stevegrant

I can't see many (if any) being sold in January, simply because the wages any likely departing players are earning are probably much higher than their quality deserves. That's not their fault, and to an extent it's not the club's fault either as many of them are as a result of automatic increases written into their contracts as a result of the two successive promotions. Ryan Dickson's the perfect example. He was good for us in League One but didn't get a look-in last season, so would have been an obvious candidate to move on, and he'd apparently agreed to sign for Yeovil if the deal was sorted, but because his wages had increased so much as a result of the promotions, Yeovil then couldn't afford him at his current salary (and Saints wouldn't pay up part of his contract to get him out, apparently). I know footballers get accused of only thinking of their wallets, but if you or I were in a position to earn far more than our "market rate" for a year or two and not have to work too hard to do so, I'm sure the vast majority of us would take that option.

As far as Network Rail are concerned, it is infinitely preferable to carry out engineering works on a Sunday when relatively few people travel than during the week when there are thousands of commuters (who pay the majority of the fares) standing in the aisles waiting to get to work.

Morning all, The site will be unavailable for a short period at lunchtime today while I install a software upgrade. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Probably IP-blocked.

No trains. All other London public transport will be running though (union strike dependent, of course ).

All over, other results mean that Pompey slip into the bottom 4. Tragic.

3-2

3-1, Ricky Rocha giving away a penalty on his return :lol:

2-1, first goal in 545 minutes

****ing hell Showing their support for the potential ground-breaking unique fans takeover that has definitely never happened at any other club in the country

If it was a simple case of it being a payment lost among "thousands" of other monthly payments, surely they would have paid up when they realised their mistake, rather than allow it to go to independent arbitration, and then when the independent arbitration ruled against the club, surely they would have paid up then, rather than take it to court and then wait until the day before the case was due to be heard before emailing the court to tell them they wouldn't be attending to defend themselves?

I would suggest that if ANY of those things happened, there's a fairly serious problem somewhere. How do you forget to go to court?

So they've already admitted to one mistake in the share prospectus. Now, what about the others...

Frank, the "being contrary for the sake of it" look really doesn't suit you.

"Sceptical" is my initial reaction to that article.

To be fair, I think Eric's point was that it was regurgitating news they'd already reported on last week, but he didn't realise it was a post from Dan Kerins' blog rather than a news piece, and held his hands up accordingly.

I believe it's a maximum "free" spend of £200, anything above that amount has to be paid for. Pretty poor when you're paying around £200 per head per game in the first place.

That looks like it's in Afrikaans

So they need nearly £2m just to ensure they have a majority stake, which would involve a 90+% conversion rate of pledges. If they were to raise less than £1m, they wouldn't even have the 25% required as a blocking vote!

Don't forget that ten converted pledges are required PER DAY between now and the day Birch hands over the train set to the PDT just to cover the administrator fees in that period. This working capital is being reduced on a daily basis. If we assume a (highly optimistic) conversion rate of 50%, that's around 900 pledges. If the takeover is not completed within 3 months, that pledge money will have effectively been wasted. The fans are not contributing to the running of the club, they're contributing to PKF's Christmas bonus scheme.

Er...

There are portions of the money that are paid out in stages during the season, but as the bulk of the money is determined upon how many times you're shown on TV and where you finish in the league, most of it isn't paid until the summer. The Premier League prize money pot is split in the following ways: DOMESTIC RIGHTS DEALS (Sky, ESPN, BBC, TalkSport) 50% of the pot shared equally between the 20 member clubs. For last season and this, that's £13.8m each. 25% of the pot distributed on a weighted basis depending on the number of times a team is featured in a televised game. Last season was actually the most lop-sided in terms of the bigger clubs being shown more often than ever before. From Everton in 7th all the way down the league, every club was only shown either 10 or 11 times live, with the exception of Liverpool in 8th (23 times!) and QPR in 17th (14 times). Each match is worth £585,000. 25% of the pot distributed on a weighted basis depending on the final league position, with each position worth £755,000 more than the position below them. OVERSEAS RIGHTS DEALS (Various) The whole pot is shared equally between the 20 member clubs. For last season and this, that's £18.8m each. I would expect the overseas money and the 50% equal share from the domestic money to be distributed over the course of the season, with the remaining two 25% portions of the domestic deal being paid out at the end of the season. Next season, of course, the numbers increase significantly.

Have they given a deadline for conversion of the pledges?

SPV, I think, stands for Special Purpose Vehicle, and a company under that description is often used "to hide debt (inflating profits), hide ownership and obscure relationships between different entities which are in fact related to each other" (source: Wikipedia ). Worth bearing in mind that the numbers shown there are nearly 17 months out of date. The last filed accounts for each of the companies under the club's main holding company (DMWSL613 Ltd) show the financial position as at 30th June 2011. We will get a slightly better picture at the end of March when they file the accounts for last season (they could file them now but will almost certainly wait until the last possible moment), but even they will be 9 months out of date. They should, however, include a section called "Post Balance Sheet Events", which should detail any major events or transactions that have taken place between the end of that financial period and the date the annual report is compiled. That will include the loan from Vibrac Corporation for starters...