stevegrant

OK, I've just done some basic sums, using the figures the players were allowed to claim in the CVA vote (I am assuming for this purpose that that figure represents the monetary value of the remainder of their contract at the club), so here is what they are still paying out every year: Michael Brown: £2,138,050 Richard Hughes: £1,841,250 Hayden Mullins: £1,764,291 David Nugent: £1,777,333 John Utaka: £2,605,980 Danny Webber: £766,800 Some seriously scary figures there Even just taking those six players into account, that's £10,893,704, which works out at £907,808.67 per month. The CVA budget allows for a wage bill of £495,000 per month, so they've already nearly doubled that budgeted wage bill with just six players. Then add on the £160k a month for the combined salaries of Liam Lawrence and Dave Kitson, plus however much Kanu's managed to negotiate for himself, and then of course the chances are that West Ham won't be paying all of Tal Ben-Haim's £2,210,533 a year, and it looks like a bit of a shambles. Which comes as a complete surprise...

As opposed to their previous policy... A Blackpool fan I know reckoned Pompey were only willing to loan him out if a) Blackpool paid a loan fee (Burnley paid £1m for him last season), and b) they paid his wages in full.

It'll be interesting to see how that goes in reality... of course, we now have a rough idea of what each player is "earning" (based on their claims in the CVA vote), although that obviously only extends as far as those who were there last season as well, and the duration of their contract (as per the most recent document). The budget in the CVA proposal only allows for £495,000 per month on player wages, dropping to £453,000 next season, then £316,000 in 2012/13, eventually plateauing at £275,000 a month. Good luck...

The reason I put "either from Chainrai or the Premier League" is that, don't forget, Pompey received an early payment from the Premier League at some point earlier this year - can't remember if it was before or after they entered administration - so I'm not 100% sure if that £6.9m has come from that payment or from Chainrai's loans.

So from that report, the only interesting things I can ascertain are: 1. They continue to make a loss on fairly simple profit-making areas of the club - the matchday programme has lost £4k, and the megastore lost £13k. 2. Without a massive injection of cash, either from Chainrai or the Premier League, during administration, they continue to make a massive loss overall, despite the player sales. For the 6 months from 26th February, they made an overall profit of £184k, but received a massive £6.9m as "contributions to costs of Administration". That means that they are still losing more than £1m per month

Personally I would rather have fewer forums as the off-topic forums then tend to be busier rather than have everything diluted, but I was very much in the minority among the admin team when this was last discussed. The overall feeling was to keep them separate (I don't make many decisions unilaterally on here, despite what many might think ). We will have another discussion about it, though.

Did you "check in" on Saturday? I can only assume you didn't, as it was fine before, during and after the game. We've been adjusting the server for every game this season to try and get the right combination to cope with the load - Saturday suggests we're certainly moving in the right direction. I think there were just under 700 online simultaneously at full-time, which is pretty busy (the biggest we've had was just over 1000 when we drew Pompey in the FA Cup, and usually we peak at about 800). In order: 1. "stricter moderation" - for every user who complains of stricter moderation, there is a user who complains of not enough moderation. We can't win. 2. "a crackdown on debatable content" - considering as the owners/admins/however you want to describe it, we would be equally as liable for any legal issues arising from defamatory comments made on the forum, I don't really understand why this is an issue. I am not prepared to have to fight a court action because someone believes they are above the law as they're posting on an internet message board. 3. "a widely condemned change of aesthetic appearance" - as I said at the time and, judging by the lack of comments in the last 2 months, it would seem I have been proven right, it was a case of getting used to the new look. When we first launched the new style, I actually counted the number of people who made negative comments - it was comfortably in double figures. Out of 3700 active users, I don't think that's too bad. 4. "a forum which on recent matchdays has been at best 'very slow' and at worst 'inaccessible'" - I refer you to my reply to Smirking_Saint above.

That's his choice. He knew the rules.

Unfortunately, as I'm sure you're also aware, the libel law - as it currently stands - states that the burden of proof is with the accuser.

I quote:

Who and where? As I said, interesting poster or not, it does not put them above the rules that are in place for everyone.

If "contravening the quite simple rules in place and ignoring a fairly explicit warning/reminder about libel and the stance that we feel we have to take on it counts as "hitting some sort of raw nerve" then yes, guilty as charged. He'll be back in two weeks. There are many contributors on this site who are either well-respected or interesting (and even occasionally a combination of both ), and many who have been posting on this forum and its predecessors for years, but that does not give them carte blanche to post things that could get them - and, by association and most importantly from a selfish point of view, us as admins - in trouble.

That £4250pa figure is after expenses as well, so you could easily charge more than £350 a month. Any living cost can be included there, such as service charges, buildings and contents insurance, utility bills, probably even a cleaner if you've got one.

