SaintBobby

To be fair on this issue (which I'm not minded to be!), broadcasters know there's a can of worms here, but need to be careful on legal grounds. There are both issues surrounding defamation and fears of prejudicing a possible criminal investigation. The easy, cautious line to take is "poor Pompey...shrug...sigh...you have to feel for the fans" etc etc. Most editors will therefore take such a line. I have heard (only on a rather non-committal - but reliable - 2nd hand source) that Birch is likely to conclude quite quickly that the club should be liquidated in the interests of creditors. However, there is an issue around player signings and salaries that isn't quite as black and white as some on here suggest. Yes, of course it looks horrid that any new player could be signed or that high earners could be retained, But...to simplify it...if it was the honest view of the administrator that paying Bill Bloggs £X per week would add more than £X per week to revenues, he can and should continue to pay Bloggs. Even if Bloggs is on, say, £10K a week. Certainly, just slashing payroll isn't the obligation. For example, if Varney is on £15k per week and he can be loaned out to another club as long as Pompey pay £12K per week of his wages, then this looks like a saving (cutting spend from £15K to £3K per week). An option that the administrator should take. However, if the administrator were to judge that gates at Fratton would fall substantially if Varney left or that Varney might add a high % chance to the skates staying up then he can retain Varney with a clear conscience. Not saying if this is right and/or fair, just saying there are potentially some grey areas. I still think they will probably be liquidated, though. Most likely at the end of the season following a bottom three finish.

Adam Lallana. F***ing amazing. That is all.

? The Coventry match is on the 28th April.....

Surely, the question of whether they are allowed to enter administration must depend on this: Will they be worth more by continuing than by folding? This seems to me unlikely as their expenditure exceeds income (even when debt is ringfenced). Pompey are worth very little liquidated, but surely worth even less if they continue to trade for another few weeks/months. Current unsecured creditors might only get 0.1p in the £ if they liquidate - but this would surely fall to even less if they continue to rack up more wage bills/police bills/leccy bills etc. Is it also right that HMRC are trying to "send a message" rather than merely recoup as much as possible? i.e. they judge that sending a club to the wall (and getting zilch) will help them secure revenues from other clubs more promptly in the future, rather than accepting a bit more than zilch in a second CVA?

It's wonderful stuff. I do think the end is nigh for them now. They may limp on for a few more weeks, but it is very difficult to see how they can survive beyond that. It seems they might even struggle to sell out Fratton Park tomorrow night - that's astonishingly poor levels of support. It'd be fantastic news for Saints in the long-term, of course, for Portsmouth to disappear (or re-emerge in the Isthmian League or something). Present Skate fans are unlikely to come over to Saints, but give it a few years and "neutrals" will drift towards us and youngsters in the Pompey catchment area will start to support Southampton. Almost whatever happens is going to be fun. But liquidation is still my hope. Not so much because it's Pompey (although the footage of crying Skates will be f***ing hilarious) but to serve as a major wake-up call to English football. It's just delicious :-)

Thanks. V helpful.

Ok, a few questions for those who have been more immersed in this thread than I have (although I have read most of it): 1. What and who can stop Portsmouth entering administration? 2. Is it in anyone's interests to stop them going into admin - and if so, through what mechanism? 3. If, for whatever reason, they do go into admin, does this permanently suspend the WUP? 4. Isn't it completely obvious that the club are insolvent? Their income simply doesn't match their expenditure - let alone start to clear their debts. What are the legal ramifications for being in admin while insolvent? 5. If they are prevented from going into admin, does the WUP order go ahead? And, if so, what could possibly prevent it succeeding? 6. If the WUP order succeeds (now or later) do Portsmouth go out of business immediately?

Even if we're the worst squad in the division, we have a high enough points tally to date to finish in the top 16! I calculated (and posted on another thread) that the chances of us losing all our remaining games is about 1 in 5 billion. Even if you think we are so sh1te that we go into each game with a 90% chance of losing, there is still only an 18.5% chance that we'll lose all our remaining games.

