stevegrant

All well and good citing the likes of Diarra, Benjani, etc, who Pompey made a profit on when they were sold, but there were plenty of others who made the club nothing. Teddy Sheringham, signed on a free, one year's wages at £40k a week = £2m, left on a free. Total cost, £2m + PAYE/NI Sol Campbell, signed on a free, two years' wages at £50k a week (with Arsenal matching it) = £5m + PAYE/NI... plus another year of Pompey being his sole paymasters, at anywhere between £50k and £100k a week, potentially £5m a year, so a potential total of £10m + PAYE/NI. Left on a free. Even players like Defoe, signed for £7.5m, sold for £15m a year later, but on £80k a week during that time, so that's at least £4m, meaning they only made a maximum "real" profit of £3.5m (and that's obviously not taking into account PAYE/NI, bonuses, image rights, signing-on fees, etc). Peter Crouch, signed for £9m, sold for £9m, according to Soccerbase. Again, £80k a week after tax. At least a £4m loss. The net transfer spend argument just doesn't work in reality because the associated costs with transfers, player contracts, etc have such a massive impact.

What this really needed was another thread. See my various previous posts on the subject in the last week.

The main problem is that the person overseeing this forensic investigation is one of the men central to it having played out in the way it has in the first place.

Coventry to win at Sheffield United at 11/5 looks good value.

I was almost let down hideously in the FA Cup 1st round last season... my slip: Most of them were quite comfortable, but Wrexham won 1-0 in the 92nd minute and then in the final game, Burton Albion v Oxford City, it was 2-2 in the 96th minute, and then Burton somehow scrambled a winner Had a couple of accumulators in the Champions League this season that have been stitched up by one result, nothing costing anywhere near the amounts you're talking about though.

I've got a few cheques that haven't been cashed, but I was pretty sure I'd dealt with the subscriptions for them... I'll check when I get home tonight.

How do you score on that one, by the way? FWIW, to my knowledge I've never even met "hypochondriac", so I don't see how I'm "sticking up for my mates" there

The only stupid decision was his - that, despite numerous warnings, he couldn't leave his "humour" for the parts of the site where it would actually be relevant. I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that the infractions that were handed out to him which pushed him over the 10-point milestone recently weren't done by me, so you can direct your "over-inflated sense of importance" digs elsewhere.

And yet it had no effect on you. How odd.

Available from Companies House if you so choose.

He was never a prolific poster, and he has been online since the two week ban expired.

Except he hasn't...

Well it's certainly not ****ing Saints-related is it?

Except the "news" part of the site isn't part of the "sale". Everyone has access to that part of the site if they choose to use it. The subscription gets you full access to the forum. While it's a reasonable point, the user stats show that the vast majority of people visiting the site go straight to the forum. 88% of people "land" (i.e. the first page of a visit) on one of the forum index pages, compared to 4% at the overall home page (the rest are specific links, usually straight into a thread). As I said earlier, I'll be getting the news bit sorted shortly.

To be fair, I still haven't moved, thanks to solicitors, management companies, etc I am hoping to put the wheels in motion towards getting the news section sorted tonight. However, I would also say that the viewing figures on the articles that were being written were pretty low, so it would seem to me that a lot of people are complaining for the sake of complaining. Just to make a change.

VAT threshold is £70k, I think.

We're currently 26th in the country in terms of average attendance this season: http://stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/LGE/attend.html

Isn't that what Storrie-teller was saying for years?

It was removed as it's quite an intensive query to load all that data, and as we were having major problems with the database coping with the number of requests, that was one way of easing the load. Now we've managed to tweak the settings to make it much more robust, I will try to phase some of those small features back in over the next few weeks.

I suspect the £8m he's talking about is broken down as follows: £6.9m advanced to the club when they went into administration (documented in the administrator's 6-month progress report) Plus another advance (or possibly a legitimate scheduled payment - not sure when parachute payments are actually paid) The most intriguing thing there is that Duffen has come out and said all of this, considering he's likely to be bound by a non-disclosure agreement...

Incorrect. They were deducted ten points for the actions of previous directors in relation to payments to agents. That sanction was imposed by the FA. They were also deducted twenty points for failing to exit administration with an accepted CVA (which was the third time they'd been in administration). That sanction was imposed by the Football League.

Good game, I thought. Don't see how anyone could complain about the red card or the penalty, City did well to create as many chances as they did with ten men, but Arsenal always looked pretty comfortable. That said, 3-0 flattered them.

Intrigued by this part of the FL statement: Does that mean they're still under an embargo?

Decent end to the game, nothing in it really. On a complete tangent, anyone seen the score from the Eredivisie this afternoon... PSV Eindhoven 10-0 Feyenoord

How does Mandaric owe Gaydamak money, when it was Gaydamak who was the buyer, not the other way around?!