hutch

It's about 55 minutes when you're a goal down and chasing the game, and 70 minutes when you're desperately clinging on to a 1 goal lead. HTH

AA wasn't appointed when Pompey had their first day in Court to face the WUP. He was only appointed just before the final hearing, to effectively stave off the winding up order. He did survive a Court challenge by HMRC against the legitimacy of his appointment at the begining of March, but with a stark warning from HMRC that "they would be keeping an eye on him".

2 points on what Lampitt said (or is reported to have said): In his explanation of the basis of HMRC's appeal against the CVA vote, he didn't mention the "material irregularity at or in relation to either of the meetings", 6 (1)(b) of the Act and 1.17 (4) of the rules, and That same £19m or so that appears in the cash flow to pay the football creditors, which states that the football creditors are actually £22.4m, but were allowed voting rights of over £30m?

The former.

FWIW, I was paraphrasing. I'm aware the Judge is unlikely to get the chance to ask those questions directly to Andy. But, IMHO, those are the questions he will be looking at Pompey's Counsel for answers. And HMRC's Counsel will be standing by to explain why those answers are wrong.

Verdict after Sutton - Could do better. Verdict after Barnet - Did do better. An away game on a Tuesday night, on a dodgy pitch, against opposition we expect to beat.

I'd forgotten about Trottman. They don't seem to rate him either. I thought he did OK for us, better than what we had at the time, but not a patch on Fonte. Maybe Carter's in the same boat, better than Wotton, but not as good as [..............]

So if you work in the London office of a Global Corporation, you only have to pay tax on that part of your salary that you earn while working on UK subsidiary business, and your employer can pay the rest of your salary tax-free into an overseas account? But putting that question aside, the appeal isn't about image rights, it's much more simple than that. It's about voting rights. His assessment of 1½ days in Court is wishful thinking, based on hoping that the Judge will be interested to hear all their convoluted arguments. IMO, the judge will ask 2 questions: Mr. Andronikou, what happened between 28 May and 17 June to make you change your mind and include the football creditors, which you had previously excluded, in the unsecured creditors vote? and Mr. Andronikou, what happened between 28 May and 17 June to make you unilaterally and without explanation or notice, and without any doubt as to the correctness of your decision, reduce the voting rights of HMRC from the amount in the HMRC assessment, which you had previously accepted, of £37m to £24m? If he doesn't get a satisfactory answer the vote will be nullified, and it'll be all over by lunchtime on the first day.

FAP, maybe. The jury's still out on the last P.

To make the CVA rescue work, Andy had to get in £18m from selling players this year. And get a CVA. It looks like the firesale has started in earnest. Andy (not the club) owes somebody £6m. A case of "get as much cash in as possible and pay back what you can" before pulling the plug?

Just when we thought the comedy value was waning, up steps Cotterill to fill the shoes so admirably filled until recently by Storrie, Grant and Andronikou. From his "News" article on Ciftci: Good luck selling that one to the League, Steve. Not up to nPC, but OK in L1? Now that one did make me

Sloppy reporting, as clearly both bits can't be true. As I see it there are 2 possibilities, either: They don't have permission from the FL to add to their squad, or They do have permission, but "the holder of the purse strings" won't allow it until the present wage bill is reduced to the target Neither of which helps their preparation for the upcoming season.

It wasn't the whole team. It was only 9 of them. At the end, anyway.

OldNick, if it helps, I'm certain that HMRC were already aware of everything I posted, and a lot more besides. All I did was read the available documents. I'm sure they did the same, before making their appeal.

As misdemeanours, in my view, probably yes. Andy is likely if/when called upon to explain in Court, to blame it on "mistakes" by his underlings. He's done that before in Court. The likely outcome, again in my view, is that the Court will nullify the previous vote, and order Andy, if he wants a CVA, to go back and do it again, properly this time.

alpine_saint, this morning in the AP School Report thread.

Woot

That bit's not strictly true. In the report of the meeting filed by AA at the Court, he recorded total unsecured creditor claims of £162m, and he admitted for voting purposes £131m, so he reduced the claims by £31m in total for voting. In the proposal he sent out to creditors the total was £83m. So he effectively inflated the unsecured creditors from £83m to £131m for voting purposes between sending out his proposal, finding out that HMRC intended to vote against and having the vote. Of the £31m reduction which he made to the total claims, £13m of that was knocked off the HMRC vote, and the rest mainly from the player's claims. So, in reality, I suppose the only "unsecured" unsecured creditor whose vote was reduced was HMRC. The others were "secured" unsecured creditors, if you see what I mean.

As I understand the situation, and this is "off the cuff" without proper research, Pompey have 18 players on tour Stateside, including England's U19 'keeper, who is on their books. But 3 of those are trialists. They also have a Youth/Academy team playing pre-season around Hampshire (they beat Havant & Waterlooville - our kids didn't). Pompey have stated that the FL have given them a dispensation not to include this years 4 new Academy scholars (16/17 y.o.) in the squad. If that's true, I personally think that's fair enough. But that leaves at least 7 other squad members still at home. So they have at least 15+7=22 "recognised" squad members at the moment, including a 'keeper. They have plenty. The fact that they don't put all of their pictures on the club's own "First Team Squad" webpage is no reason for the FL to relax the rules. The rules say you must have a squad of at least 20. They don't say it's up to the club to separate them into a "First Team Squad" and "others".

It's that combined AQ/BP sense of humour, mate. Few of us are blessed enough to have it.

I'm surprised there's so much support here for the FL "relaxing" the embargo to let them bring in new players to replace current players on "inflated" contracts, on a one-in one-out basis. Rules are rules, and should be applied equally to everybody. Once you start "relaxing" them in "special" cases, you get the Pompeys of this world continually pushing the limits to see how far they'll be allowed to go. Remember, the parachute payments were specifically introduced for just that reason, to allow relegated clubs to progressively replace expensive players with cheaper alternatives as their contracts expire. Pompey are already receiving £48m over 4 years to do that. An example of them wanting to have their cake & eat it too. No favours. Let them sort themselves out within the rules, or go to the wall. They created their own problems.

They did, but they're wrong. A creditor can petition a Court. Only a Court can issue the order.

It's all in Andy's own cash flow forecast, scroll to page 64 of the CVA proposal. But before accepting his forecast, ask yourself the following questions: Why is the parachute payment in March 2011 not given to the football creditors? Why is the Sky TV payment in May 2011 not given to the football creditors? Why does Andy expect to receive £3.8m from season ticket sales at the end of the season? Where is all that money from player sales going to come from? and then form your own opinion.

From the figures I've seen (all taken from Andy's own documents available on the UHY website) it's currently £14.1m "probably" secured against club assets (but for which he would be lucky, IMO, to get £5m back in liquidation), plus another £6m so far put into the administration. So it's around £20m so far, and he's being asked for more.

I saw those, MLG. I also saw this. Strange that Pompey haven't confirmed the transfer yet, if true. I'm not convinced yet.