stevegrant

Ignoring statistical probability in favour of a load of clichés and a wild guess

Do they look likely to do that at the moment? Posh have remembered how to score goals, West Ham can't score more than one at the moment. In fact, since the beginning of December, they've only scored more than one goal on three occasions (18 league games).

Any half-decent manager would fully expect to have them in the top 2. With the budget they have compared to every other team in the league (and I include serial mentalists Leicester in that), they should already have one foot back in the Premier League, and it's a damning indictment on Allardyce's management that they actually look like outsiders behind us and Reading at the moment.

SFC has absolutely no control over who is allowed access to other clubs' stadia.

I expect there are a number of local journalists who would strongly disagree.

Why do you bother constantly spouting such absolute ********? The OS article said we had an initial allocation of just over 3,000, which could rise to 5,817. It's fair to assume that we won't have all of those tickets available immediately, we'd have to request the extra batch from Palace.

Depends on the pricing structure. I would argue that for many, we've not been away from the top flight long enough for games against Man United, Arsenal, etc to be deemed a novelty. We saw this season that the number of ST holders actually dropped despite promotion, so they will need to strike the right balance between maximising revenue and making the price attractive enough for new/returning ST holders to want to buy.

An excellent response by the Echo there It will all end in tears down there, Demin is Gaydamak Lite

Coventry will stay up

Wow The Boros

No idea. I have a vague recollection that Ivan de la Peña scored one or two for Barca, but that's about all I can remember.

Away, I think we lost 4-0. Probably the only time we ever actually wore that horrendous "ecru" away shirt

Why not?

Quite surprised with that, only adds another 15-20 minutes onto the journey.

Guy Whittingham got 42 for the blue few in 1992/93...

Yes, and then the club realised they wouldn't make as much money if they did that again, so when the situation most demanded a recorded/special delivery (i.e. Pompey away), they managed to create the biggest ticketing farce since Fulham decided it would be a good idea to allow 16,000 tickets for the Europa League final to go on sale to 15,000 season ticket holders at 4 tickets per person, leaving some fans who had been to the far east of Russia for the first qualifying round without a ticket.

While you made a tidy profit on a handful of players, the number of players who you made a huge loss on far outweighs it. Dave Nugent, signed for £6m in July 2007, given away for nothing four years later. £40k a week wages for three years of that contract (out on loan for most of one season, although I can't imagine Burnley were paying all of his wages) is another £6m. Signing-on fees, a "loyalty" payment due for completing the duration of the contract, image rights (listed on CVA as £350k) and agents fees take that to an overall cost of at least £13m. John Utaka, signed for £7m, also in July 2007, apparently sold for €500k to Montpellier three and a half years later, on an eye-watering £80k a week. £14m in wages, £140k owed in image rights on the CVA document plus however much had already been paid on that basis beforehand. A £22m+ cost. Michael Brown, signed on a free in August 2009, released on a free in 2011. Reported wages of £35k a week, had an auto-renew clause in his contract so he was dropped just before that kicked in. £3.6m + fees. Tal Ben-Haim, also on a free in September 2009, still at the club draining £37k a week. Half a year on loan at West Ham. £5m + fees and rising. Add many more...

This is the problem with the media perception of Pompey's situation over the last 5 years or so. They quote absolute luddites like Redknapp saying things like that and the Few get it into their heads that the money must have been siphoned away somewhere, completely ignoring the fact that transfer fees aren't the only expense when it comes to players Take Johnson as an example, they paid £4m as a transfer fee and sold him for £18m (according to Soccerbase, although they didn't actually receive £18m cash, a big chunk of it was offset against money still owed for Peter Crouch). Sounds like a £14m profit. However, chuck in a signing-on fee (guess at £1m), agents fees (around the same) and £60k a week over the three years he was at the club, they're down to a £3m profit on that one player. As an alternative example, they bought Peter Crouch for £9m from Liverpool and sold him for the same amount to Spurs a year later. Signing-on fee, agents fees, etc probably came to another £2m. He was on £75k a week (), a cost of £3.75m over the course of a year, and then they had to pay him another £250k just to leave because Spurs wouldn't pay him anywhere near what Pompey were giving him. So while they "broke even" on the transfer fee, he actually cost them around £6m for a year.

Wage bill in the first season in L1 was around £10m, I believe (haven't got the accounts document at home, it's on my work PC), which I would expect to have DEcreased last season because around 15 players left the club (Wayne Thomas alone accounted for about £500k a year), while only 5 players were signed (Dickson, Richardson, Butterfield in the summer, Forte and Chaplow in January). Throw in an increase in season ticket prices and an increase in attendances (20,982 in 09/10 up to 22,161 in 10/11) and while I don't expect that £8-9m loss to be wiped out completely, it'll be massively reduced. Then chuck in the various revenue increases this season (Chamberlain sale, TV revenue, gate receipts) and I think we're doing OK. Probably should be doing better in terms of attendances this season given the position we're in, but then we don't bang on about how we've got the best fans in the world.

Chiles is horrific. Mumbles through, er, er, his, er, words all the time. Whenever they've got Roy Keane in the studio you can see that he's clearly thinking "you ****ing idiot" I'm not Colin Murray's biggest fan but at least he can ad-lib to camera on live TV.

I'm baffled as to why anyone would choose to drink in the Hole in the Wall

They've just introduced a new tax rate for high earners as well, 53% I think. That should drive a few players away, not entirely convinced whether the 3% difference will be enough to tempt them back to the UK though.

Just show your campus card, that should be enough.

About 5,000 including the block of seating away teams get in the side stand.

Derby in the playoffs? That must have been at least 5k