The Kraken

It's a sensitive subject; I certainly think the city should be doing a hell of a lot in terms of rememberance. I'm split on whether the club should or not, and can see the arguments on either side as to what SFC should do before the game. If the club are going to do something, it needs to be built up so that people know its going to happen. Just having an off the cuff on the day "by the way, we're having a minute's silence for the Titanic" is inappropriate, it's all or nothing for me. But in any case, I'm out of the country until May so it's not really something that affects me anyway...

Too long; didn't read.

Birch isn't saying any of that. The £1K is an initiative by their supporters trust. Which is clearly doomed to fail, as nobody knows how much the club will cost to buy, how much it will cost to run, who the money will go to, and what you actually end up owning for your money. What an investment!

Without wishing to be too pedantic, that's not entirely true. Our current average attendance is just over 25,500. Previous years in the Championship showed average attendances of 23.5K, 23.5K, 21K and 17.5K. In mitigation, we've never had a season as successful or trouble-free as this one, which would somewhat explain the extra 2K on the gate.

You just hit the nail on the head. At the moment, despite what anyone says, no-one has any realistic idea as to what sort of regular crowds we could achieve. There are estimates we can all make (and have done to death), but for now that's all they are. What we can be sure will happen over the next 2 or 3 years is that Cortese will certainly be monitoring the situation very closely, in terms of: How many season ticket holders we have. How quickly the home seats sell out. What sort of level of applications there are for tickets beyond that. Plus various other methods (e.g. online ballot for tickets) which would give an indication as to what a realistic capacity stadium is for us in the top flight. If the numbers are proved feasible, then I'm sure a very good case will be put forward for increasing the stadium capacity. If it turns out the numbers don't stack up, then I'm sure we'll look to maximising other revenue streams.

Is that true? Slightly different scenario, but I'm sure when it was bein mooted that Pompey could go bust that their parachute payments would return to the PL.

No chance. My mate owns a pub in town and he'll definitely be open for it, whereas in the past he's been "advised" by the police to close. Prior to the bubble the police were quite hot on shutting some pubs down for the morning/day; well they didn't say pubs "had" to close down, but that if there was trouble the landlord was pretty much on his own! The bubble has seen to it that pubs can now open up as per normal.

Avenue Saint seems a little bit emotional about it all. Worryingly so.

Yep, just saw it on ebay myself.

Up: Us, Reading and Cardiff (only because my mate works for them and I get free tickets.....) Down: Wigan, Bolton, Blackburn, clubs who have settled for league mediocrity and can't fill their small grounds.

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.