stevegrant

I have a funny feeling he might be a Pompey academy reject, actually

Not as good as this one, tbf Thanks for the nominations so far, all comments duly noted, likewise with the handful of PMs I've received... keep the suggestions coming, please. I'm not around for the next couple of days, I'll probably look to make some sort of decision on Friday.

Morning all, I am looking to recruit one - perhaps two - extra forum moderator to lighten the load on our current moderator team, who have done and continue to do an excellent job policing you lot If you believe you fit the bill, please let me know. Serious applications only, please!

Correct. While, in theory, playing more centrally should enable him to see more of the ball (definitely a good thing), it also means he'll receive a lot more attention from the opposition. This, IMO, has been exacerbated in the Ajax and Udinese games by Adkins' slightly strange decision to play Jay Rodriguez on the left wing, where he's been completely ineffective (as you'd expect from a player who's been a centre-forward throughout his entire career). This has meant that the opposition can commit more defensive resources centrally, so Lallana's been mostly crowded out in those two games. It also doesn't help that Lambert would normally drop deep quite often to collect the ball and start attacking moves but unfortunately he's been about as useful as a chocolate teapot in pre-season. No different to last season, of course, where he started very slowly, but personally I'd have either Rodriguez or Sharp (who's been living up to his name so far) up front at City on Sunday.

Was it an online banking transaction? If so, I'll check that this evening (can't do it at work as I need one of those really annoying card readers to log in)

Wasn't dune. Damning him with faint praise, admittedly, dune's smarter than that.

I've no idea how we compare on that front, but from speaking to people who have worked at the club both past and present, the turnover at SFC has increased a lot in the last 3 years compared to before that. As a guide, since David Luker left nearly two years ago (who had been at the club for a decade or so), we've gone through 3 ticket office managers, for whatever reason. Whether we're just hiring the wrong people from the start or we're hiring the right people but failing to keep them happy, I don't know.

Of course, this assumes the chairman is only "managing headcount" (i.e. hiring and firing) for the position of Team Manager/Head Coach. There has been a massive turnover of staff in back-office departments (ticketing, marketing, retail, commercial, etc).

I've just checked PayPal and it looks like it'll attempt to take the money again tomorrow.

Oh good, that means the new design focuses on being really slow to load, especially on mobile devices...

From F365's Mediawatch page today: Portsmouth fans might be despairing. The club is on the verge of going out of business - and really, this time, not like those other 423 times they've been going out of business. Trevor Birch has warned that they only have 16 more days unless senior players like Tal Ben Haim and Kanu come to a compromise over their outstanding wages. And yet - what's that coming over the hill? No, it's not a monster, but Harry Redknapp, riding on a trusty steed, ready to save the day. He told ESPN: "I will be ringing Kanu today to see if there is anything I can do. I signed him for Portsmouth on a one-year contract and Tony Adams told me: 'You must be mad, he is finished'. Six years later, he is still there." So there you have it. The man who jazzed something like £40million on transfer fees and lord knows how much more in wages it turns out they couldn't afford during his time at Portsmouth (and that was just his second spell), as well as his assorted bonuses that Rosie the dog kindly held in escrow, is now lending a hand by having a word with Kanu. Perhaps we're being a little unfair. Perhaps we shouldn't have a pop at a man who was told money was available and then spent it. Perhaps we should go easy on him. However, take a look at what Harry said again, specifically about Kanu. "I signed him...Tony Adams told me: 'You must be mad, he is finished'. Six years later, he is still there." Yeah, you were really proved right there Harry. What a shrewd move that turned out to be. If we were you, we wouldn't be taking credit for bringing in one of the men who, perhaps through no real moral fault of his own, is taking Portsmouth down.

No, we have the maximum number of tickets City will give an away team for a league game. I'm sure teams like Wigan, Fulham, etc will struggle to take a thousand there at those prices (especially having been there loads of times in recent years), so City - in the same way we do - will have ways they can split the away end to account for a smaller away following and allow more home fans in. I'd guess they've got 1500, 2000 and 3000 blocks, with the 3000 one on a "guaranteed-sale" basis, i.e. the away club has to pay for them all up front, with the other allocations on a "sale or return" basis, where the away club only has to pay for the tickets it actually sells.

Another thought, perhaps we do have the "minimum" 3,000, but the other 200 are for the players' allocation for friends, relatives, etc.

Quite possibly. Now they've got the demand for tickets from the home fans, which in previous years they haven't had, they're probably not that bothered about squeezing in another 2-300 away fans.

I notice that they've removed the option to link other people's accounts to your own - this will be fun next week when Man City tickets go on sale and people try to get 3 or 4 tickets together...

The home club are allowed to remove seats from the away end to account for segregation, so that'll be where those 200-odd tickets have gone.

And of course there's absolutely no "details" there anyway... surely the most important detail is the price?

Yeah it originally looked as though they were going to do it on a very simple "one point per pound spent" basis. The way they are going to do it now, based on getting more points for going to the less attractive games, makes a lot of sense, but I'd still expect loads of problems with points not being allocated when bought in a group, etc.

The thing that seems "inconsistent" with the whole thing is that the inquest into Tomlinson's death found that he was unlawfully killed, and that inquest requires the same burden of proof as a criminal trial. If we take the inquest's verdict as just - which seems reasonable to do - it seems a bit strange that Harwood could be found not guilty of manslaughter.

My belief is that any players you sign should be of high enough quality that they are better than you already have. What's the point in buying a back-up player? No player with any sort of ambition and drive will sign for a club on that basis anyway, but doing that doesn't provide much competition for places among the existing squad.

Fair to say it's done and dusted, I reckon

The deal offered has to be of equivalent or greater value to the existing contract.

Reading seem to have decided that they're going to place games into categories as they go through the season rather than announce them all at the start. £32 for adults for "standard", £40 for "gold". From their first 6 games, Spurs and Newcastle are "gold"-rated, with Stoke, Fulham, Norwich and Everton "standard". Given the relatively short distance between the two sides, I reckon we'll end up in the "gold" category