Corporate Ho

"A toy being passed around a group of businessmen", that would surely describe PFC over the years. So you should understand why so many Pompey fans have become disillusioned with the club and new owner after new owner. But because it suits you you use it as a club to beat us with. Hypocritical of you? You bet I'm not having a go at you for your crowds dipping, just trying to get someone/ anyone on here to recognise the parallels between what happened/ is happening at our clubs and admit that if Saints were in our position with crap owner after crap owner your crowds would suffer too. It's the ridiculous blind assertions by most of your fans on here that things would be different that makes me laugh. If Lowe had come back in and invested loads of cash do you really expect me to believe the "boycotts" would have gone ahead? Of course they wouldn't Like I've said, if Lowe had brought money to the club the crowds wouldn't have suffered. I understand you didn't like him (although that wasn't the case when I first started coming on here) but the vast majority of your fans were staying away because of the crap football and league position. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous. If you'd been near the bottom and Lowe hadn't come back you're telling me you'd still have been averaging what you did the year before? You'll get higher average attendences. It's a no brainer for all the reasons I've already stated (club doing well gets bigger crowds - it's a no brainer). But PFC have paid the charities they owed. It's not a pleasant part of our recent history but it's been paid. And that's my whole point. Not to say anyone's support is better, just to get people on here to accept that your crowds dropped because the "product" was worse than they were used to. If Lowe came in with a billionaire there would have been the odd dissenting voice but do you really expect me to believe that your crowds would still have dropped? See above. Lowe coming back with money would have meant no "boycott" other than by a minority of Lowe haters. You know it and I know it. I'm not saying PFC/ the new owners shouldn't pay the small creditors at all. What I meant was that as Chainrai agreed to pay them, he should be held to account and made to pay. IF part of the sale of the club included CSI taking over that debt then of course they should pay it. And before any of you say "but that DIDN'T happen" if Lowe had agreed to pay your creditors out of his own pocket and then left the debt to Liebherr would you really be saying Lowe shouldn't be made to dip his hand in his pocket? No-one's "washing their hands of them". They're creditors and legally entitled to their money

What other ones were there? The only one I'm aware of is the St John's Ambulance and that was paid before January thanks to the fans. If you can tell me the names of other charities that haven't been paid I'll try and find out for you Anyway, what about your low gates and not going/ boycotting because Lowe was trying to get you trading within your means. Let's get back to that. That is what the "boycott" was about wasn't it? No-one seems to have voiced any vehement disagreement to Depressed's post explaining it to me

Let's be clear, when I said your boycott was "mythical" I was referring to an something organised and orchestrated en masse by one group rather than people just getting fed up and voting with their feet which is clearly what happened. Nothing wrong with that, you didn't like the "product" so stopped going. Pompey fans had to put up with that for 20 years or so, is it any wonder our gates dropped. Yours halved in a couple of years. But back to depressed's post. What you seem to be saying is that you stopped going because you'd been overspending on players (by £700K a month according to one of your own fans in the replies section to The Echo article) and when Lowe tried to balance the books and you had to play some youth players you didn't like it because you weren't competitive and protested/ boycotted/ stopped going. That is what you wrote, isn't it? So what you're saying Phil is that Pompey fans you know feel this may be yet another false dawn and aren't prepared to pay £30 for tickets until the new owners prove they're not just another bunch of chancers. That's your reasoning, isn't it? Which is what I've been saying. Thanks for backing my stance, good to know you agree with me Your "protests" are the same as our "protests". Get taken for a ride, poor value for money/ entertainment - vote with your feet. like I said, we had to put up with that from a succession of owners for 20 years. You try it for that long and see the effect on your gates Chainrai agreed to pay the small creditors. It's a matter of public record. So let him pay them Couple of other points. Lampitt says the charities were paid back in January. Would be surprised if they weren't given he's made a public statement: "Similarly the fact that we have now paid in full the three main charities (Tom Prince, Harbour Cancer Trust and Faith & Football) that were owed money by the old company is part of that same process. We said that we wanted to have this done by Christmas and we have now, I hope, put to bed one of the most shameful aspects of the legacy we inherited. Our best wishes go out to each of those charities for the coming year." http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/LatestNews/news/David-Lampitt-s-January-Diary-1771.aspx Also, on the subject of attendences, I can't believe none of you felt you could share with me the fact that anyone with a ticket can bring along someone under 11 free of charge in the family section. Not knocking it, think it's a great initiative. Just surprised no-one mentioned it in the attendence talk