Simple reason being that I've not had time to keep it updated recently, mainly as I'm in the process of moving. I'll be trying to fill in the gaps on the news part of the site in the next week or two, and will then be looking for a couple of people to assist me in keeping it updated.

They're still in the database, so if the new version of vbArcade uses the same database tables and columns, the high scores should still be there.

Good point, I'd completely forgotten about it Will try to get it sorted this week, need to check there's a compatible version of it but expect it'll be fine.

Season starts here then?

I think it's probably too early to tell just how bad the situation is there at the moment, particularly taking results on the pitch as the barometer. They've had a tough set of fixtures so far, playing Arsenal, Man City and Man United in their first 5 games, and the sides they've played in Europe are no mugs either. It's very clear that the squad Hodgson has inherited isn't good enough to challenge for the top 4, although I'd say that most of the first-choice starting eleven aren't too bad (and came 2nd only 18 months ago). Wednesday night proved that the second string isn't anywhere near good enough, which leads to its own problems, e.g. squad stagnation, complacency among first-teamers, etc. I also suspect the supposed "hype" over them has been over-egged by the media - I know a few Liverpool fans and they've all said they'd be quite happy to get 6th place this season and try to build from there. Next month could be key in terms of the financial situation, as RBS and Wachovia could effectively take over the club by default, although I think RBS are currently investigating whether they can do this without forcing the club into administration. As Robert Peston wrote on his BBC blog the other day, why would someone pay what Hicks and Gillette are asking for (£450-600m) when in a month's time they might be able to get the club for £280m, with the added bonus that the two Americans are left with nothing?

As graced by such luminaries as Gaby Roslin...

Fair enough - can't say it looks much different to FM10, really, but until I've got one alongside the other I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Not convinced the social networking stuff will take off, really, but I suppose with the current craze for Twitter and other SM tools, they've got to try and shoehorn it in somehow.

What's new about the TV Match view?

I'm sure there's some sort of competition-related conflict of interest where a chairman of a rival club is allowed full access to a club's books...

The FT has been a paid-for subscription service for years. The model works with that publication because it is specialist information and analysis that may not be readily available elsewhere. The Times' website hits have fallen through the floor as a result of the paywall - I've got vague recollection of reading a report which suggested a 90+% drop - which would suggest that it's not working for them. Unless all other newspapers go down the same route (which I'm pretty certain they won't), they'll have a problem because, for me, there isn't enough exclusive content in The Times to warrant paying for online access when similar content is available for free elsewhere. The BBC are incredibly unlikely to ever make their content paid-for, so there will always be that source, which renders Murdoch's idea fairly irrelevant, IMO. Some people will draw comparisons with the model in place here, but there are clearly massive differences. Firstly, you don't have to pay to access the site at all. In fact, the majority of users don't pay. For most people, three posts per day is enough, so they have that option of using the site in the same way they always have done for free. Obviously as a consequence, they'll have adverts on the site (unless they've got an ad blocker installed), so they are still generating revenue for the site without actually having to pay themselves. Then we come onto the subscribers - there are generally two "types" of subscribers from what I can tell: there are those who subscribe because they want to be able to use all the features that are only available to paid subscribers, and then there are those who subscribe just because they want to contribute towards the continued running of the site. There appear to be a surprising number of people falling into the latter category, based on the number of subscribers who have low post counts. As we explained at the time, the whole reason for switching to the subscription model was to ensure the site remained self-sufficient. Under the previous donations-based structure, it became a law of diminishing returns - after the first wave of donations, there was plenty of money to run the site for about a year, but when we then asked for further donations, we received a much lower sum, which would obviously only keep the site running for a shorter period of time. With donations, I think people are happy to donate initially but feel a bit put out if they're then asked to contribute again a few months later. I seem to remember there was a bit of an issue with someone who donated a fairly significant sum then trying to claim immunity from being banned because they had contributed that much more to the forum than most other people. With the subscriptions model we now have in place, there are two options, it's either free but slightly limited, or a fiver with everything included, which keeps things much easier and settled. To pick up on a couple of other points that have been made on this thread, it does feel as though it's been quieter lately, but then a look at the figures (3746 have logged in in the last month) would suggest otherwise. I guess it's all in comparison to the massive floods of traffic we had with Markus Liebherr's death and then the Pardew sacked/Adkins appointed saga, and clearly it's going to seem quieter compared to those occasions when everyone wants to have their say. Not everyone has something to say on a given topic, obviously. With reference to the lack of news articles on that part of the site, I can only apologise for that. My excuse being that I'm in the process of moving house, and simply haven't had the time to write articles recently - I've not posted much on the forum recently for the same reason. I'll try to plug the gaps in the next week or two, but I'll also be on the lookout for a couple of people who are interested in writing news articles, match reports, etc for the site.

Politician in "saying things to win votes and adopting a different policy when he/she gets into power" shocker.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/football-league-blog/2010/sep/22/championship-already-decided History suggests they're already ****ed in terms of their footballing survival...