stevegrant

There shouldn't be any sort of nightmare for the Football League really. They can basically blackmail clubs into accepting whatever punishment they deem fit for any perceived misdemeanour on the grounds that it's a private members club, they make the rules and if you want your Golden Share, you'll do as they say, and you'll waive all rights to challenge any decision through the courts. That was what we found out to our cost. As far as their insolvency policies were concerned at the time (i.e. April 2009), there was no rule which stated that if a parent company went into administration, the football club would be deemed to have breached their insolvency rules and would be punished accordingly. When they imposed the points deduction, they even stated in their statement that they were applying the "spirit" of the rules rather than the "letter", i.e. they'd bent them to suit what they wanted to do. I've no real issue with that because it was clear to anyone with a pulse that the football club was the cause of SLH going into admin, but at least be consistent.

Nice, except the scenario and figures he's come up with are all garbage. There is no precedent for any club not getting a CVA approved receiving a 25-point deduction. The only ones are 15 (Leeds), 17 (Bournemouth, Rotherham) and 20 (Luton). The main problem I see is that the football club itself isn't responsible for the CVA as far as the law is concerned. The company responsible for it has been liquidated, with the current football club company having signed an agreement to make payments towards it. Technically, the football club itself probably wouldn't be in default of the CVA when the payment is not made on April 1st. There's also the issue that, because they're in administration, debts are frozen and they are afforded protection from their creditors, so Baker Tilly can't touch them. Also, as far as I'm aware, there hasn't yet been a case of a football club failing to make payments on a CVA. Another can of worms for the Football League to deal with.

There's nothing to "bid" for, per se, there is no auction because - as far as everyone's aware at the moment - there are no other serious interested parties. Saints received an "indicative offer" from SISU back in 2008, a document which spelled out what their offer entailed for both the club and the shareholders, how it would be financed, how it would improve the current financial situation of the club, etc. It's basically saying "this is what we will probably offer, is that likely to be acceptable? If not, we won't waste time and money with lawyers, accountants, etc". With Saints, the three major shareholders all told them to **** off, so SISU went elsewhere.

Not in the slightest. All it suggests is that this particular party is interested, subject to due diligence and coming to various agreements with certain people whose identity should be obvious. As an example, I would imagine if they can't settle Chainrai's debenture for the square root of **** all, the deal will be off the table straight away.

Looking into the not-too-distant future, there is an ever-increasing chance that we could actually send Pompey down at St Mary's on Easter Saturday. They would have 5 games to play after that game, so the gap to 21st place after the game would need to be 16 points or more. With their dwindling squad, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they could lose the 5 games they have to play between now and then - Bristol City (home), Birmingham (home), Coventry (away), Hull (home), Burnley (home) - and then they're relying on the teams above them to not pull away from them. In order to guarantee that a win for us would send them down, the 16-point gap would have to exist before the game as well (with 18 points still to play for) for two reasons: firstly, we can't rely on the other sides down there winning that day (indeed Forest play Bristol City, so at least one side will drop points), and secondly, our game is an early kick-off so we play before everyone else. That means that the teams outside of the bottom 3 need to get to 42 points before Easter: Peterborough: 1pt required from Ipswich (away), Reading (home), Barnsley (away), West Ham (home), Leicester (home) Millwall: 5pts required from Saints (home), Doncaster (away), Leeds (home), Cardiff (away) [ouch] Nottingham Forest: 7pts required from Derby (away), Leeds (away), Brighton (home), Leicester (away), Crystal Palace (away) Bristol City: 9pts required from Pompey (away), Watford (home), Middlesbrough (away), Derby (home) Alternatively, either Coventry or Doncaster could go on a really good run. Coventry would need to win all 4 of their upcoming games (Watford away, Cardiff away, Pompey home, Hull away), or Doncaster 4 from 6 (Reading home, Derby home, Millwall home, Saints away, Crystal Palace away, Birmingham home). So all in all, it's still fairly unlikely - mainly due to the reliance on other **** teams not being quite so **** anymore - but the opportunity to hammer the final nail in their relegation coffin would be the ultimate redemption.

I'm assuming the reason they want to move to their own solution is for performance reasons, so parking a domain to the same place they're operating from at the moment wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

If they win most of those games, they'll be in the playoffs, and deservedly so. That's a pretty tough run-in when you've got to make up at least 4 points (teams above have at least 1 game in hand)

Nope. The suggestion is that the main backer will make some sort of indicative offer today, subject to the world's most intense spell of due diligence. We wait and see...