I like Brass Eye too Torro but again, what has that to do with your boycott/ protests? What were you protesting against? Simple question to answer, surely? I'm going to be busy until early afternoon now so maybe that will give you all time to come up with the answer

Interesting. So the "beginnings of the protests against Lowe" were in January according to the date of the link you posted. So how does that explain the sub 15K crowds you'd been getting up until then? As for the one man boycott, the replies to the Echo article by your own fans seem overwhelmingly to be against a boycott, saying you should all attend and get behind the team I'll ask again as no-one's answered my question - what were the boycotts and the protests against? Because the fit and proper person test to take over a football club is based on whether a person has been convicted of any wrong doing. Antonov and Dubov have never been convicted of anything. You seem to find it hard to grasp the concept Who? Which one of your fans are you talking about here? I hope you didn't mean me as it's you lot who are the ones who keep pushing the conspiracy angles It's not business news, as I said it's rumours. The national press all reported it a while back and quite a few papers on the continent have mentioned it too. Whether it's true or not I have no idea. That's why I said it was a rumour. As for you lot "taking it on the chin" is that why you were all protesting and boycotting? LOL Thanks Chez. Good to see a bit of balance on here

I'm not revelling in it at all. My point was that maybe you have Liebherr's money and maybe you don't. His will's going through probate and there are plenty of rumours out that that his daughter's looking to sell you. Hence the "maybe" and the reference to him being dead. Upset me? LOL. Phil, you're the one who made himself look a complete idiot by inferring on here with your "insider knowledge" that Antonov was going to use the EIB loan to SAAB to fund Pompey. If only you'd realised that he hadn't actually managed to buy into SAAB. Tell us again how CSI have pulled out of the deal to buy us and are buying Bournemouth instead. Oh, OK. So there wasn't a boycott that season then? But there were big crowds for the two Xmas games and Lowe was still there then - or did he temporarily step down for the festive period? Did Paul McCartney make a video about it with your fans and Lowe's chums having a game of soccer in the St Mary's car park, only for the rest of the season to have to kick in and see you both trotting off to different areas of the ground? What happened to the boycott at Xmas? As for your club being a mess for a couple of seasons, Pompey have had chaos surrounding the club pretty much since I started supporting them in the late '70's. You lot have no idea how that can affect a club's support. Even when Mandaric was there it was the same so don't bother trying to play that card. As for us having new owners meaning that should see supporters flocking back to the ground - how many new owners have we had recently? And the "fourth biggest spenders" tag doesn't mean much when we still don't have a squad does it? Your club dropped down and as asoon as you started to slip down the league your gates dropped. It's natural, it happens. Stop trying to make excuses for it. Tell me what this mythical boycott was protesting against?

Last season we had an "owner" who invested nothing and was only interested in taking what he could from the club. He left just before this season started and the new owners have yet to speak to the fans or let them know anything bar the smallest detail about what they're planning. Quite how that's meant to be pulling in thousands of fans I'm not sure. As for "the majority" of Pompey fans thinking "everything is OK again" what percentage exactly do you gauge this great insight from. Your attendence stats about 2009/10 are when you'd been taken over by a billionaire who was spunking the cash on every player that moved to buy you out of L1. Our PL attendences were always hampered by lots of clubs not taking their full allocations and by segretaed areas. We averaged 96% sell out across the first 5 years we were in the PL. When it suits you (like now) we have a squad that should be walking the league. Any other time and it's post after post laughing at our lack of players. You somehow know that we're paying Norris and Benjani £30K a week (please tell me how you know this). You dropped out of the PL, your crowds fell by 50%. If it's the precious, morally upright saints it was a boycott. If it's Pompey it's because we're fickle. As for the owzat comment, here's one back at you to prove you're full of ****. If your attendences that season were because of a boycott, how come both home games around Xmas and the last three at the end of the season when you dropped prices and gave away loads of tickets were all 20,000+. That's some kind of selective boycott you've got there ladies. Night Night

