The Kraken

Is he having a personal toilet installed? I'm starting to think Little Nicky might have OCD.

Alpine has got something of a point. Its not a complete point, as he has failed to recognise the obvious shades of gray in his logic, but its significant enough to warrant discussion. Unfortunately, making his point in the manner that he does and being deliberately provocative and obnoxious reduces it from a discussion to a pointless argument. Hooiveld will be dropped for the next game, surely. In fact I'm struggling to understand why Butterfield wasn't on the bench as an option on Sunday. Butterfield is no long term option by any means, but he's a decent pro and I'm convinced he'd have done at least as well as Yoshida at right back. And I'm also convinced that Yoshi would have done much better at CB than Jos (but then that's not much of a point to make). We have had a lot of injuries, and for a squad that wasn't going to be top 10 anyway, its hit us hard. Cork and Lee out since the start of the season, since then at various points we've lost Clyne, Fox, Morgan, Davis, Ramirez and now Richardson. Those injuries have simply highlighted the lack of depth of the squad in key areas (CB, CM in particular); so the injuries aren't totally to blame, but then neither is the summer transfer activity fully to blame either. Where we are is a combination of things: a tough fixture list; some poor tactical decisions by Nigel; a number of individual avoidable errors by players; some injuries to put second string players into the firing line; and any combination of other factors. We're 4th from bottom. I take solace from the fact we're not bottom, and that we've shown more than just glimpses of what we're capable of doing in most of our games. That said if Reading draw their game in hand we're in the bottom 3; and I heard a stat on the radio yesterday saying that the current bottom 3 sides have yet to win a league game, and at this stage of the season that's the most number of teams to fail to register a win since the Premier League began. So there is room for optimism, but we need to not get carried away by the "out of the bottom 3" factor. I hope we stick with Nigel Adkins. Most of all, I hope he gets a run of at least 2 or 3 games with limited injuries, just so that he can have a fair crack of being judged with as close to his first choice line-up as possible. That really hasn't happened at all yet, and with Ramirez looking a long term doubt it may not for some time.

Agreed. The overdraft was on its way down from over £6M to £4M. Other financial considerations were being met; the club wasn't healthy by any stretch but tax, NI, wages etc etc were all being paid, as were all outstanding creditors. Players had been lost from the wage bill, plans were in place to lose more at the end of the season to bring in much needed funds. Barclays obviously saw something they didn't like and changed the conditions, and that was the end game.

What they did is start the summer with Portpin telling Birch his business plan would likely include a budget at £4K per player per week. Appleton then went off to source a squad of players at that wage level, and took many of them on pre-season. Days before the start of the season, Portpin dropped a bombshell that they would only be able to subsidise a £1.5K per player per week allowance. Appleton then squinnied in the papers about how unfair it was, and how he now needed to go and find a whole new squad of players within that new budget. At that point Trevor Birch had a decision to make. He could let Pompey start the season by playing the kids (and likely losing every game, driving crowds and revenues down). Or he could just sign up the players Appy had originally sourced, at the original £4K per week budget, but just on 1 month contracts. Those players should have more than enough to be very competitive in League 1 (most other L1 clubs can't afford at least half of Pompey's team, that's for sure), and if the sale went through within a month or two then the league table looked healthier and it was someone else's problem to take over and manage the budget when PKF left; Tricky Trev had done his bit, by jove. However, he hasn't. 2 months on and they're looking not much closer to exiting admin than at the start of the season. As soon as the club do exit administration, they start to come under FL review of their wages. In administration, they aren't there yet. And under FL review they have to provide a business plan, and demonstrate that they are working within the confines of the budgets set within that plan. In other words; all of their players must accept massive wage drops, or they have to find new players on much lower wages. While PKF hoover up more and more working capital day by day, one thing is becoming very clear: whoever takes over has all sorts of financial black holes to plug, and a wage bill that they have to more than halve in size. All alongisde a manager who is constantly crying that £4K per week isn't enough and he should be allowed to sign many more players. Good luck with that.

The fact that you see it in such black and white, and wrap it up nice and neatly into two little soundbites, makes for a throughly weak argument. There are many other factors than the two you've just mentioned. Actually, I don't know why I bother. You only seem to deal in absolutes, and not in shades of gray. And being as you can't see the blatant hypocrisy in you stance towards FF being content where we are as a side right now I guess I shouldn't bother carrying on, so I'll leave it here.

In the general "doesn't get it" stakes, Appy is right up there with the best of them. Izale McLeod on £4K a week. Brian Howard, Lee Williamson, Akos Buzsaky, Luke Rodgers et al no doubt on a similar wage level. Yet Portpin's wage budget is £1.5K per player per week; the Trust's is a slightly more generious £2.5K per player per week. Or at least those WERE the budgets before Tricky Trev put the PKF timesheets into overdrive and hoovered up most of the operating budget. We're now almost two whole months on from the point at which fees owed to PKF stood at £1.85M. The club is going to need another parachute payment just to keep Trev and his happy band of overchargers in business, never mind the operating budget. But, even despite all that, Appy says its not enough. Appy wants more money, more players, to be more competitive. Because its Pompey innit, they deserve to be competitive, they're a big scalp in this division and right now, with the international players they're employing on wages that the club can't sustain in the long term, well its just not right that such a plucky club has to suffer so much. Is it?

