The Kraken

Oh aintforever, you must have missed the end of last season's high jinx on here. Kelvin for the England squad for the Euros was the mantra being trotted out by more than a few lone nutters!

:lol: Its "Kelvin for England" all over again!

Sadly I think this is exactly what will happen.

Chainrai is running scared; there's no need for him to put out that statement if he's in line to take over. Its a publicity statement only, it will not influence his bid in any way; so it has been done to garner public perception that his bid is more stable than the Trust's. Chainrai, the Trust and Sulaiman Al FatSlob all seem to want to conduct their business in public; its shameful whoremongering from the lot of them. Then you've got that moron Neil Allen eschewing all efforts at unbiased news reporting by castigating Portpin's bid both on his personal twitter feed and through the medium of the Pompey News. What a sad charade. Althought it admittedly makes for great reading this end of the M27!

And de-loused myself. I think I might have nits.

My scout mate was watching Pompey last night, so a couple of us made the trip down there with him to watch from the Swindon end. My God, Pompey were terrible. Its no exaggeration to say that Swindon could have been 4 or 5 up by half time, such was their dominance. At the other end Izale Mcleod did his best Jonny Wilkinson impressions by clearing the away stand roof with the couple of chances that slipped his way. Its true that Pompey turned it on for the last 10 minutes; and while they could indeed have gotten back in it, it would have been wholly unjustified. Their only decent players on the night were Brian Howard (too good for League 1) and their goalkeeper, who won the man of the match award. The "Fratton roar" was nowhere to be heard either. Plenty of banging on the drum but not much singing at all, it all sounded like a carninval band piping up and I was waiting for the majorettes to come out. Quite cringeworthy really. "Passionate fans" my arse, they were singing about going on a League 2 tour and moaning at their manager "Appy make a sub". Even their ner ner nerring was very tepid. After a visit to Fratton I'm now more than ready for Saturday's trip to a proper football stadium and not being around a group of knuckle-dragging fans who, quite frankly, freak me out a bit.

I find that "reporting" every bit as distasteful as the Sun's standard tactics. Kelvin McKenzie is an odious f*cknugget, but lowering oneself to his level is simply not the answer. I'd have grabbed hold of that reporter and driven off at speed, had he tried to stop me closing my own car door in such an openly aggressive manner.

You still think the corporate areas will sell out completely? Interesting.

The seating plan says not; but then that's exactly what it said before. Even for the Man Utd game, which sold out nearly 2 weeks in advance and yet there were still at least 200 empty seats in plain view. I did have a look at the seating plan as soon as Villa tickets went on sale; and it seemed like those previously empty blocks of seats were actually on sale this time round. So hopefully the club have sorted it out, either by reducing the amount of comps that weren't taken up or by moving those seats higher up in the stands and out of immediate camera view. For some reason it always bugs me that the segregation of fans is often directly behind the goal, it looks a bit ridiculous.

Minor error in my calcs, its actually 1650 tickets still available. Northam has sold out apart from literally 1 or 2 singles. Kingland is fairly full, about 50 or 60 tickets throughout. Chapel is the most available, blocks 10 to 19 have 1,450 tickets still available. And still around 50 tickets in blocks 1-4 (with no huge blocks unsold down the front so hopefully that's been sorted out).

We were never going to sell this one out in advance with the boat show on at the same time........

Around 1700 Saints tickets remaining as of just now, so we're getting fairly close.

I'm not sure who you're referrring to about histrionincs, if I'm honest. I can just see a few people pointing out that the club failed to fill the manager's stated objectives of players coming in to the club over the summer, and our struggles so far this season as a consequence. Yes, we can debate many things. Other things being debated are whether the manager will lose his job if we don't win our next home game, so I think it an entirely relevant subject.

I'm not sure why people have to be such revisionists in a staunch defence of the club. As Turkish said; the manager very clearly said that he wanted to strengthen the defence with a couple of CBs and a left back, as well as bringing in a couple of GKs. That didn't happen, so by its very nature something failed. People can gloss over it all they like with whys, wherefore and other such justifcation of how its no-one's fault (least of all the club), but it remains that the manager identified a need to replace the back line and didn't fulfill that. As a consequence we've played 4 games and conceded at least 2 goals in every single game (with a good deal of the goals we've let in clearly down to individiual errors from some of the players the manager was hoping to replace).

