SaintBobby

Neil Allen ‏@NeilAllenPN Can you name the personality shown in my profile? Email answer to neil.allen@thenews.co.uk. First ten correct answers win #Pompeyaway shirt

Think I'd take a point tbh. I'd nearly always settle for a point away from home.

Just slightly misleading headline. I'd like us to sign Messi. Have not started a "Messi signs" thread.

Loving this parody account :-) Neil Allen @NeilAllenPN For all those asking, the answer is "no". Although my job depends on the survival of #Pompey, I am not mad enough to give the Trust £1000.

It's not entirely clear whether he's signed a 5 year deal or is just amorphously "pledging his future" to the club, from the OS article.

Stephen Davis. Nails.

I' m quite persuaded by what Kraken has said actually. I'm happy for the club to stay quiet if this helps, but I am starting to wonder if it really does. Is there an actual, describable time this season where one could argue it has worked (e.g. the opposition has fielded tall strong defenders expecting to play against Lambert and then we foxed them by playing two small, nippy forwards?)

Some whisperings that the Trust may withdraw their bid - but just seems like made-up stuff on twitter and the Snooze site, to be honest.

Tuesday 1st March. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_div_2/9407294.stm Wonder how many away fans we took?

A few weeks back I was pretty worried about where we were at in terms of squad strength, am now more sanguine. Need some cover at centre-back, but that could possibly be done via loans. Am assuming that Fonte-Yoshida will be the preferred partnership for the remaining 18 matches, but we're pretty light if either pick up an injury or suspension. Seems to me we would have to spend big to get someone good enough to displace Jose or Maya in the starting eleven. Open minded on this, but it would mean disrupting what's developed into a very good CB pairing. Goalkeeper? Hmm. I think Adkins has ruled this out anyway. None of our current 3 first choice keepers fill me with confidence, but am not sure that someone like Butland makes us £6m better. I'd be tempted to right off Boruc, whose head seems to be in the wrong place, and bring in someone of similar age on a similar deal (mid-30s, experienced keeper until end of season). I can't really imagine us having the cash available to buy better players than we currently have in midfield or up front. But then I was of the view that the Ramirez stuff was fantasy, so what do I know?

Cork. Been excellent. Our season only started getting going when he returned to fitness.

Neil Allen @NeilAllenPN great photo of the #Pompey travelling army at the Swindon game. Massive away support. Packed out. pic.twitter.com/djLqGnJx Own up.....who?

Thanks, Kraken. That's very helpful. Still find my question/your answer no. 3 the total m**d****. As you say, hard to work out exactly what happened there!

Hmmm. Ok, I don't get this court thing at all now. I thought: 1. Birch/PKF were applying to the court to seek the right to sell Chanrai's charge for a certain figure (£2.7m?) 2. Chanrai and Portpin contest this, claiming - amongst other things - that the charge is secured and worth much more (£17m?) 3. Courts weren't there to "check on progress", but to adjudicate in a dispute. If PKF and Portpin can reach an out-of-court settlement, there is no more need for a court case than there would be for me and my local landlord agreeing on how much I'm going to give him for a pint of beer. I might end up in court with the landlord, of course, if he claimed I owed him an extra £10m for the pint of beer or I claimed that he owed me £10m in change. 4. If PKF can't get the agreement they were seeking in point 1, they can't sell the club to the Trust.

Reading almost certainly. QPR probably. Then one of us, Wigan, Villa and Fulham. On present form, Villa look a good tip for the drop.

Seems to me that 34 or 35 points might be enough this season. The bottom 5 are all averaging less than a point a game.

It's like kicking a sick puppy now. I don't know where to turn.... Am still laughing my nuts off.

Can confirm the 10 weeks rumour. Horse's mouth on Saturday.

chuckle http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/20798234

Loved seeing us climb from -10 in League One to the Premier League in 3 short seasons. 2005-2009....hmmm....not so much....

