stevegrant

Nick, as I said above, the timing and/or reasons for his dismissal at the end of August are irrelevant here. Four months ago, NC said the mere suggestion that AP was under threat was "ill-informed", and yet straight after he does get the boot - for whatever reason - he's telling journalists that he had to persuade ML back then that he was worth keeping on. Either: 1. the speculation was ill-informed, in which case he lied to journalists after AP's sacking, or 2. the speculation was spot-on, he was about to be sacked until either NC or ML persuaded the other (depending on which logic you believe) to persevere, in which case he lied to the fans in May.

The reasons behind his sacking are completely irrelevant here May: "speculation is ill-informed" August: "in May, I had to persuade the owner that he should be kept on" It really is quite simple.

Well I could do, but strangely, the statement that was released on the OS in the middle of May (17th or 18th, can't remember exactly) seems to have mysteriously disappeared, where Cortese said that the speculation about Alan Pardew's future was "without exception, ill-informed". On the day Pardew's sacking was announced, journalists were briefed that Cortese claims that in the summer, he had to persuade Markus Liebherr that Pardew was worth sticking with [as reproduced by the BBC's Paul Fletcher in his blog], which (whether true or, as would be more logical given the very obvious dislike AP and NC had for each other, the complete opposite of the truth) proves that the speculation about AP's future in May was not in any way "ill-informed". It was bang on the money.

You are assuming that they are lies, despite no evidence either way. Both men have form for lying, so neither of them would be a particularly reliable witness.

He was linked somewhere with Sulieman al-Fahim, IIRC. He realised he couldn't actually get any money into it, so pulled out. SAF decided he still fancied owning the club, though, and went through with the purchase anyway

I think I've narrowed this problem down to a browser issue. It seems to only happen in Internet Explorer, and particularly in older versions. Also, I have vague recollections that it was only an issue when you have a particular type of reply box visible, so perhaps try playing around with the settings in your control panel (right at the bottom under Miscellaneous Options)

Our fans are no different to fans of any other club in the country, and there hasn't been a sudden change to a number of people picking up on anything to have a moan - lest we forget, any time Rupert Lowe wiped his arse, there was someone waiting to have a go at him. It's not something that's just suddenly happened now Cortese's the chairman.

Where has this "unpaid bar bill" stuff come from? The last (and indeed only) time I've been in the directors lounge before a game, it was a cash bar, i.e. if you don't pay at the point of purchase, you don't get the drink. I'm not really that fussed about Mitchell, he's a complete gob****e, but it does seem somewhat contrary that all the club's official statements bang the "we will continue to run the club in a professional manner" drum, when I would imagine the "professional" thing to do on this occasion is to rise above his comments and simply ignore them.

Now there's news we didn't expect...

I've just had two split-finger donuts :vuvu:

I should just look at the database load stats to work out what's happening We're going to investigate moving the database onto a separate server - there are pros and cons to doing it, so we need to weigh it all up. The main "con" is the cost and the added complexity, but if it runs faster then ultimately it'll probably be worth it.

Sounded like plenty of pressure towards the end, but still probably two points dropped. A win on Saturday becomes that much more important, although if we'd been offered 4 points from the two away games beforehand, I expect we'd have been reasonably satisfied with it.

Here...

Plymouth 2-0 up now, Wright-Phillips again Rochdale 1-0 Huddersfield

Goals elsewhere already, Bournemouth 1-0 Exeter and Swindon 0-1 Plymouth. Meh.

I don't know, really. The one thing I'm sure AA will (rightly, on this occasion) ask is why Gaydamak didn't (appear to) claim to be a secured creditor when the CVA was being proposed and voted on. Now it's been approved, and he voted in favour of it, remember, I'm not sure he'll have any claim to that security now.

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.