stevegrant

He seems to be pretty much the only person down there coming out of this situation with any sort of credit. However, I would also argue that he was rather naive to take Lampitt and Antonov's promises at face value when even the slightest bit of research (and apparently a West Brom director warned him of the pending crisis) would have painted a fairly bleak picture.

I don't have a problem with transfer fees being paid in instalments or being incentivised (i.e. extra payments based on the player and/or team fulfilling certain criteria), but they should simply do away with the Football Creditors rule for any transfers conducted from this summer onwards. It should remain in place for transfers that have already taken place because I don't think it's particularly fair on selling clubs to move the goalposts on a deal they concluded under the old system of secure knowledge that they'll receive 100% of the agreed fees, but from the summer onwards, it should be down to selling clubs to do due diligence on any other club they're looking to do business with.

#firstworldproblems

Sort of, except the latter was achieved by very good fortune rather than by design. Crouch had tried for months, maybe even years (as did Lowe, as did Wilde), to find proper investors to buy the club but absolutely nobody was interested. Therefore, he assumed that nobody would be interested once the club slipped into administration, leaving just one person with the capability of rescuing the club and being pronounced the Saviour (with the side-effect of 1. buying the club for **** all, and 2. getting one over Lowe and Wilde)

More by luck than judgement. I'm certainly not going to give him praise for selfishly jeopardising the future of the club in the misguided belief that nobody else was going to be willing or able to buy the club when it went into admin. Clearly it's one of those things which nobody will ever be able to prove, neither Crouch or Richard Fry would ever admit to such a conspiracy. Forced administration because of a £6k cheque, when the overdraft was at £4.1m, having been reduced from £6.5m? Cracking business sense there...

Arguably without Crouch's various interventions, we might not even have had to go into administration in the first place.

No. However, the Football League do reserve the right to bend/make up the rules as they see fit, so it's not entirely cut and dried that they'll only receive the statutory 10-point deduction on Friday.

I'm not sure that's strictly true, because otherwise they wouldn't need to go into administration in the first place.

Glad he answered the toughest question so honestly there

Jesus ****ing wept

Football League have confirmed it'll be a 10 point deduction when they enter administration.

I bet they didn't. Penny Whats-her-face would have made it very well known as soon as the meeting ended if that had happened. Since when has a politician ever missed an opportunity to justify their own existence?

I'd argue it's the exact opposite. If his contract contains a clause which states that any offer equal to or in excess of £1.85m must be accepted, and clubs know about this clause (which it seems was common knowledge as the Donny chairman said as much in an interview), why would anyone offer any more than that? If we're competing with other clubs for the player, it's down to us offering the player better terms and/or prospects than the competitors. If we offered £2.5m and Leicester offered £1.85m, both bids would still be accepted and it would still be down to the player to decide where he wanted to go.

We're one of the few clubs who refused to get involved with the Sun deal, rightly or wrongly.

Worth bearing in mind that there is another protest going on tomorrow. Leeds fans are staging a demonstration in the city centre against Ken Bates, I have a feeling that particular protest will have a higher profile.

That seems the most likely outcome. However, one scenario the Football League hasn't had to deal with before is such a short period of time between periods in administration. It should be added that Bournemouth failed to get a CVA agreed as well - if they had done so, they wouldn't have had any points deduction once they exited administration.

They got merked by the "old undated statement on the OS" trick.

Only got firm confirmation from 6 now, waiting to hear from a few others not on the list on page 1 as well.

It's an old article. You can tell by looking at the article ID (672) in the URL and comparing it to recent articles that appear on the home page (http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/LatestNews/news/Appleton-We-Fight-On-3102.aspx, for example)

Assuming they've not sold out their allocation (unlikely), away tickets will be on sale from the ticket office window immediately next to the away turnstiles.

I was thinking the same thing, I can't imagine Kettering v Telford is a particularly high-profile game that would actually need policing. Saints have had loads of police-free games at SMS over the years.

I think that is true, but this situation is different from most because of the OldCo/NewCo scenario. Most companies that exit administration with a CVA don't create a new company and have the old company liquidated, as far as I'm aware.

In theory, yes, although it would rarely happen. If a player doesn't (formally) request a transfer, he will be entitled to some sort of "loyalty" bonus because he didn't ask for the move. The amount payable will depend on that player's contract, I don't think it's necessarily an arbitrary value relative to the transfer fee or anything like that, it'll depend on whatever the agent had negotiated at the time.

Not true, actually. Facepalming when you're wrong yourself is a bit silly really.

Much like us with our parent company back in 2009, this can be filed under "circumstances the Football League didn't plan for". You see, most clubs when they go into administration and come out the other side tend to embark on a new wave of austerity and self-sustainability. Most clubs.