SaintBobby

You felt fairly sure we wouldn't get promoted from League One last season. Surely to have even a half-shot at promotion to the Premiership this season must be beyond your wildest dreams. You must be in fantasy land bouncing along on a wave of unending euphoria, I would have thought? I mean even if we end up, say, 14th - this is much, much better than you have ever dared hope for in terms of our final position in 2012.

You use this forum for your own rather tragic mental therapy. Again and again, your actual knowledge of Saints has been proved to be dire - certainly your predictions have. A little worse than my 5-year old nephew's overall. I don't actually mind people with deep, disturbing personal problems using the net as a scream for help. It reminds me how lucky I am. But don't expect the majority - who just have a love of a particular football club - to be patient forever. After a while, it just gets seriously tedious.

annoying, but we will almost certainly be top heading into the New year. bad day at the office, but no need to panic.

Amazingly, having failed to score in the first 45 mins, those odds drift.

The present in-play odds are Saints evens, draw 8/5 and Bristol 5/1. You can therefore make a fortune by backing City. HTH.

Ta, hitting refresh ten times seemed to fix it.

Does anyone know when Saintsplayer commentary starts? I'm in a hotel room and it's saying "off air"

Rodriguez and/or a foreigner that we've never heard of.

Are you still taking bets? I've asked several times with no reply. I'm happy to bet we finish in the top 10. Any sum you want - at evens.

Why is the accepted term "prolific" - meaning "producing an abundance"? Seems to me that this would be better applied to the number of chances created by a midfielder. I'd also like to see a table measuring "which goals really counted". Scoring a hattrick in an 8-0 victory isn't as valuable as scoring a goal in the 93rd minute to earn a 2-1 victory.

I'm guessing - and hoping - we will get one of Rodriguez, Sharp or Maynard. We're now in a much stronger negotiating position than we were in August. Firstly, we're a more attractive club to go to as we have a much better chance of promotion than most players would have assumed in the Summer. Secondly, we have shown we won't pay stupid money just because the selling club asks for it. Thirdly, the selling clubs have a tougher decision on whether to cash in or let players' contracts wind down.

I'm presently away in Las Vegas and the quantity of quality of sports punditry is just stunning. The American equivalents of Shearer, Hansen and Lawrenson wouldn't get close to a studio here. The pundits here are knowledgeable, controversial and opinionated without being OTT. The format of the punditry programmes is designed to make them voice an actual point of view. It's almost inconceivable that someone on TV over here would say something like "well, I think it's going to be a very tight game, Brian, and the first goal will be crucial" which seems to be the default prediction in the UK. Similarly, a team doing poorly wouldn't have Shearer and Hansen muttering "I fear for them, Gary". There's no cosiness with the players. Those who aren't cutting it are called out. I agree with those who say Claridge is one of the better football pundits. At least he edges towards stating an opinion most of the time. Given the BBC has so many platforms, I'm surprised that the rights to Football League matches doesn't generate about ten hours a week of television. The FLS should just be the flagship. A two hour "Championship round up" with extended coverage and serious punditry at 10am-noon on a Sunday morning would, for example, get stratospheric viewing figures on BBC3.

Saintsplayer still not workign for me on either commentary...

This. Unless they surrender the FA Cup graciously, or are gracious in having it stripped from them, I want them liquidated. I don't want them bleeding or injured. I want them dead. And I think there's a good chance it will happen. Only a mammoth act of genuine contrition by the whole lot of them would alter my view.

I'm still hopeful we'll scrape into 17th, are you?

Potentially big, big differences with SLH. At least in theory. If SLH had hit the buffers because another subsidiary it owned had collapsed (e.g. if SLH had owned Northern Rock), but Southampton FC had - in its own right - been a going concern, then we would almost certainly have avoided the points penalty. In practice, however, it seems to me almost impossible to believe that Pompey are a going concern in their own right. Others have crunched the numbers endlessly. There is no way the club's income covers its expenditure and liabilities - their only prayer was (and remains) a sugar daddy bailing them out. I would have thought that Portsmouth FC are now trading while insolvent. Which, I believe, is illegal.

I'm not an expert in the rules surrounding these issues. But if the FL fail to impose the rules, Southampton FC should take legal action. We have already lost one match to them in virtue of their financial cheating, we shouldn't accept any possibility of losing another.

I find the whole immigration debate really interesting, but often clouded by nonsense. Anyone who says "sod off, we're full" is just wrong IMHO. The population of the UK has about doubled in 150 years. And we have got much richer in that time. I guess that there may have been general hysteria when the population got to 10m then 20m then 30m etc. The latest horror story is that the population might reach 70m before too long. Good. So far, the more densely populated we've got, the richer we have become.

Ah well, that's me embarrassed. I owe a fulsome apology to Corp Ho. This guy was clearly on the straight and narrow all along! :-) Joy. Joy. Joy. This is surely catastrophic for skate finances? Please tell me it is....

OMG. Is that all you lot cling to these days? The Jimmy Hoffa case? This is the proof that my analysis is wrong and all is well at Fratton Park? Hell, things are even worse down there than I thought.

Disaster. With this sort of approach to the retail of children's clothing, all hope is clearly lost.

I'm not sure if Portsmouth have been used (again) for money laundering purposes. It's very possible, but it's not certain. Reasons for buying Portsmouth rather than one of the other 92 clubs would be pretty obvious... Yes, the club is under more scrutiny than most, but this scrutiny is so lax as to be almost non-existent. Certainly easy to get round. Additonally, Portsmouth's internal checks and balances are likely to be almost zero, so utterly dysfunctional has the club been in recent years. It is true that if you bought, say, Burnley, you would have slightly fewer half-hearted types from the FA/FL looking through the paperwork, but you'd run the risk of some internal check and balance (a senior staffer, for example) blowing the whistle. By way of analogy, it's why dodgy mafia types invest in strip joints/brothels in Soho rather than, say, launching a takeover bid for Mothercare. The former are under enormously more scrutiny from Scotland Yard/The Vice Squad/The Child Protection Unit etc...but it's a damned lot harder to run laundered money through the latter. I don't know how acquainted you are with international banking regulations. Barely at all, by the sound of it. Contrary to popular belief, banking is one of the most tightly regulated sectors on the planet. Laundering money through your own bank would be reckless verging on suicidal. You'd likely be caught very quickly indeed. That is why, throughout recent history, the mafia have tended to avoid the financial services sector. You don't find the Cosa Nostra putting their capital into banking and insurance - they invest in drugs, bars and restaurants. The dubious organised crime interests in 1960s America didn't run pensions funds - they bought up Las Vegas casinos. Al Capone had a network of illegal drinking dens, not life assurance annuities. Organised crime always gravitates to the leisure industries with high cash turnover and few questions properly asked. I think it's reasonable to say that English football broadly fits into that category. Nothing of this means your owner is definitely a crook. He may be a misunderstood, unfairly maligned, genuine, well meaning, self-made, honest billionaire with a purely philanthropic interest in Portsmouth FC's wellbeing embedded deeply in his heart. But, the circumstantial evidence points in another direction.

In nominal terms about 2 or 3% is easy to secure. In real terms, about -2%, owing to an inflation rate of about 5%. So, in all likelihood, if invested conservatively, the 12m is now worth less than it was.

Not sure Forest are "somewhat bigger". Saints are in the region of 12th-20th biggest club in the land I'd say. With a fair chance to grow. SFC's marketing effort is, however, truly lamentable.

Useless. No petting zoo or rollercoaster.