The Kraken

I agree. As I've said above to MLG, I think whatever league we are in we will always struggle to keep players when the likes of United, City, Arsenal, Spurs come calling. Where we may have better success than in the past is when the likes of Everton, Villa, Sunderland start sniffing around. I believe Cortese when he hints at making the stadium bigger; I think we'll definitely look at it in the next few years, though I don't quite buy into the revisionist theories and 45K expectations. I think a 40K stadium is potentially, in the next few years, possible. Which makes us a bigger attraction and, provided we don't get loaded with debt doing it (unknown right now) able to maximise profits better.

What you say is true; however in all three of the cases of Walcott, Bale and Oxo I doubt whether Premier League status would ultimately have made much difference to them staying. When the top 3 or 4 clubs come calling its very difficult for any club to resist, whether in the PL or Championship. I'm not sure I agree with your analogy either of players staying until their mid-20s. Maybe in some cases you're right. But you only have to look at Rooney (moved to United at 19), Daniel Sturridge (Chelsea at 20), Fabregas (Arsenal at 16), Pique (United at 17), and however many others to show that when the really big clubs come calling (even from other big clubs) there isn't a lot clubs can do to keep their best prospects. Where I imagine we will better success in when the clubs just below the top 4 or so come calling, the likes of Villa, Everton, Sunderland, Newcastle. We may just be able to show that we have something equal to offer than they could get there.

I admire the rationale and sentiment, but it's not totally steeped in reality. The one Academy graduate he leaves out, Lallana, has been an exception to the norm. Walcott, Bale, Chamberlain all in very recent years have been enormously keen to leave the club as soon as a bigger name club came calling. Unfortunately not all players will buy into the "love of the club" mantra, in fact most won't. Being in the Premier League will give us a big leg-up in keeping our better academy graduates. But it won't be the be all and end all, we still have to face reality that we'll likely be a selling club (as most in the top dvision are).

That's a fair principle to take. Personally I don't believe its £15M, but then no-one has any real estimation of the actual cost so its a moot point. This type of investment is very good to see within the club. Staplewood was a tired building and needed some form of upgrade to bring it up to at least a mid-range Premier League club, which is where we're aiming to go. I guess Cortese's idea was, if you're going to spend a few million on it anyway, why not spend a bit more and get the best. Its one of the things we can control; getting the foundations right. We won't compete with the top clubs for wages paid or transfers fees shelled out, so we've got to looka t what we can lead at. Control the controllables, I'm sure I've heard that somewhere! MLG and many others have had disagreements about the potential stadium expansion, but I think there has always been an agreement by most/all that an extended St. Marys is not out of the question by any means, just a point of when and by how much. Personally I'll stick to my opinion that we're still at least 2 or 3 years away from that, but in the meantime what we're seeing here is a very nice show of progress, and also I'd hope an indication that its the start of something with us from the owners/CEO.

As I said at the top of this page; the CVA is administered by Baker Tilly, who were effectively put in place by HMRC. And their policy is to oppose any CVA that provides anything less than full repayment of all debt. So good luck with that one.

It's pretty outrageous what PFC have done with this, though no real surprise. And I fully expect the FL to try to brush this one under the carpet, as I very much doubt they have it within their written rules to do anything about it. That said, what this does do is create a formal £16.5M club debt, which is controlled by Baker Tilly. That debt will form part of any new CVA. And being as Baker Tilly effectively represent HMRC, they will surely push for nothing less than full repayment of the CVA amount. And as a £16.5M debt will be more than 25% of the total debt, it's quite clear Baker Tilly hold all the cards here. With that in mind, they are NEVER going to get a CVA agreed, surely? Which will then mean further points deductions per the FL's rules.

Shut the bars too; God forbid anyone should be drinking between the hours of 3 and 5, that would be entirely ludicrous. Who on earth needs to partake in such wanton folly?

If ever there was a example that the penalties and restrictions for going into administration are too slack, Pompey are it. Also, to a slightly lessr extent, Crystal Palace. I've nothing against the Eagles, but their admin in the last year or two was also a sham; -10 points, pay 1p in the pound of debts, stayed in the same league. It just doesn't sit right with me. Administration should be a proper punishment, and for me it doesn't quite work right now.

This forum is fantastic. It really is. Not only are fellow paying customers being instructed by their peers exactly how and when they should support their team, when they should arrive, when they should depart, what songs they should sing, what songs they shouldn't sing, at what pace those songs should be sung etc etc etc, they are now apparently being told when they are allowed to eat! Great stuff. I'll be sure to stay tuned for the next episode in SMS acceptable behaviour.