If you assume that for each remaining match that there's a 33% chance of a win, 33% chance of a draw and 33% of a defeat (which is rather pessimistic analysis...), then: The chance of us losing the next eight games is a tiny 0.014%. The chance of us losing all the remaining 16 games is 0.00000002 % (a one in five billion chance...that's 357 times as unlikely as hitting the national lottery jackpot) Even if you are a "wrist-slashing" depressive and you think that for each upcoming game, Saints are a 90% shot to lose - it is only an 18.5% chance that we will lose all 16 remaining league games. In short, the chances of Saints finishing 17th or worse are so vanishingly small as to be nearly impossible to measure.

The odds of us finishing in the top 16 are now something like 1/1,000,000 Only remotely feasible we will finish outside of the top 10-12 if we get some weird points deduction. Which looks rather more likely to happen to a different Hampshire-based team...

I said at kick off that I thought the starting 11 was probably the best Saints side to take to the pitch in about 7 or 8 years. They did not disappoint. Real quality performance through out the team, with Rickie Lambert turning in a near flawless performance. His touch, passing and strength were phenomenonal. I suspect he is going to get a shedload of assists with Sharp playing alongside him. A very good and enormously professional performance. Burnley, a good team on paper, were made to look somewhere between poor and awful. Happy days.

if you're on twitter, you might like to ask if you can encourage any of our present squad to back Steve's efforts: These are the @s that I'm aware of: @billysharp10 @jasonpunch @adlallana1 @RChap04 @stief87 (de Ridder) @Danny_Fox3 @joshooiveld20 @jackcork1 @RadhijaidiOff

Agree, can we make this a sticky please? Steve Moran was my childhood hero - and that winner versus the skates is worth every Saints fan bunging in a few quid, surely?

The official stats don't bear that out.

I'm delighted a new thread has been set up for this. Clearly doesn't belong in "post match reaction", given we haven't managed a shot on target all season. Sigh. Mods - please lock.

But probably by a team that finishes in the top 16?

I basically agree with this article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2093995/How-vilification-Stephen-Hester-cost-billions.html

Agree 100%. If we;d only got Hooper, we'd be pretty certain of a top 16 finish. Having only secured Billy Sharp, I'm much less sure.

Almost always, yes. They'd try to sign a contract "subject to medical" in most cases - but given the rush, that may not ahve happened today. However, I'd be surprsied if the medical is taking place if there isn't already some sort of agreement on contractual terms.

Taking bets on that?

Let's not.

Fox at centre back? Is Hoovield injured - having been subbed at the Leicester game?

I'd think the fair thing would be for all Pompey's unplayed fixtures to be forfeited 2-0, but existing results to stand (I'm not sure why I say 2-0...I seem to have some dim distant recollection that this is the standard "default" score). But the rulebook couldn't be clearer, as I understand it, and ALL results would be expunged. I can see why the league would want to keep them afloat. It would look odd to suddenly switch to a 44 game season when you're more than halfway through. And, of course, there are revenue implications (Saints would stand to lose c. £1m if the game at St Mary's is cancelled). Offsetting that, the club's struggling against relegation are surely going to be utterly insistent that there is a mammoth points penalty.

A lot of folk can be like that (disproportionately those at around about the age of puberty, as another poster suggested). There's nothing wrong with that per se - but people behaving in such a fashion can't reasonably expect to be listened to very much or taken at all seriously.

Query: does Chainrai have an incentive to keep them afloat? Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere...but if the club owes him £17m isn't he best advised to spend several £m on keeping alive the possibility that he gets some of that back? E.g. if he could get them over this hurdle by spending £2m and they restructured so as to pay him back £500K a year for 34 years, isn't this a good deal for him? Or are the sums needed so vast that he probably needs to take a £17m loss on the chin?