stevegrant

Not to mention the fact that the club couldn't even be arsed to put them on their own website

Yeah, that was a fantastic waste of 15 minutes of my time earlier. Lesson learned.

That bit of it looks like the hideous things that have been built at Old Trafford cricket ground:

Without any detailed knowledge of stadium construction I'd only be guessing, but that guess would be that it would be very difficult to do in one go, especially considering the fact that there's only usually 3 months of the year when there's no football being played there, and therefore only 3 months when there wouldn't be tens of thousands of people milling around at a time. That said, I remember when West Ham built their main stand about a decade ago, they built it behind the existing stand, which didn't seem to cause too much disruption at the time. The problem with expanding rather than replacing (as I guess we'd assume will happen - they surely wouldn't knock the whole stand down and rebuild it from the ground up) is that the roof needs to be removed/lifted at some point, and with the current design, the roof is an integral part to the whole stadium's structure. Also, for reasons of working space, they might see an expansion of the two ends as a better starting point.

Anyone can do some pretty drawings and stick them in the public domain, tbf. Loads of clubs have released similar artist's impressions in the past only to not follow through with any building work to that effect (or even so much as a planning application). This particular design would, as Colin has alluded to, also require the purchase and subsequent demolition of at least three sites that adjoin St Mary's in its current guise. If, for the sake of argument, we assume the club proceeded with this, the timescale involved would surely be a minimum of 5 years, perhaps even 10, simply because of the complexity and scale.

Perfect advert to accompany the article as well...

You're all wrong

I wonder if anyone's thought to try to negotiate a deal with the Football League whereby Pompey are allowed to make players redundant (as Rangers have in Scotland), and NOT fulfil the contract as per the Football Creditors Rule, in exchange for a points deduction. At least that way, they'd be in a position to have a viable business plan at some point.

Worth checking out page 43 of that PDF. A hand-written statement of affairs, with the realisation value of Fratton Park having been scribbled out from what looks like £7.3m and hastily amended to £10m to make the shortfall to Chainrai look less The last sentence in section 2.4 is either optimistic or wilfully misleading: "No further points deduction will be applied if this Proposal is approved by the requisite majority of Preferential Creditors and Unsecured Creditors." - we do not know how the Football League will interpret the soon-to-be-confirmed failure of CVA1. To all intents and purposes, the same outcome as occurred as if they hadn't agreed that CVA in the first place. Section 3.3.2 is Chainrai's get-out clause, basically saying that if TBH doesn't waive his right to the remaining money due to him, there's no obligation on Chainrai's part to complete the Sale and Purchase Agreement, and it's down to the administrator to negotiate this.

Suspect it's more likely he'll go abroad as the compensation payable would be fixed at around £750k, he's been linked with a few Bundesliga clubs. Domestically, reports suggest it could be anything up to around £5m.

Because he's under 24 and Blackburn have offered him a new contract of equal or higher value to his previous one, so technically they still retain his registration unless another club agrees compensation with them.

Pick 3 realistic signings from that list (Drogba doesn't count as realistic ): I'd go for Danny Murphy, Salomon Kalou and Craig Gordon.

Still haven't decided, but it'll probably be something along those lines.

Person in "wanting to be paid what he's contractually owed" shocker. I know it's a bit of a new concept to people down there, but when you promise to pay someone a certain sum of money, you're actually obliged to pay them that sum of money.

https://twitter.com/lewisstockford/status/208161537175715840 Players not paid again

Looking back through last season's fixtures, I reckon there were only three scheduled rounds of games in the Premier League.

A couple of Pompey examples... Jason Pearce was linked with a number of clubs a year ago after a good season with an over-achieving Bournemouth side, Peterborough agreed a fee for him and offered him £3500 a week, a significant rise from the £700 a week he was on at Bournemouth. Pompey came in and offered £7000 a week, despite clearly not being able to afford it in the context of their existing wage bill. As far as the player's concerned, he has no reason to turn down the guaranteed extra money because there's no chance that he won't actually see that money - if the club goes into admin, the FCR comes into play for any unpaid wages, and I believe the PFA has an insurance fund which covers the eventuality of a club actually going bust. Of course, the player's agent also gets a much larger fee as a result of the bigger salary negotiated/offered, so it's not in the agent's interests for the player to go to a fiscally-responsible club either. David Norris was another, Ipswich were paying him about £7k a week, offered him something similar, but Pompey dived in with £15k a week. As Torres said above, if the PL/FL operated in an "ordinary" industry, most potential employees wouldn't dream of accepting a job offer at a company who were offering more money but were unlikely to be able to actually fulfil the terms of that contract.

Absolutely incredible appointment and statement. Yes, and we're witnessing the fruits of that well-thought-out restructuring programme right now

Paraphrasing that statement: "Yay, we get to continue to allow our clubs to rip off local businesses and charities so millionaire footballers get paid in full". HMRC are ****ing useless.

See the OP. I haven't decided yet.

As it's almost tournament time this summer, I've set up a free-to-enter Fantasy League covering the European Championships on the Metro's game, which can be found at http://fantasyfootball.metro.co.uk £100m to spend, pick a squad of 15. Create your team and then enter into the private league with the league ID 52651 There will be a prize for the winner (I haven't decided what it is yet ) Good luck!

The joke's on you, there is no Forum Creditors Rule

Gerrard and Neville are apparently good mates, Neville tried to persuade him to join Liverpool when they were away at Euro 2004.

And yet Kean didn't even manage to play at a high level. He is/was a highly-respected and highly-qualified coach, although suspect much of that respect has evaporated over the last 18 months, so he's actually the sort of bloke who should be ideal for coaching and management roles, i.e. someone who's had to make his way in the game without the backup of a successful playing career.

Bolton, Blackburn and Wolves will all get the same as Birmingham, Blackpool and West Ham. The new TV deal that has been put out to tender recently is for 2013-2016. That said, because one of either Blackpool and West Ham will be going straight back up, the parachute payments that they would have received will be distributed evenly among next season's Championship clubs instead.