The Kraken

There's actually a lot of ways in which Lowe and Cortese are actually very similar. Both privately educated; both with no real sporting background prior to their arrival at Saints; both investing with other people's money and installing themself as CEO; both fairly autocratic figures; both willing to try innovative business solutions as opposed to contunuing with the norm; both recognised the advantage of building upon the strength of the academy; neither really had a grip of management of their own PR; both of their willingness to be involved with aspects of the first team management in particular transfers; and in particular a desire to grow various parts of the business and make it a market leader, even if we couldn't do that on the pitch. There are ways in which they're quite different, of course. Cortese's ability to find significant external funding; Cortese's (so far) ability to spot a very good manager; Lowe's complete financial prudence of not committing to spend money we don't have. But to say there's not some obvious similarities between the two is a bit daft, really. Both have their own styles but they're far more alike than some people would care to admit. And I'm not even sure I know why that's instantly seen as a bad thing. Both Lowe and Cortese have done some very, very good things for this club.

This can't be true. Around a week ago when asked to suggest other strikers we could have bought for the money we spent on Rodriguez, when Benteke was suggested he was written off as just a lump and not very impressive at all.

Fonte was playing top half championship for Palace and getting decent plaudits before we (somehow) got him in League 1. Lambert; God knows what he's been doing playing lower leagues for so long, he's a cut above and it seems like diet and a proper exercise programme more than anything have sorted him out. Puncheon played PL for Blackpool before us, how you can say we've developed him is amazing. No, its perhaps not easy to pick players like that. But neither is it totally strange. Have a look at Norwich, they've also still got players they picked up in L1. Its not as bizarre and rare as you are making out. We have risen up the leagues faster than we expected, and therefore many of the players we signed in the last 18 months have become somewhat redundant to us; victims of their own success in many ways. I just hope SFC doesn't become a victim of its own rapid success come May. Of those 3 I'd say Davis is the transfer I have the least problem with. He cost next to nothing, has PL experience and will be a very good squad addtion. The other two cost £10M and offer nothing except something from the bench. Simply not good enough for a club like us that require more of an immediate impact this season.

Ah its Pompey Mart. He had a bit of a breakdown on there the other day when it was announced that the minus 10 would definitely hit in. In fact he said that was it; he wouldn't be supporting Pompey ever again if they accepted those conditions from the FL. I'm guessing he's dialled down the rhetoric a little bit since, bless him. He was one that I used to enjoy winding up on there when I used to post incognito; he took the bait every time in true meltdown fashion. He's never too far away from throwing all of his toys out of the pram, its quite impressive to watch sometimes.

Is that from Mr Disgusted? I'm absolutely sure he's one of us on a wind up; he cracks me up.

So if a player fouls you, you're entitled to retalliate by headbutting them? So long as they fouled you first, of course? Interesting.

Why do people so often find it appropriate to joke about posters having autism or aspergers? Really odd.

If he came for free on a short term 6 month deal and agreed to chop his wages down to less than £10K per week, it'd be worth thinking about as a replacement while Lallana is injured. Otherwise; no, absolutely not. He really is painfully overpriced.

You mean players like Rickie Lambert? Like Jack Cork? Like Morgan Schneiderlin? All signed while we were in the lower leagues. And we've added to that with Jason Puncheon, Nathaniel Clyne and Jose Fonte. That's more than half our first team made up from players from the NPC or below. Hardly strange.

Therein lies the problem. Allen got completely carried away by the wave of emotion from Pompey fans deseperate for a change from the old routine. Instead of treating both bids with objectivity, he lumped all in with the Trust and decided the best way forward was many public denigrations of Chainrai and Portpin. Fair enough for the man in the street; a truly imbecilic decision from a supposedly independent journalist.