LOL. Who'd have thought it. The saints situation was obviously completely different from Pompey. The fact that Pompey fans were staying away last season because of Chainrai raping the club and that this season our new owners (nice to see you comparing them to your owners when it suits you) haven't even managed to build anything even approximating a squad yet is not seen as a valid reason by you for Pompey fans to be put off shelling out £30 a game. When it's saints getting crowds similar to Pompey's it's because of organised protests and high moral principles. When it's Pompey getting the same ballpark figures it's scorned. Face it, if the situation were reversed your crowds would be no different to ours and the stats I posted prove it.

LOL. Because last time you were in this division you had 30,000 for every game, didn't you. Might be a different story this season now you've (maybe) got a dead billionaire's money backing you but last time your average crowd was a massive 17,800 and that was skewed by a massive free ticket giveaway for the last few games of the season. If you're laughing at our paltry 13,600 last nigth I assume you'll find these attendences from from your 2008/9 campaign at the St mary's enormodome truly side splitting. 30th Aug vs Blackpool – 15,629 17th Sep vs Ipswich – 14,916 20th Sep vs Barnsley – 14,836 30th Sep vs Norwich – 14,480 28th Oct vs Coventry – 14,226 8th Nov vs Bristol City – 14,535 6th Dec vs Sheff Weds – 15,440 17th Jan vs Doncaster – 15,837 3rd Feb vs Sheff Utd – 13,257 21st Feb vs Preston – 14,790 Laugh at Pompey, your support was at the same level. Go on, tell me how different it was for you

Err, not sure where that's come from. My position on here has ALWAYS been that Chainrai never paid a penny to acquire Pompey and never put a penny into the club. That would be borne out by my posts highlighting the fact Andronikou let slip that Chainrai owned both Portpin who "loaned" the money and "Falcondrone" who received it. Both are based in the BVI. Some coincidence that. The money was never "loaned" to Pompey in the first place. It was a scam from start to finish and unfortunately, due to the companies being based in the BVI there wasn't a bloody thing legally anyone could do to prove otherwise. I'm not saying anyone's clean and blameless. Chainrai is a complete and utter scumbag which I've said many times on here. What I was saying is that despite what keeps getting repeated as fact on here, Gaydamak DIDN'T make his fortune from arms dealing, he made it from Angolan oil. I'm sure he's a complete ****** but you lot constantly get the source of his wealth wrong. As for the writing off of £100m, see my previous point about Chainrai and his scam. He may be a scumbag but he knows the legal loopholes and exploited them to the full. How that makes me guilty of "denying blatant deception" is beyond me

The funny thing is, despite being told repeatedly you still say Gaydamak Snr's wealth was based on arms dealing. It wasn't. He made his money largely through oil in Angola. It was as a result of his relationship with the Angolan government that he brokered an arms deal between them and Russia (along, of course, with the French government), but that was a very small part of the money he made in his other businesses. So yep, still celebrating the cup win, just as everyone on here would be doing if it was your club in the same situation. Also, why keep referring to Chainrai as a loan shark? Everyone knows no money was actually loaned to Pompey or al faraj and that it was just a ruse to let him take over the club and get back the money Gaydamak owed to him. Good to see that now you're throwing drug dealing into our owners mix of offences, where's that one come from? Link please Still banging on about SAAB Phil? What have they got to do with Pompey? Maybe if Antonov actually gets to buy into them it might be worth discussing but as he isn't involved why keep bleating about it? it's like you have OCD As for Boeing, it's you lot who keep on about arms dealing so I assume it's a major moral issue for you and would take direct action if you were giving your custom to companies actively involved in the arms business and maiming people. Unless, of course, you're a bunch of complete ****ing hypocrites who only have an issue with it if it's somehow related to PFC. Imagine. A football messageboard filled with mini Tipper Gore's.

