Crab Lungs

How stupid do Portsmouth feel now building that 250,000 harbourside pottydrome... ....Oh.

Someone needs to re-programme the Adkins-bot before he's rumbled at press conference with one too many repetitions of the same line or perhaps has a wire hanging out by mistake. Failing that, they could just come clean that he's a robot and start selling Adkins dolls in the club shop... who knows, it might be a money spinner with the kids? "It's about winning games of football" "It's as simple as that" "Listen" "As long as I've been in the building" "Make no mistake about it!"

The only reason this hasn't been featured on a Panorama-esque programme is because there is still so much to play out - especially legally, so therefore I'm not sure if it's worth poking just yet. Though once all the formalities have been dealt with (or swept under the carpet, perhaps?) then I'm sure something will happen.

An extract: and in response... Unbelievable.

I've totally warmed to mack. He's awesome!

My oh my, are the mightiest team in the world surprised that they aren't actually that good?

Skates. Skates, please.

We're being bankrolled? Lmao... £93m stadium and an unsustainable wage bill and we're the ones being bankrolled? Lmao...

Pretty good summary IMO.... and I live here!

Surely Bompey could have asked their big brother to the east whether it is necessary to bother with paying bills? I'm sure they could have kept him and added a few extra players if they'd just shown a bit more of a ballsy disregard to staying solvent.

Another gem from a Brighton fan: Lol. What a moron. "Poorly run business" :-/ And it's this stupidity/arrogance that hopes this nobber is crying into his rice krispies come may... Yes, yes they are ahead of us... but for how long? You can see "We are top of the league" all you want, it's November... and we're arrogant, lolz.

What is it with the South Coast spazzers around us? Bournemouth fans have a deranged vendetta and if you go east, Portsmouth and Brighton fans are delusional and/or fantasists with egos to match their overdrafts. Loved this quote: Tuesday night, November, 3 home games in a row, 20 odd quid a ticket, nearly 27,000. Right, ok, that makes sense. And the supposed biggest club in division, Sheffield Wednesday, could only manage 15,000. riiiight. It's a bit easier to fill the Withdean, d1ckhead. Anyway - I'm happy to report having read through the thread a bit more, most are pretty level headed. Fair play to them... **** EDIT **** Nope, change that. Seems Tony Bloom's money has gone to their small little minds. Bunch of d1ckheads, as first summarised. I keep hearing about our arrogance but I've seen far more delusional, stupid comments on Bournemouth's/Brighton's forums over the last few years. Here's a good one: There is confidence in your team and then there is arrogance...

Oh, I'm sure she done it entirely for the kid's interests. Women aren't selfish, manipulative cockle twangers at all... :-/

LOL at Adkins' reaction on Solent :-o No more Mr Nice Guy, it's as simple as that :-o

Considering they are a bunch of uppity, begging bowl pr1cks - no.

I shouldn't have to post the stats up here but IIRC, Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Holland all have thousands upon thousands more accredited coaches than we do here; even some much, much smaller nations do. For example, I think Spain had something like 30,000 accredited coaches - we have 3,000. Or something like that. For a country of our size, we should not be so bereft of technically good players but we are. I'll always remember the football tournaments when I was younger, when we played kids from other countries and every, single one of those teams played us off the park. It wasn't that we weren't very good as we were effective in "English" football but when it came up against our European counterparts, we failed miserably. And to add further weight to this, having recently restarted my Sunday football team again I've been unfortunate enough to witness some grassroots football and I am appalled (but not surprised) to see some of things I've seen so far. "Managers" or "Coaches" (whatever you want to call them, they act like neither) bellowing at 6,7,8 year old kids. 6,7,8 year old kids playing 11 aside, full sized pitches in full sized goals. A "win at all costs" attitude. Big kids at the back, small nippy ones at the front. It is cliched and, yes, the standard of coaching is getting better slowly but I saw absolutely nothing other than kick and rush football. No composure, no skills, no technique - just raw, 100mph football. You have to wonder - what are some of these "managers" or "coaches" actually doing it for? Themselves, or the kid's development as a footballers and ultimately, people? Sometimes I fear it's the former. Furthermore, when I was younger I actually got dropped from my club side for "not being able to kick the ball high or far enough". That's just another example of the shameful mentality in this country. Hopefully the training centre at Burton will go some way to redressing the balance but it won't be an overnight thing; it took Spain the best part of twenty years to see results and most major nations in Europe have had a infrastructure like this for years. It's not ideal playing catch up but as long as we do, as a country, learn from our compatriots and learn from our own mistakes and start implementing a sensible, progressive coaching programme, we'll get there in the end. 100mph "passionate, guts and glory" football is not the answer.

Don't forget the vomit inducing "special nights" at Anfield.

We had United in the early nineties (Giggs, Nevilles, Beckham etc), then West Ham late nineties (Lampard, Ferdinand, Cole, Carrick) then ourselves (Bale, Baird, Walcott and a plethora of other possibles (Surman, Blackstock, Best, McGoldrick, Howard), including current players Lallana and AOC...). Obviously, in comparison the latter of our products haven't reached Bale/Walcott-esque heights but we've still produced a huge quantity of Championship/Prem players in such a small space of time. I agree though, we'd have been able to keep Bale/Walcott much, much longer than we did if we'd not been relegated. I think the likes of Bale and Walcott also wouldn't have been shown the door either; they would have come through and played in the Premier League with no problem at all, much like Oakley, Bridge did. Oh, what if

Likewise with the players we produced. It's incredible, really, the level of quality and frequency/volume of the talent in recent years. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of another team which has produced players of that quality, in that short space of time and at the rate we did - and we've another two off the production line since in AL and AOC. It is hypothetical but who knows where we might have been today if we'd stayed up? Would we have kept those players? What ones would have been given an opportunity? What ones would have left? How many of them can realistically do it in the Prem... ... actually, wouldn't mind writing a fictional, topical novel on that scenario!

According to the Brighton public, it's Chris Eubank in that garish truck

Hmmm, whilst I was glad that Rupes kept him in check, honestly... would have much preferred to stay up! I like the lower leagues... It has been fun, it has been exciting and it's been good to see us win more games but - I do miss the Premier League. It's what I grew up with and I guess, in a sense, I was spoilt. I want us to get back there as soon as but seeing as you asked; yes, I'd have much rather have not left in the first place!

He's a good manager - as long as he's allowed to manage *his way* (meaning; jobs for the boys, debatable transfer dealings etc) His lack of success here was Rupes keeping him on leash. That said, besides a few last minute goals, it could have been very different under him. We weren't actually that far away from staying up. One or two goals difference at the end of games, that's all.

I reckon Nige said something like: "Listen - there is finance there; make no mistake about it. It'll help us win games of football - it's as simple as that."

Most expensively assembled side in the nPower Champ this year fluffs their lines again. Such a shame. No, really. Maybe a team massage in Horton Heath would relax a few nerves?

Shock, horror - Holmes is good. Yet every 2 or so weeks we get a thread started with peoples in's/out's and he's always in the majority of people's "out's" :-/