Yeah, maybe. I think I was just trying to highlight the general point that relegation needn't immediately result in sacking the manager. Its a moot point anyway, as you say Adkins wouldn't survive a relegation, its debatable he'll even get that far.

I think even you'd recognise that Terry Connor is a thoroughly barmy example. I used Holloway as an example because the parallels with Adkins and us are very similar. He went there when they were struggling, moulded them into his shape, improved them, got them promoted, played decent football but ultimately weren't quite string enough to stay up. They kept with him and I'm sure are thankful they did; as such they're a decent enough example to use.

I'm aware of that. My point was that Blackpool have stuck with Holloway, they were fairly decent last year and made the playoffs, they look like mounting a decent challenge this season. This from a side who aren't exactly huge, but they've managed to keep the bulk of their team together.

Yeah, I think a lot of people are suddenly a bit fearful that NA has one more game to save his job.

I disagree. Against Wigan I'm not sure the tactics were right, at least as the game progressed (we started quite well). I can't fault the Man city game, United we were 5 minutes from an epic result (even a draw would have been very good), yesterday just a p*ss poor performance from too many players. In any case, the true measure starts now. Wigan, a let down. Our next 3 games are against sides where we've kind of got to expect to take points from, and the performance levels will allow us to see where we are. I'd hope Cortese recognises this and at the very, very least gives NA the next 3 games before he makes a decision; somehow I don't think he will, and NA will be judged on the result against Villa.

That's just conjecture. If he personally makes mistakes then yes, probably. If the team (and in particular the defence) keep making mistakes to cost us games then I'm more inclined to blame our failure to strengthen where truly required. The team has let the manager down a bit so far; the Arsenal performance was entirely down to individual mistakes and not a reflection on the manager. The Man Utd game; great tactics to get us to 2-1, less so to allow us to give it away (although precipitated again by individual player error).

You assume all our players would leave; some would but not as many as you may think. Look at West Ham; they kept a lot of their side in place after relegation and it paid dividends, they were promoted straight away. If that happened to us, it would still be within the 5 year plan. I don't believe we'd lose an enormous amount of players, we'd lose Ramirez and probably Lallana, maybe 1 or 2 others. But (I'd hope) we'd be in a financial position to resist low-ball offers and maximise returns from outgoing players, while still retaining a core of a squad who could give promotion a proper tilt (whilst allowing us to bring in 2 or 3 to replace those leaving).

Do you think he should go in that scenario? I mean, being realistic, if we lose every game until then, then yes, he should probably go. But say our form picks up a little, we're still in the bottom three but have a win or two under our belts; do you think he should be fired then?

Yes; but Pompey were not so long ago looking for a new ground; in which case the council covenant would be null and void had you actually found a suitable site and moved (Harbourdome lols). Mandaric, Gaydamak etc were all looking at ways to develop the land at Fratton for housing etc as a way of part-financing a new ground. So, with that argument, Chainrai could very easily claim that were he looking to move stadium the charge over the land would be redundant and the value of the land would actually be more than in its current incarnation. The Dell got sold for £5M all those years ago; the Fratton Park footprint must be close to double of the Dell, what with the big car parks behind both ends. There are many ways in which a sports and recreation covenant could be got around, if only for valuation purposes. I truly believe the £3M figure has absolutely no hope of sticking.

Blackpool didn't lose Ince & Phillips; we would have more financial clout than them anyway, plus the parachute payments in place mean we wouldn't need to sell (so even if we did lose players we'd still be able to attract a decent fee for them). We'd lose Ramirez, and probably Lallana, but would get in enough in transfer fees to regroup for another tilt at the title. As we found out, with the right manager it doesn't take an enormous amount of money to build a promotion winning squad.

I'm of the opinion that, even if we were to get relegated, I'd stick with the manager. For a number of reasons: - He's done a brilliant job to get us promoted twice in successive seasons. - The quality of football we're playing is decent, and at times we look a very good side. - The weaknesses in goal and in defence were addressed by the manager at the start of the transfer window and not adequately covered by the transfer committee. - If we did go down this season, I can't think of a manager better equipped to get us back up again at the first time of asking (look at HollowHead at Blackpool).