stevegrant

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.

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?