The huge flaw in that argument is that Huddersfield kept pace with us during that run-in. All we had to do (and did) was get in front of them and then match their results. If our run of spectacular results was unable to be predicted, so was theirs. In any case, nobody had to predict that we would go on such an amazing run. The prediction was that we would stay ahead of Huddersfield, which we did.

God, that was another one. I was at college when I heard he'd been sacked, and was delighted. "The new manager is Ian Branfoot". "Er, who?". "Well, he used to be a coach at Crystal Palace". Ok then.

For mine; naturally there's probably quite a few so amongst those: Burley being a great appointment. Getting rid of Pardew a stupid move; replacing him with someone like Adkins even more daft. Hooiveld a desperate last minute signing for the sake of it once we'd lost our better targets.

"We will finish 16th - 18th in League 1" was a particularly insightful one too.

That's symptomatic of the MoD in general, or at least every department I've had experience of working with. Money and resources are no object whatsoever; they'll try to do it in house, throw huge manpower and funding at the problem, then when they realise they can't actually do what they need to do they'll outsource it to a select supplier (usually BAE in my experience) at huge, set labour rates and enormous cost. There is seemingly no-one held accountable for keeping costs low, or keeping projects on schedule. The most inefficient organisation I've worked with (except for the US Army, who to be fair are even worse due to the compartively gargantuan budgets they work with).

Ooh yes, you've got me all rattled you silly little sausage. Though by the way, I'm not the one ganging up on the early leavers by agreeing with the fella calling them "c*nts". That bit was you, by the way. I prefer to stay to the end. So do you, apparently. Quite why it provokes such anger that others don't buy into that, I do find odd. As you say, each to their own though.

Really? How can we become confirmed champions before April falls? I'm intrigued.

I'm ambivalent to it all. As I said above, I stay to the end because I live locally, but I totally understand if people want to leave early for whatever reason, including beating traffic. You seem to be amongst the ones getting all teary and stomping your feet about others not sharing your own values on all things SFC. If you want to stay to then end, good for you. If they want to leave its entirely up to them. They've supported the team and the club, and they've paid their money. Again, I wouldn't leave early, I don't need to and (usually) don't want to. But quite why so many people get so arsey and upset about those who do, I just find that thoroughly weird and obsessive.

Chicken balti pastie. Have one of those and you won't entertain such ludicrous thoughts as vegetarianism again.

As far as trophies go, its a thing of beauty. A perfect example of the contrast between old school tradition of "Division 1" and the bling, tacky Premier League ™ monstrosity. Unfortunately though, as nice as it would be to win it, its all secondary to the actual aim of getting promotion to the top league. Winning the league is just the icing on the cake to getting out of this division; whether it happens by finishing first, second or up through the play-offs, the end result is exactly the same. I'd prefer to win the league; of course I would, it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise. But if you offered me now a guarantee of promotion this year, but going up in second place, I'd absolutely take it. No-one remembers who won the Championship 5 years ago, do they?

Or it could be that you're the pr*ck for getting so hot, bothered and all upset about the fact that other people you don't even know choose to support the team in their own way. But there we go.

I think Supersonic's idea that he could look cool and brave on the internet has backfired somewhat! Silly tw*t.

If Cestrian Saint isn't on a wind-up then he's either massively stupid, a bit mixed up in the head or just has a enormously misplaced air of arrogance. "When will people realise we're not going up" indeed. What a thoroughly ridiculous suggestion to present as fact.

Exactly right. Not an issue for me either as I'm within walking distance and usually go to the pub afterwards anyway. But, especially when we have crowds of 30K+, you'd have to be an utter dribbling idiot not to recognise that the traffic getting out of town is an absolute shocker. if some people want to get away and beat the worst of it, I have no problem with that and can't believe how unbelievably precious some people are on here that have got their knickers into such a twist about it and are stamping their feet about how unfair it all is. I usually go down for a beer before half time on around about 40 minutes, so that I don't have to wait for 10 minutes in a queue and then don't have to down my drink within 5 minutes. Sometimes we even have a couple of pints and make it back to our seats 5 or 10 minutes into the second half. I expect some of the uber-fans will start crying about what a shameful state of affairs that is as well.

Wow. You're a brilliant mind reader to know for certain what they were thinking from that far away. Go you.

Being as they're talking about making over 5000 tickets available, potentially more, I don't think there'll be too much bother for those who really want to go.