Assuming you're using MySQL as the database, you should be able to use a program on the old server called mysqldump, which will take a snapshot of the database and dump the SQL statements required to recreate it into a file. You can then transfer this file to the new server and run it to create the new copy. The only problem you might have is that a free hosting package might not give you the level of access you need to do that. I have a feeling phpBB might have its own import/export mechanism, so you may be able to run a dump from within the admin control panel instead.

Nice defending for both goals

An interesting link, given the stuff we've heard in the last day or so about Portsmouth City Council supposedly being prepared to buy Fratton Park: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/say-no-to-rent-increase-for-portsmouth-artlodge.html Looks like the money's got to come from somewhere...

Novelty concept, I think. We've played at The (New) Den 6 times (as far as I can tell - 2 FA Cup, 2 Championship, 1 League One, 1 pre-season friendly), and not once has the lower tier been open.

And the desire to be proven right allows blinkers to be applied where required.

As opposed to someone who has nearly 1000 posts on the forum of your local rivals, someone who was so desperate to get full member status without actually paying (seems like it's just a Pompey thing, doesn't it) that he sent emails claiming to have sent cash through the post but that "it must have got lost" You're a joke.

Is there an election due soon?

*something about stable doors*

Agreed, but one issue as far as fans are concerned is that there is no early warning system in place other than the usual forum ITKs who some will believe and others will ignore. Transfer embargoes are generally kept quiet until it gets leaked to the press, and they're often completely pointless anyway (see recent Birmingham example, they knew it was coming so they signed players on loan the day before ). If they knew the team would suffer in terms of its league position, that's a pretty big prevention for what is a relatively minor requirement (submitting accounts to the league) in the grand scheme of things. A 3-point deduction for Birmingham in that situation could be the difference between making the playoffs and missing out. There's nothing like the fear of a "proper" punishment to focus the minds, and if a club's hit with a points deduction for their financial activities, the fans are left in no doubt that there's a problem, and it's far less likely that those in charge at the club will be able to try to muddle on without addressing the issue.

All well and good, but then a club is having to adjust to a two-division shift in revenue rather than just one, and they were clearly making a mess of running things at their current level if they'd been forced into administration. Even using it as a "nuclear option" punishment to scare clubs into complying, I'm not convinced it would work as intended. While I've praised the Conference for the way they punish clubs for missing payments, etc, I do think the way they insist that all debts are settled in full at the end of a season before they are allowed back in the following season appears ridiculously OTT - it doesn't seem to cater for affordable long-term debt. Not all debt is bad, despite the perception.

OK then genius, say a club goes into administration in the middle of September, rather than at a point in the season where their fate may already be inevitable, what happens? While fans may rally behind a club that goes into administration for a handful of games towards the end of a season, even if they're going down, can you really see a club getting the support (both financially and numerically) it needs for pretty much an entire season safe in the knowledge that no matter how well or badly they do, they'll be playing in the league below next season? Players have professional pride, yes, but there comes a time when it all becomes a fairly futile exercise. Determining a relegation place 8 months in advance is a ridiculous idea. Much better to punish clubs for the little things that often lead to insolvency problems in the first place.

The problem with imposing any sort of "automatic relegation" punishment on a club that goes into administration is that clubs don't always go into administration during the summer, when it would be easy to relegate them and rejig the fixtures. In Pompey's case, they went into admin in February - with an auto-relegation rule, where's the incentive for them to bother trying for the rest of the season if they know they're going down anyway?

Almost certainly lower, the whole end combined holds about 4000

Well worth placing clubs under transfer embargoes outside the transfer window (and yes, I realise that covers out-of-window loans as well, but the emergency loan rules will be tightened up or even removed in the next couple of years) Rather than imposing ineffective registration bans, the Football League should take a leaf out of the Conference's book and hand out points deductions for non-compliance with financial regulations. For example: -1pt for every month the club's tax bill is paid late (or not at all), with the deduction rising each consecutive month, e.g. month 1 would be -1pt, if month 2 also goes unpaid, it's another -1pt for month 2, plus an additional -1 for consecutive months, etc. -1pt for every month the wage bill is paid late (or not at all), again with deductions rising each consecutive month -5pts for failing to publish the club's accounts by the deadline -10pts for entering administration Up to -25pts for exiting administration without agreement to pay 100% to creditors, sliding scale depending on the CVA agreement - this makes it in the buyer's interests to pay back as much of the debt as possible... now *that* would "maintain the integrity of the competition", as the Football League like to quote at any given opportunity. -5pts for altering the agreed timescale for a CVA -10pts for failing to make an agreed payment to a CVA I reckon you'd soon see more clubs fall into line pretty sharpish...

Yes. That squad should have won the league already. Watford

Ah, apparently the Halford money's not due until the summer

Wolves £500k, any more for any more?