Simon Clifford has asked me to help him restore the fortunes of SOCATOTS, Brazilian Soccer Schools and Garforth Town FC. I have agreed to do so and with some exceptional support from Dominic McNally, Mark Hanson, Fred Lowe, my secretary Jane Sheldrake and some able professional advisers we have already made impressive progress on both fronts. When Simon approached me some three weeks ago, I was well aware of the excellence of the coaching programme that he has developed. We worked together when I was Chairman of Southampton Football Club. I had built up the Academy which had produced players such as Gareth Bale, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade Chamberlain, Adam Lallana, Nathan Dyer, along with many others, and Clive Woodward and I identified Simon Clifford as the most exciting coach with the best philosophy for teaching young people to play exciting, attacking, entertaining and, most importantly, winning football. He would have helped to hone and improve our very talented young players but, as is often the case in football, we were not able to complete my long term plan and I was ousted from the Club in 2006. My confidence in the efficacy of the SOCATOTS and Brazilian Soccer Schools product has been underlined by the enthusiasm and belief of people like Nick and Steph Aresti in South Africa, Will Partington in Jersey, Stuart Owen in Harrogate and Dave Sellar in Lichfield. I have not had the opportunity to speak to all our Franchisees but hope to do so over the coming months. We have now restored the website and email to full working order and will have all our systems/kit supplies operating within a short space of time. We intend to work from the offices of Garforth Town and I would urge any Franchisees to contact either Dominic McNally on telephone 07734669115 or email dominic@braziliansoccerschools.com or Jane Sheldrake on telephone 01242 890350 or email jane.sheldrake@braziliansoccerschools.com if they have any urgent need of support. We will be contacting all Franchisees over the course of the next month in any event. Simon Clifford has agreed to resume responsibility for the Garforth Town FC first team again as well as helping to support our Franchisees with their coaching programmes. What Simon has achieved over the past decade is quite exceptional but I believe that with the right structure around him there is a great deal more to come. Thank you for your support over the past few months, we all look forward to meeting and working with you moving forward.

Indeed true. Which of course makes it very important that the transfer committee get it absolutely right this January. I can see 'Arry being given bundles to spend so that they'll be a threat, and Villa seem to have kicked into some form of gear now too. Losing Lallana for such a time is a massive blow, and we're not exactly stocked with adequate replacements.

Technically yes; but it also massively skews the whole "£3M" net figure. Chamberlain's figure was so high for as much as the potential for him to improve as it was for the level of player he was at the time. In any case, I think the signings to get us to the Premier League were generally very good (both under Pardew and with Adkins). This summer; well the jury is still out in certain areas but I'm not sure if the transfers this summer have had / will have the same impact. So far I deem it as a halfway house transfer summer; some sucesses, some failures in terms who we did and didn't bring in.

The problem with giving him (effectively) 3 different red cards is that he couldn't possibly have received all those red cards if the officials had done their jobs and spotted his actions as and when they happened. If he'd been sent off for the first headbutt he couldn't have done the others. That said; to continue doing what he was doing just shows a worrying level of stupidity. I think the FA will likely bottle it and just go with a 3, maybe 4 game ban. Personally I'd give him a 5 or 6 game ban. Plus Shawcross made too much of a meal of the headbutt, it was a bit embarrassing; I'd give him a one game ban for simulation (and a kicks in the balls to tell him to man up, he's a centre half FFS).

Supplemented by a sale of a youth product for £15M that he had very little to do with developing, to be fair.

Supposedly on 13k a week with us, all underwritten by Bournemouth while he's with them. I've watched him a couple of times this season for them, he was all sorts of average in both games.

Think you need to have a rethink of that one. Mudie cops tons of stick from POL for his pro Chainrai tendencies. And Joe Michalczuk is a blatant Chainrai sock puppet, he could easily be one of us nutjobs for the amount he gets into bed with Portpin and derides the PDT; he is absolutely despised on POL, Scumfinder General frattoniser the van driver was desperate to ban him.

She's nicely spoken, but really not very intelligent. At all. http://audioboo.fm/boos/1114734-portsmouth-north-mp-penny-mordaunt-speaking-on-football-hour-14-dec-pompey Um, er, um, er, you know, you know.

Out of interest; in your bizarre effort to get Lallana dropped, who were you proposing should replace him?

Poor man management if you don't know how to get the most out of your most talented players.

I can't believe Jonno Quick gets disregarded out of hand. You lot know f*ck all.

The question I have is this: if the PDT are indeed completely external to the sale of Fratton Park, what is the deal connecting REL and PKF? Could another party offer £2.76M and be in a position to buy the land (ahead of the court case)? Why do REL have exclusivity? I always thought the PDT were buying the ground and then selling it immediately to REL. It would seem that's not the case and its actually in reverse; the PDT really are backseat drivers in all this.

Again from Micah Hall. In fact, the £1m figure covers from October to mid January and includes legal fees, but the club is not washing its own face. I've been in there getting emails generated and trying to get the marketing side off the ground (at my own expense) to try and get some revenue coming in. We need to turn things round urgently a d that's what we are working to do.

Well the money they're putting in can't be secured against anything, so it is a gift. Rather like the manner in which Leon Crouch dipped into his own pocket to keep us going.