This politically correct OP is turning out well, I see...:-)

Anyone know if this woman on the Snooze is right on this stuff? [h=4]SarahPFC[/h]11:19 PM on 15/12/2012In a desire to look for further evidence of people pledging, I decided to take a look at the Trust's facebook page, which I've now "liked". http://www.facebook.com/PompeySupportersTrust?fref=ts As someone who has spent over three years working in the charitable fundraising sector, it has to be said that this further confirms my worst fears. The page only has 744 "likes". This is, in essence, a fairly tiny fan page. Not at all the sort of size you'd expect for any organisation with the remotest prayer of raising £1.8m. (by contrast, Battersea Dogs Home has 178,000 "likes", Comic Relief has over 420,000, the United Kingdom Independence Party - which raises way less than £1m a year from its members - has over 12,000 "likes"). The page itself implores supporters for good news stories. "Please send us the best stories of share syndicates etc." There are just 2 "likes" and no comments left. In one particularly sad post, it asks people to "like" a post if they have converted their £1K pledge. A miserable total of 32 people have done so - and only 5 others leave comments saying that they intend to. These numbers are, I'm sorry to say, truly derisory in the context of what the Trust is seeking to achieve. They simply do not remotely chime with an organisation that has the slightest prayer of raising £1.8m in a relatively short period of time. Another post asks supporters to complete the sentence "I purchased my PST share because....". Only 9 people have chosen to complete the sentence. Of which one says "don't count your chickens" and another is part of a consortium which hopes to buy a share soon. It's not obvious that the other seven are all £1K pledgers either. It's fair to say, that the sort of support on Facebook for the Trust is along the lines of a fairly local charity that might - with superhuman effort - raise £250K or so per annum. Possibly, with unbelievable, almost obscene effort, a bit more than that. But nowhere near £1.8m. Absolutely nowhere near. Any organisation (especially relating to football) that was on target for that sort of figure would typically have about ten or twenty times as much support on Facebook and hundreds of likes and comments for each individual post. Worse still, some of the comments, especially the most recent ones are actually very hostile to the Trust. Perhaps, as well as being unbelievably reticent and private about making donations, people from our city also have an unusual allergy to Facebook! If not, the Trust's prospects look truly awful.

Presumably, everyone attending Saints games thinks its worth at least the ticket price to go. Otherwise, why the hell are they buying a ticket? Some people will think it's worth much more than the current ticket price, of course, but discriminatory pricing for each individual fan would be rather difficult...

Sad news. Best wishes to his family.

From the Snooze site. Quite perceptive for a skate! [h=4]SarahPFC[/h]9:35 PM on 15/12/2012 Let's be clear about this. There is no reason of "commercial confidentiality" to not release the numbers. I'm afraid that the Trust is probably way, way off reaching its £1.8m target. I know the numbers are complicated by syndicates etc, but in very broad terms, the Trust need 1,800 to hand over £1,000 each. Ask yourself what sort of background noise or mood music we'd be witnessing if they were anywhere close to this total.. a. We'd be seeing a flood of people on twitter or on sites like this saying "I've paid my grand". We have seen a tiny trickle. I'd say, at a cursory glance, no more than 10 or 20 such people on this site - the main local news site for the city. b. We'd be seeing a very large number of local news stories of businesses or local "celebrities" saying they'd paid up their pledge. Again, there has been a tiny trickle of this sort of stuff. But if 1,800 people really are ponying up, about 1,750 of them seem to guard their privacy very, very jealously indeed. c. Trust meetings would be absolutely packed to the rafters. If you're so passionate about the club that you're willing to stump up a grand, you're disproportionately likely to be willing to attend a meeting for an hour or so. Attendance at these meetings has typically been measured in the dozens. Again, maybe 95% of hardcore Pompey fans are willing and able to write a cheque for a grand but not willing and able to attend any meetings. But it doesn't ring true. d. Ancillary fundraising activity would be on an absolutely colosall scale. If Portsmouth is typical of the nation, the city as a whole would have raised about £250K for Comic Relief this year. The Trust are trying to raise about eight times that. Does the activity and publicity feel about eight times as big to you? It doesn't to me. Selling T-shirts to raise a few hundred quid is cute, but pretty useless. e. The loyal, enthusiastic Pompey fans you know would be showing a VERY high propensity to pay up their £1,000. I'd say I know about 50 Pompey fans quite well. And these 50 are pretty "hardcore" - season ticket holders, regular away attendees, have the disposal income to go to lots of games etc. If you aren't getting nearly all of these sort of people to handover £1,000, it's hard to see where you are getting the support from. Of the 50 people I know, two have handed over £1K (both rather sceptically) and four or five have put down the £100, but only one expects to be able to complete on the other £900. So, in broad terms, of the 50 fans I know, the Trust will raise about £2,500 or £50 per head. This makes £1.8m a very steep hill indeed. (If my mates are representative, you'd need to find a total of 36,000 such Pompey fans to raise the targeted amount. There aren't that many) f. You'd need to believe that for every one Pompey fan willing to pay, say, a total of £100 to attend the Tranmere away game, there are six Pompey fans willing to hand over a grand to the Trust. This doesn't sound very likely to me at all.