I've just read that The Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC have all been providing funding to manufacturers of cluster bombs. I know how strongly you lot on here feel about such weapons so I'm assuming that any of you who are customers of the above banks will be closing your accounts over the next couple of days and moving your business elsewhere

He's on £30K a week is he? Where did you find that detail from? And who else is on £30K a wek at PFC? Oooooooooh, it's another CONSPIRACY

Maybe we'll use the SAAB loan to pay for some players. What do you think Phil? Ryan Williams, a young Aussie winger is now in the first team squad. Looks a very good prospect. Sam magri, who was the England U17 captain is also a very highly rated defender and is on the fringes of the squad Fortunately I'm in the position where I can afford the prices so it's not an issue for me but thousands of others aren't (not just Pompey fans here.) £32 for an Championship game is ridiculous really. On the subject of the youth team most Pompey fans wouldn't disagree with you. Take a look at any of our messageboards and you'll see that. That's three posts girls so don't look for any replies from me. And keep clinging to the idea that we won't sign any more players to boost the squad. It'll keep you moist for a few more days yet I guess

No, you're not meant to feel sorry for us, though as your ticket prices are almost as high as ours I thought you might agree that pricing in football is ridiculous, especially given the economic climate at the moment. I assume if you go up your prices will go up again to around the £40 mark. Let's see how happy you are if that happens. And you think we don't have a youth team? LOL

I notice there was no mention of our crowd number against Barnet. Wonder why that was? As for Brighton being a local derby - LOL. Once we actually have enough players to fill a bench we'll be OK. Until then it's no wonder people are reluctant to pay £32 is it?

Surprised none of you investigative marvels (as you like to think of yourselves) has picked up on the rumour that poor old Harry's been handed a thirteen week stretch. Just a rumour so far

So, if it had been Saints that everything happened to instead of Pompey what would your fans have done differently yo how Pompey fans have reacted?

Ahh, poor Crabby. Did it hurt that much? You're getting upset about thw rong things though. You're thinking we call you scum as an adjective and we don't, we use it as a noun. We don't think you're all scum of the earth (although quite a few on here would seem to fit the description) it's just the name we call you. You're scum and you live in Scumhampton/ Scumpton. PS: You forgot, it's two 4 - 1's and a cup win. Might as well be acurate about it, eh?

