stevegrant

Webb gets all the "big 4" games these days. He's generally got most decisions right today, with the exception of tolerating Wayne Rooney's tirades of abuse.

Reminded me of when Keegan lost the plot with his "I'd LOVE it" interview Now there's a thought...

Not for the first time, I suspect. I am surprised Stelling got it wrong though, not often that happens.

Dunno if it's escaped your notice, but we've been selling players in order to keep the finances in check for years - even before we got relegated. I am intrigued by the perceived "sustainable business practices", though. How is it in any way sustainable to run a company possessing a negative net worth with a wages/turnover ratio of around 95%? Matchday revenue can't be much more than £10m (if it's even that much), which is about 20% of your income - TV and prize money obviously accounting for the rest as far as the profit and loss account is concerned - and that 20% would only just about cover the wages for Sol Campbell, Peter Crouch and Niko Kranjcar. The sort of ridiculous amounts of money that are being paid to PFC's squad are the complete opposite of sustainable.

I don't think it's a case of the players feeling Moores had more nouse than KP, rather that they just felt KP went about things in completely the wrong way and with dreadful timing as well. As far as I can see, the problems between Freddie and KP are (predictably) ego-related. For years, Freddie was top dog, particularly among the press, and now this ****y upstart from South Africa has come in and taken his crown away.

Even more of a problem when the pair of them hate each other...

I wouldn't say it's "no support", rather "not unanimous support". From everything I've read, he had the backing of about half the team. Whoever leaked this to the papers is the cause of this - if it had been kept in-house, a sensible resolution could have been found. Andrew Strauss will almost certainly get the job now, but I wonder what KP's situation will be... will he still a) be selected (almost certainly, I'd have thought), and b) actually want to play? And people thought the Aussies were in turmoil...

Strangely, I don't think they'll get the chance.

Apparently so. Pompey also still owe Spurs money from when they bought Defoe last year, as well as from the signings of Younes Kaboul and Pedro Mendes, apparently, although I can't see how they'd still owe on Mendes, given that he signed 3 years ago!

It's like Spurs whinging like mad when ManYoo clearly tapped up Berbatov and now think it's fine for them to do the same thing with Defoe and Downing.

Is the answer Glenn Hoddle?

Sorry. Thought I'd done those shortly after the draw was made... obviously not

To be honest, I reckon Man City would probably be quite happy to do just that...

Got to say, I never saw that one coming...

Perhaps you should have read it a bit better then. There's very little "support" for Lowe in there aside from (paraphrased) "he's there, he has the support of enough shares to remain there for now, so unless we want to see the club go under, there's no point in embarking on countless nose-spite-face crusades". See above.

You should be able to do this already by choosing the "Subscribe to this thread" option from the "Thread Tools" menu. You'll probably have to change a setting in your profile if you don't want to receive an e-mail every time someone replies though!

Which would have been a lie, which would have led to an even bigger outcry by those who clearly have nothing better to do than concoct conspiracy theories about how The Dark Evil Mr Lowe is some sort of world-dominating Illuminati.

I don't deny that Distin is an excellent defender, but given the various different things that can (and will, IMO) dent his value, I just can't see the price being any higher than £3m. As I said, he's the wrong side of 30, other clubs are aware that Pompey are skint which means any offers received will be lower as they will think they can get away with it, and if he's unhappy the club will probably want to get him out of the club as quickly as possible. Without seeing the list of players whose contracts expire, I would guess that a number of those are among your better players, and they're all going to need replacing. From the outside, it looks as if the squad as it is at the moment isn't big or strong enough, so without those 13 players, that's going to need significant spending to replace those players. Money you appear not to have. Yes and no, I suspect. Cutting your cloth accordingly will involve only spending what you're actually bringing in whilst reducing the debt - with gates of 19-20k, that's not going to leave very much to spend.

I wonder if Jewell will finally get the stick he deserves for the "job" he did at Derby. He never even made an attempt to keep them up last season and they've paid the price for that lack of effort as it's carried through to this season.

If those players go for those values I will eat the hat I don't own. Unhappy players = devalued players. Defoe still hasn't fully been paid for, which diminishes his value, so he'll go for £8-9m tops. Johnson has the best chance of going for a "decent" fee - but as he's a right-back, he still won't command a massive amount. £4-5m for him. Distin for £6m?! Please tell me you're taking the ****. If he goes, you'll be lucky to get £2-3m for him, he's the wrong side of 30 on massive wages.

Sorry, but that's exactly what you're saying.

The same board that appointed them in the first place despite all roads pointing to disaster. Having witnessed the unmitigating disasters that were Gray and Wigley, and having been very vocal in retrospect when he first came onto the scene about Lowe's poor managerial appointments, you'd have thought Crouch would have realised that he was making exactly the same mistake. Strangely, I don't remember Crouch apologising for that appointment, nor do I remember those who have demanded apologies etc from Lowe demanding the same of Crouch. If a proper manager had been appointed as soon as Burley left (it was obvious he was going - it wasn't as if they didn't have time), we probably wouldn't have begun the freefall in February that saw us come close to going down. We were fairly comfortable at the point of his departure (14th). I wasn't Pearson's biggest fan, but if he'd been appointed a month earlier, I don't think we'd have got into the mess we ended up in. Positive action would have been appointing a permanent successor immediately, and would probably have seen us comfortably finish mid-table.

Adam Leitch was the reporter in question and he was sat a row or two in front of Crouch. Agreed. I was surprised Lowe wasn't a bit cleverer with the photo issue - if he wanted to get rid of the photo of McMenemy (which he clearly did), he could have replaced it with one of the TEAM from 76 with the cup and therefore would have had a ready-made response along the lines of "the TEAM won the cup, Lawrie, not just you". That said, I would have expected pettiness on a similar level from all of the three protagonists. They're all as bad as each other, IMO.

They didn't do that last time, so I see no reason why they'd do so this time either.

True as that may be, their value is diminished by the knowledge that PFC is desperate for the money, and that chances are some of the better players are now desperate to leave. A club would almost always (Spurs being the idiotic exception re Berbatov) choose to sell an unhappy player so he doesn't cause problems in the dressing room. Also, as much as you may bring in by selling players, firstly it won't cover the debt, and secondly the money brought in clearly won't buy replacements who are anywhere near the same quality. I would be very surprised if you go down this season, although with the gap at just three points, it's certainly not out of the question. I'm not entirely sure how a defence that was so good last season has suddenly turned to complete crap.