One of the chaps I'd been talking to during the game turned to me and said something like "That's the problem with these black lads - they haven't got the bottle." I pointed out that Papa Waigo had buried his kick, while Lloyd James had missed his (actually, he pretty much passed the ball straight to Norwich's keeper, if I recall correctly). Finally, of course, Wayne Thomas scored the winning penalty. Was this chap a racist? His comment certainly was, relying as it did on casual and ignorant stereotyping. But, during the match, he hadn't come across as some knuckle-dragging dinosaur or potential BNP acolyte. My guess would be that certain stereotypes and generalisations based on skin colour are lodged deep in his mind and get expressed on particular occasions. In my view, such comments should not go unchallenged; if you point out to someone the absurdity of their thinking, they may eventually absorb the message. Not that I'd be holding my breath. Casual racism is far more commonly encountered than the more virulent kind, and it's highly insidious. Such attitudes could easily lead people to be unwilling to offer jobs to black people, for example (the example above suggests to me that, deep down, the person in question regarded black people as potentially unreliable). Come to think of it, I've worked with people who've displayed exactly that attitude when it came to recruitment.

I like a straight Assam tea, using leaves and a pot - I don't have any tea bags in my house, though I do use them at work. Strong Assam tea (and I make it bloody strong) is what I need to get properly woken up in the morning. Sainsbury and Waitrose both do a good loose-leaf Assam; the latter has larger leaves, so they're harder to wash down the sink, but it's got an excellent taste.

Will it be a box-to-box-all-action-goal-scoring-midfield-general-playmaker-on-the-field-leader giant moth which can also play in central defence if need be? TMCDAJFU!

I think I've spotted where you're going wrong here...

How specific was he about this? I mean, was it the decor of the changing room, or its furnishings that he liked the most?

Are we looking for a Martin Peters type of player who'll ghost in and out of the game then?

As the old song goes: Tigers don't go out on rainy nights, They've no need to whet their appetites... I doubt that the tiger's owner (or should that be keeper?) will be hurrying to come forward somehow!

The first, quite unarguably; as others have pointed out, you can't release a player who's under contract. The second I'm not so sure of - he's hardly excelled at any of the teams he's joined on loan over the past couple of seasons, all of them clubs which play at a lower level than us, often significantly. I think any club would want their third-choice keeper to be one who's seen as having a future as first-choice, at least potentially. Given his performances on loan, I very much doubt that Forecast is that person.

Isn't he still under contract until the 30th June? Being available for free transfer now presumably indicates that he's not officially released yet as his contract has a few weeks to run, but also that it won't be renewed. Mind you, I think everyone on here had already guessed that last bit!

In one of the best bits of transfer business there can ever have been, Tommy Forecast was signed on a five-year contract - at least I'm pretty sure that was the case. It's not mentioned in his slot on the OS, and I can't be arsed to trawl the archives right now, but five years is the duration that sticks in my mind. So that'll be another two years of lower-league loans and (very) occasional bench-warming for Tommy then...

We read rumours in the papers and ignored or laughed at them, and waited for official news. No real difference, just that there's an awful lot more to ignore and/or laugh at these days...

Do you know something about next season's cup draws that the rest of us don't?

Not sure about that. Chris Hoy has legs so chunky it's a wonder he can get trousers to fit them, but I wouldn't call him podgy.

No, obviously not. My point was that our start was poor, but that it was early enough in the season for a new manager to effect the necessary turnaround. Had Wilkins been in charge for longer we'd have fallen further behind the top teams, making things even more difficult. No indeed, and I wouldn't suggest that it would do. But form of that sort has cost them any chance they had of winning the Premier League. Not sure I see your point here. We lost seven league games under Adkins, out of 41 played. More saliently perhaps, we never lost two matches running. I said our rivals were accruing points throughout the season; this is why it was never a question of us simply winning two games. Yes, if we had won two games and all our rivals kindly lost their games at the same time, winning two games would have put us back on track. But that wasn't the case, because our rivals for promotion were winning games too. Do you see my point here? Maybe so, but getting automatic promotion after losing the first five matches would have been a massive task. I think you're right that most would have seen the season as a failure had we not secured promotion - I certainly would have done. Our start did make it more difficult, but I still expected it. Can't argue with any of that really!

