The Kraken

The wait goes on and on....

Build it now.

The ultimate non-denial denial. He'd get on well at Bolton; they're massive in the sh*t financially so can continue to peddle his "need more money to be competitive" f*ckwittery.

Christ, that's almost as bad as the Westwood picture. Bargepole with her touch a wouldn't.

Correct, I guess it comes down the definition of being competitive. Most rational people would term that as being able to put out a side that can prove to be the equal of others, and not lose every single game. A side with a fighting chance of surviving in the league and with a reliastic chance of winning some games is a competitive one. Pompey and particularly Appleton define being competitive as winning more games than you'll lose, of expecting to steamroller the "smaller" sides in the division; and they'll attribute each draw or defeat to a lack of competitiveness, and an unfairness of the rules imposed by the Football League. Edit: in other words, what Trousers said.

Appleton's actions are absolutely f*cking shameful, and all Portsmyth fans should hang their heads in shame if they go along with his nonsensical witterings. YOUR CLUB IS IN MASSIVE DEBT. You need to trim little bits here and there; you've lost the right to be competitve and should thank your lucky stars you're still able to put out a team with players that most of the other clubs in the division cannot afford. When will all be enough? When is the overspending ever going to stop, when the manager is all too keen to encourage and more to the point the local news NEVER, EVER question where the money is coming from and what the current wage levels are. Appleton is just an ignorant joke of a manager. Shame on the Portsmouth News who just accept his mad ramblings as fact and don't ever dare to ask to the questions that the fans don't want to hear.

The loyalty points system has been a shambles from start to finish. Yes, it needs to start at some point in time (with everybody on the same level of points) but my God this has been hopelessly mismanaged. Our ticket office is an absolute joke these days, a real farce.

I remember going away to Highbury and the Saints faithful tried to ingratiate themselves with the Gooners by starting a rendition of "if you all hate Tottenham clap your hands". It was in the extreme. Although quite funny when ex-Spurs man Dave Howells scored the equaliser for us; the anti-Spurs link kind of got forgotten by our lot after that.

It's not so much the fact that they cheat or circumvent the rules; it's how brazen they are in doing it. And how they still shamefully deny their ongoing cheating, time and time again.

If you're going to nitpick, it's "penmanship".

PES, if you're going to celebrate your past heroes its perhaps best to get their names right. It's Jimmy Dickinson, by the way. Not Dickerson. HTH.

After having watched Yoshida playing out of position at right back I'd be loathe to seeing him out of position again. Admittedly a DM role would be easier to adapt to than at RB but I feel we have enough square pegs in round holes already (and having Yoshida play there would mean having Hooiveld in the team; no thanks).

As for the thread topic of gelling/settling; I must have missed it, as I've yet to see anyone suggest that the squad needs time to gel. We could do with a run without injuries though, that would be nice.

Doesn't really explain the times when Lambert wasn't on the pitch and Rodriguez was still playing wide left (e.g. Man City opening day).

Despite criticism of him in the immediate aftermath of last night's capitulation to the mighty Wycombe, it seems as if the Pompey "faithful" have regained their inertia and are deludedly back behind their man. Although, what's this........ah, no, that was but a lone voice in the dark:

Not really, no; the tickets are being spread out over 15 games.

Oh don't get me wrong, I don't trust a word that comes out of Appleton's mouth. I think he's almost unique in being a combination of an abject liar while also at the same time being completely ignorant of the full facts surrounding "his" club. A feature highlighted by his ridiculous previous statement of "our wage budget is definitely one of the bottom 2 or 3 in the division"!It clearly isn't Appy, and that myth has been completely put to bed by the various players and managers that commented on how absurd a suggestion that was. You're right that it is semantics, but the version I choose to go with (as you say its mostly speculation but, bloody hell, that's what this thread is for!!) is that at the start of summer Portpin had informal chats with Birch and in principle went along with Birch's suggestion of an average wage figure of around £4K per player per week. This was in keeping with the wages that Birch was paying out to the high earners at that time; the likes of Ben Haim, Kitson etc etc were being paid £5K per week with the rest going into their big old deferral pot. Birch and Appy then went out and highlighted the players, and just before the start of the season Chainrai submitted his bid confirming a wage level of only £1.5K per week. At whch point Appy spat his dummy out, yet Birch still went ahead and signed the players. That may be how it happened, it may not. In any case, however it happened one thing is surely true: neither Portpin's bid nor the PST's bid were originally set up to accommodate wages of the kind that are reputedly being paid right now. Birch has taken a very short term view IMO and recruited the players on higher wages than the club can afford in the longer term, knowing that they the players are on month to month contracts and by the time the takeover goes through, he will be out of the door and it'll be someone else's problem to sort out their own budget and play within the FL's sanctions. He of course can get away with that now as the parachute payments are subsidising the operating budget (well, up until the player deferral payments are due of course) and the FL sanctions and reviews don't come in until the club exits administration.

A lot of it is summarised in this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19244057 Now, perhaps you're right that Appleton set himself a budget, but I somehow doubt it. Any figure would certainly have been in collusion with Birch, and most likely also with an estimated player budget from Portpin at the start of the summer, as they were the only definite bidder at the start of summer. At the time of the announcement of the £1.5M budget from Portpin, pretty much all player deferrals had been agreed. Perhaps that was Portpin's reaction to the deferral agreements, but it can't have been a warning as, like I say, the agreements had already been made.

Appy has decided not to even defend such an abject result, claiming its only the 3 points on Saturday that matters. That being the case, I'm inclined to wonder why he put out a full strength team tonight. Although I'm surprised at his ambivalence, given his constant clamouring for more funds for ever more players.

The handwringing continues from the bestest who never criticise their own...

They've played two though, so they're ok. PST only budgeted for one of each cup game per season. It was a rare piece of conservatism from them. Not that it matters. Trevster is working to his own budget; the PST or Portpin will have to sift through the wreckage of PKF's blatant overspending and adjust accordingly.

7,292 is a pretty good attendance for them, to be fair. Sadly for them they lose half the gate receipts to Wycombe and a share to the Football League; and with tickets priced at only £10 a ticket, they've probably only cleared enough funds to pay PKF's bills for another 3 or 4 days. What a shame those plucky boys couldn't progress further to bring in more much needed revenues. Tricky Trev and his pals will just have to continue to pull their fees from the ever depleting post-takeover operating budget (which, lets face it, could end up entirely depleted at this rate).

It would seem the natives down the road are getting a bit restless with their glorious leader... And all this from the supporters who never, ever get on the team's back and who never, ever have a go at the manager.

He's certainly been fine at giving away penalties, scoring own goals and making rudimentary errors that have directly led to us conceding. He's perhaps the most un-fine defender I've seen in the Premier League for quite some time. In fact his woefulness at times has been quite spectacular.

:lol: I'm still convinced this chap is one of us on a wind-up; he's absolutely classic.