Err, the whole point that I was making was that money we should have received seemed to go missing, as others have pointed out to you. Who's the tick one here? LOL I got the figures from your accounts released this year. Having checked they were actually from the season before but wages were £12.2m against a T/O of £14.28m. 85% of turnover If you'd bothered to read the article properly you'd have seen that at the top it says: "All details from most recently filed official information at Companies House." Big difference. if money was siphoned off then PFC were the victim, not the perpetrator. Read the PL administration guidelines which were quoted when we went into admin. No idea of the point you're trying to make. So other clubs have bigger stadiums etc. So what? We paid £48m for players over three years, had income of at least £150m from SKY in that time and recouped (or should have) £75m+ from sales. They may have bigger stadiums but the figures are there in black and white. Our income was almost as substantial, if not more so, than many ofthose clubs You need to read the stats again. Whilst I agree that the figures don’t show agents fees etc the fact is that across just a two year period our turnover was in excess of £110m so whilst the turnover to wages ratio was high it wasn’t in excess of 100% as many have stated on here. The fact that we only had £20K gates is almost irrelevant because if you look at the gate receipts from all PL clubs Pompey’s income from this revenue stream was actually higher than a lot of other clubs, especially the northern based ones partly due to the Wembley gate money but also because we were charging so much for tickets at Fratton back then. Incidentally, where does your figure of £120m of spending come from? I don’t understand where you’ve pulled that from. And to contradict you, the figures do “add up”. The fact that we pulled in £75m+ in transfer fees show that while we spent a lot on players and wages, our total income across three years (including the fees we got when we sold some of those players) was around £220m (adding in another year’s SKY money to what I’ve already quoted). And if that money was siphoned off from the club then PFC are a victim of a crime. Onto your second point about the source of Gaydamak’s wealth, again I think you need to check your facts. I’m assuming that you believe that Gaydamak Snr built his wealth through arms dealing. In fact, he built his fortune largely through oil in Angola, not arms. The arms deal was a by product of his relationship with the Angolan government. If you feel so strongly about arms dealing I suggest you emigrate to a different country because UK arms companies, fully sanctioned by British governments that you vote for are responsible for far more death and misery than the arms that Gaydamak brokered to Angola. So if Gaydamak’s money contributed to our cup win then I have no problem with celebrating it The constant “they don’t get it” thing is silly. You think we should be punished for spending beyond our means but we were punished to the full extent that the football authorities allowed. Just because that didn’t include PFC being dissolved and all our assets burned and scattered to the four corners of the earth that you’d have liked to have seen doesn’t mean we “got away with it”. We were punished within the rules, same as you were. If you don’t like that, bad luck I’m afraid. Your wage bill is incredibly high compared to your income and you still don’t know how that’s being funded, if the Liebherr’s are giving you the money or if it’s a loan to be paid back some time. Your fans were very keen for Paul Allen to buy you and spunk millions on turning you into a “global brand” – there weren’t too many dissenting voices back then. It's been postponed until December because the judge fell ill. Posted this at least three times now

OK, you asked for it. Your list of players is misleading regarding the cup win because quite a few of them didn't play in the cup for us or just for one game (e.g. Defoe was cup tied, Benjani went to Man City that January). Plus it's hard to take you entirely seriously when you say we had "international players" like Djimi Traore available. However, you asked for their transfer fees and wages so here you go. Wages are roughly what has been reported they were on James cost £1.2m and was on £40K a week Campbell came on a free and his wages included the infamous image rights but as estimated at about £70K a week Johnson £4m/ £40K Defoe £6m/ £50K Diarra £5.5m/ £50K Pamarot £2.5m/ £25K Hreidarsson Free/ £25K Utaka £7m (FFS)/ £30K Diop £3.5m/ £25K Distin Free/ £50K Lauren £500K/ £40K Muntari £7m/ £50K Kranjcar £3.5m/ £30K Benjani £4m/ £25K Traore £1m/ £20K Mendes £2.5M/ £25K Our wage bill that season was £54.7m according to this article http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jun/03/english-premier-league-debt by David Conn in The Guardian and places our wages to turnover ratio at 76% (too high but worth noting well below your ration in winning promotion last year). Also worth noting that Pompey were just one of 13 clubs whose wages to turnover ratio was above the 60% suggested. Our debts were estimated at £57.7m which are high but well below or about on par with the likes of Villa (£73m) Bolton (£53m) Fulham (£197m!!) Boro (93m) Newcastle (£106m) Sunderland (£69m) and Wigan (66.4m). Of course, it depends if the debt is serviceable but the likes of Fulham, Boro & Wigan look very vulnerable should their benefactors bail out. The cost of bringing those players into the club was around £48m but that was spread over three or four years. Now, that's a lot of money. However, according to the same article, our turnover that season was £70.5m, up from £40.2m the previous year, mostly due to the increase in SKY money but also partly due to money from the cup run. So, whilst the ratio of wages to T/O was too high it wasn't impossibly high given the money coming in. The question is, if the debt then was £58m, how did we get to the huge debt that took us into administration? Of course we paid wages but a lot of those players left a season later, especially the big earners so how did the debt keep increasing to the levels they did? Look at the fees we got for some of those players: Johnson £17.5m Defoe £15.75m Diarra £18.9m Muntari £13m Kranjcar £2.5m Benjani £4m Mendes £3m By my reckoning those sales brought somewhere close to £75m into the club which should have been more than enough to scale the debt down to manageable levels. So to answer your question whilst the wages were high, they were roughly in line with what other PL clubs wages to T/O ratio was and by losing two or three of the really high earners and using their transfer fees sensibly should have seen us continue in the top flight. But the scale of the wages certainly weren't out of line with what most other PL clubs were paying HTH