They have vast debts and a gaping hole in their finances. They had already borrowed against several years' worth of future ticket income some time back, so I doubt they're in a particularly sound position now, and their ticket income is now likely to fall. I reckon they'll lose their best players and struggle to replace them, parachute payments notwithstanding. The only bright spot for them is that they'll get rid of Avram Grant.

Nobody has said there was a huge gap - the biggest possible gap between two teams after five games would be fifteen points, after all. Our start to the season, for a team widely tipped to win the league, was very poor. Yes, our position in the bottom four looked false given the quality of our squad, but having started so poorly (all the more so given that we then lost our sixth game as well) we were in the position of having to catch up. At no point in my post did I suggest we were doomed after five games, incidentally; I'm not sure where you got that idea from. It was never simply a case of winning two games to get us back on track, as you rather simplistically suggest; we had points to make up, and all our rivals were busy accruing these as well. In order to gain promotion, we had to outperform every other team in this league; further, this had to be accomplished against the backdrop of a managerial change and all the disruption which that must have caused. That was never going to be an easy task, but we did it; which is why I think that Adkins has done an excellent job thus far.

When Adkins took over, we had played five league games and had lost three of those; we had four points to our name and were in the relegation zone. For such a good squad, I'd say that was a pretty disastrous start to the season; the one saving grace was that it was still early enough for a new manager to turn things around. Many on here, I seem to recall, reckoned that our season was irreparably damaged after those six games. I remember all the calculations of likely points needed, points per game needed and so forth, along with the comments on just how hard it would be to achieve them. As it turns out, we achieved it all and more - few if any reckoned we'd need 92 points just to get second spot. And don't underestimate the difficulties that Adkins faced. Taking over a group of players who were mostly signed by another manager, who are demoralised and playing very poorly, is no picnic - no matter how good those players are. You make it sound as if all Adkins had to do was turn up and that was that - I think that would have been a long way from the truth. After all, if it was all so easy with the squad we had, how come Wilkins lost every game he managed us in? Would we even have reached the play-offs had Wilkins remained in charge? Adkins would have had to win the confidence and trust of the players, which would, I'm sure, have taken some time. Remember that he wasn't a big-name manager who could command instant respect from the players, in the way that Dalglish appears to have done at Liverpool. I don't think that anyone is saying that Adkins has "performed a miracle with his hands tied" as you put it; but he has performed better than any manager in the league, bar one, in his time at Saints, which deserves rather more recognition than the damnation with faint praise which you consider appropriate.

Very poor analogy. Fulham were an established Premier League club, who needed to replace a successful manager, whereas we will be a newly-promoted side with a very successful manager in situ. Are you suggesting that Adkins should be immediately replaced if he gets us into the Premier League, on the basis that he hasn't managed at that level before? That would be a fine reward for winning us two promotions. And how exactly does any manager gain top-level experience? Not every ex-player can get a first managerial job at that level, and several who have done so have failed pretty miserably. It's entirely possible that an established manager, with a record of success at his current club (which Adkins will unquestionably have if he gets us up to the Premier League) will continue to succeed at a higher level. If Adkins does flounder at that level, then he'll doubtless be removed swiftly and without ceremony; but that's a different matter altogether.

Reserved in your admiration? I can't see the slightest hint of admiration for Adkins in any of your posts. If, as you suggest, anyone could and should have got us promoted this season, how about Dean Wilkins? He was doing the job before Adkins came in - are you seriously saying that he would have turned things around in the same way that Adkins did? If not, then your contention, as well as being facile, is also demonstrably wrong. If you present a reasoned argument, it's likely to be met with reasoned responses by most, if not all. But you haven't and don't; you simply twist things around to fit your unchanging, unchangeable view. You decided at the outset that Adkins wasn't the man for the job, and since then have steadfastly refused him any credit for anything achieved and berated him for any number of perceived failings. People do not have a go at you simply because your views differ from theirs; it's because of the way that you express them and your stubborn refusal to change one iota, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Just look at your first post on this thread as an example - your assumption is plain, that everything will go tits up under Adkins at some point. The fact that he has out-performed all other managers in this division since his appointment cuts no ice with you; in your mind he's not good enough, and all the evidence to the contrary will never sway you.

Every time I see this, I can't help but think how much more faith I'd have in it if the people who made it had been able to spell 'extension' correctly. And even more if they knew how to use capital letters and apostrophes.