Of course you can take a positive from where your side are in the table. At any point in time. If we were top of the Premier League right now we'd naturally be thumping each other on the back and wondering just what might happen this season. Similarly if we had lost every game 4-0 we'd be expecting relegation and probably looking for a change of manager. We are where we are. Our games played (and the performances therein) are an indicator of what might happen. Just as they are for you to make a statement of: If you can't or won't see the hypocrisy in what you're saying then that's fine. But on one hand you're saying FF's positivity after 7 games is meaningless, yet your scepticism of the squad after 7 games is entirely relevant.

I do agree with the transfer part. However I think you're putting words in FF's mouth if you think he said that where we are is some form of definite indicator for where we'll be later. Lets look at the post you highlighted: Where does that state that we'll be ok after 38 games? It doesn't. It states that we're currently 4th from bottom, and we're not adrift or even in the bottom 3. Which as things stand is an entirely reasonable place to be. You seem to have taken that as a complete prediction of where we'll be at the end of the season; its actually nothing of the sort, and shouldn't be treated as such. Its a statement akin to "we've had a tought start, perhaps disappointing in places, but we're still well in touch and there are currently 3 teams worse than us, so there are positive signs as well as negative ones".

Leaving aside the fact that Reading have a game in hand on us and a draw or a win would take them above us..... But no; I don't understand why FF's view of saying where we are after 7 games is unacceptable, but your view of where we are after 7 games as an indicator to the rest of the season and the overall quality of the squad is accurate.

Its also one of the most ridiculous. Alpine first of all claims that its nonsense to make any sort of judgement of our position after only 7 games, as it'll probably bear little relation to where we'll be after 38 games. However, he then goes on to claim that (in his opinion) those first 7 games played tells us all we need to know about our squad and that our position after 7 games is actually fairly accurate. It's a complete rambling mess of a statement.

There's many aspects of the online system that could do with improving. That issue is very much one of them. Another is that, for games that are really close to selling out (admittedly we've only had one of those so far) there is no way to know which blocks have available tickets for sale without actually clicking into them. Load time per block can often take 5 to 10 seconds each, and with 42 available blocks to choose from it can become a laborious exercise. There should be some sort of function to highlight which blocks still have groups of available tickets and which ones are sold out.

For the Wigan and game and the Man United game the seats at the front of the stands (partciularly in the Itchen) were all shown as totally sold out pre-game, only for big gaps to be seen during the game. So, rather than this scroll issue, there was obviously a bit of a cock up in the ticket office for these seats to not actually go out on sale. For the Villa game and Fulham game we've been well short of selling out capacity, and while there have been gaps at the front of the stand, the bigger gaps have actually been seen high up in the Chapel/Itchen corner. And, lets face it, the worst seats to view a game from are those right at the front behind the goals, so its perhaps only natural that they'd be the lest seats to sell out. Against Tottenahm, which we be a sellout, we'll get an idea if the ticket office have sorted themselves out and actually managed to get all available seats out for sale.

If you hit the "drag" button at the top you click and drag down for the seats at the front. It would seem this has been a common misunderstanding.

Why is it crazy? Just how many people do you think want Adkins out of his job? Do you really think its a sizeable majority? A poll on here was voted on by nearly 600 people; and it came back that around 6% of posters agreed Nigel should be replaced. At least one of those posters admitted that he pressed the wrong button and was actually behind the manager. So you're talking about a very fine minority of people that aren't behind the manager; yet this forum has got about 5 different threads all alluding to how terrible it is that "people" want the manager out. Get a grip. Most people are still completely behind the manager. A few oddballs aren't, but they're in the minority. Football is a game of opinions and you will rarely get 100% consensus on any opinion; this is entirely no different, and 95% behind the manager is about as good as you're realistically going to get.

First of all; 95% of those polled suggested they were behind the manager. Save for a few wackos that's a pretty convincing statistic that the fans are behind the manager, wouldn't you say? Secondly, who is getting on the backs of the players? Unless I missed it at the Fulham game there wasn't any barracking of our players, and no booing of individuals. Puncheon, our recently most derided player, was given a standing ovation when he went off. What "getting on players backs" am I missing here? It seems like a few people are getting themselves at it about a situation which doesn't really exist, or if it does only in the heads of a complete minority. If you're searching for 100% of the fanbase to agree with you 100% of the time then you're always going to come up disappointed; there will always be the unhinged such as Dalek or Lard to skew the percentage away from total conclusivity.

Godwin's law after a mere 27 posts; impressive.

It seems the Pompey locals' opinions of Micah Hall have changed somewhat. Now that the going is less good than when they were ignorantly riding the gravy train, I suppose there is more inclination to remove fingers from ears and get a proper perspective of events.

Like I say though, we need names. Otherwise you've just ignored the views of 550 people to send a message to a bunch of 35 weirdos.

So two people. And miltonroader is slightly unhinged anyway, he's started sending me PMs asking what I think about Directors' of Football. Its a start.

Is there any way these 37 can be outed? Might be quite useful for future reference. Although at least 1 of those confessed to pressing the wrong button on the poll.

Perhaps true, but at lease my arse-aching dullnees was kept nice and concise, so that's nice.

At 25 years old you've kind of got to wonder how much difference coaching is going to make to his game now. He's not exactly a raw youngster, he should theoretically be right in his prime.

Very odd. I might make a thread for all those Saints fans that want Steve Cotterill as our manager instead of Nigel Adkins; it would be about as relevant as this one (though I'd strive to make it much less arse-achingly pompous and f*cking tedious).

Precisely. Who is that long winded waffle actually aimed at?