stevegrant

You'd think people might have learned their lesson by now.

They have a lifelong fan with more money than sense throwing some of his own cash at the club. If we are being run as a sustainable business - as has always been the claim - we won't be doing the same without the figures adding up.

In theory, a club could be shown just 5 times under the terms of the new deal, up to a maximum of 26 out of 38 games. However, in practice even the bottom clubs get around 10 games, simply because a lot of those games will be against the top clubs, who themselves have generally been televised between 18 and 22 times over the past few years. Obviously there are more games in the new deal (worth remembering we'll only see the benefits of it if we stay up this season), but not by much. Only an extra 16 games per season.

Aware that the conversation's moved on from here, but I'd like to drag it back just to point out that the Amex already has the space for the building work they're embarking on at the moment, hence why it doesn't look like much. When we went there in January, it was clear that it was unfinished. Dragging it back again to the more recent points about an "upper limit" that St Mary's could be expanded to, I have vague recollection of the figure being (a completely unrealistic) 55k, with the Itchen being the only stand unable to be expanded due to the weight of the offices, corporate facilities, etc on the foundations. However, stadium design has changed substantially in the 11 years since SMS was built. I'm not entirely sure whether the more modern structures with more curves are lighter or heavier, but I'd say for certain that the 55k figure would no longer apply if any expansion were to be along the lines of a new-look design rather than simply an extension following the more dated Barr identikit pattern. Also, a friend of mine who works in geotechnics was of the opinion that the foundations could be modified anyway - as with many things, it's basically a case of how much money you want to throw at it that will determine what sort of an impact you can make.

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!