So, who were these players we bought that we had no intention of paying for? When we won the cup there was no mention on here of us having cheated our way to it, you all said we only won because we only played lower league opposition all the way through (coveniently forgetting Man Utd of course). Now, we "bought it" with players we couldn't afford. The fact of the matter is that if we only won it because of understrength opposition we didn't buy it. And if you say we only won it because we "paid" for it surely any of the other clubs who spent much more on players than we did would have won it? The fact is we won it because we had the luck of the draw most of the way through and fate conspired ridiculously against Man Utd in the Old Trafford game (the chances they missed that they would have scored any other day, their replacement keeper getting sent off for the penalty etc). We won the cup fair and square. And it drives you lot insane with jealousy

Spyker indeed own SAAB. But Antonov doesn't own Spyker. Antonov bought the sports car division of Spyker, not the whole company. So he has no way of transferring any monies between SAAB and PFC. Details of how people can get their refunds were already on the PFC OS by the time you posted this If Liebherr had to charter private jets when you had delays it would seem that you had no contingency plans either wouldn't it. So, crap organisation on your clubs part too? On the subject of the team getting back, do you really think it would be worth chartering a private jet to play a meaningless friendly? Except when the transfer money went missing they owned the club and so had access to the transfer cash. As they don't own SAAB how are you suggesting this transference system would work?

Steve, they don't own SAAB. They have no way of moving money between the companies I'm not saying our cases were almost the same. I'm just pointing out that you had £7m and decided to spunk the lot on a return to the big time and the gamble didn't come off. In any walk of life that would be irresponsible so you effectively spent money you couldn't afford. As for us, the whole situation is murky to say the least. Our debts should have been much lower considering the amount we pulled in for transfers like Diarra, Muntari, Defoe, Crouch etc. Also, you'll remember that the independent investigation said our debt was around £85m. Now that's a lot of money by anyone's standards BUT some of it was transfer fees covered by parachute payments and some was to HMRC but the biggest chunk was owed to either previous or the the then owner, much of which was dubious to say the least (Chainrai's £17m "loan" to a non existent al Faraj for example). Debt was loaded onto the club by people like Gaydamak and Chainrai to line their own pockets, you guys seem to conveniently forget that. Why does anyone buy a football club? No-one's going to make mega millions out of any club are they. Even most of the "Big 4" lose money every year. FWIW, I think CSI bought the club because they wanted a football club to add to their portfolio of sports businesses, because we're rel;atively high profile because of the two cup finals (and the admin/ CVA) and they could pick us up relatively cheaply compared to some other clubs. I don't expect them to spend massively on us and think they'll hope to build steadily for a couple of years and hope to make it into the PL Because we haven't had enough players to play in our pre season games against Chelsea etc have we? Game's been called off now anyway due to the delay in getting back

Steve, always happy to get into a genuine debate about this stuff. You say "various people" keep moving the goalposts but it's not various people - it was Chainrai (or his pet poodle Andronikou on his behalf). As you said, the creditors themselves agreed to the rescheduling so whilst they should have started to receive their monies by now it's clear, again as you say, that Chainrai had no intention of putting his hand in his pocket to pay these poor people back. He promised to pay the charities and the smaller creditors out of his own pocket, said publically at a creditors meeting and then reneged on that promise. Now, CSI could also not pay but as I said above that would effectively result in the club folding - I can't see the FA/ FL allowing us to go on should that happen. And CSI, whatever your theories or beliefs about money laundering/ mafia connections etc do seem to run some pretty successful businesses so it would seem odd that they'd take us on for a year only to not pay the CVA and make themselves look stupid. Because they don't come across as stupid people to me. Time will obviously tell but the way they're going about things seems promising so far