St Marco

And just like that they have not got away with it. In fact really this could be the worst thing to happen to them other then actual liquidation. The club could now get a points deduction and that will mean they are relegated. But regardless of "what could happens" they will stay with a transfer embargo until they come out of admin. If they come out of admin without the cva they will get nailed to a tree by FL. If they don't come out without CVA they can't buy or sign anyone. The team they have will remain the team they have. The FL will not try and help them at every turn like the PL did. But more importantly they could now be seen to go to court and be dealt with by the law. Those involved with the club right now who thought they were going to get away with it will be nervous. Would not surprise me one bit to see them come out of admin without the CVA and sell the club while still in admin. Doing so will result in massive points deduction anyway. Hopefully now the cheats will get dealt with.

It seems AA is using the media to make hmrc look bad. Like by appealing the cva is wrong. AA from the start has run admin to make it favour one guy. If it goes to court he is going to have to show everything he has done and will have to prove the debt figures are correct. With one judge already saying he has fiddled figures before i can imagine he does not want to go to court. I imagine he is now feeling the pressure hence his remarks. The fl is different from the pl. It is not easy. If they go into the season with the players they have now they will struggle. If they lose more of them which they will then they will be as good as down. If they looklike they are down will chinman still throw money at them? Will someone still want to buy them? If hmrc appeal they are screwed simply because the appeal to buying them becomes less. I wonder if the appeal is rejected would they not come out of admin and take the points hit then just try to survive the season?

Love the way they say "if the appeal comes it will seem unfair and vindictive". What is vindictive about someone being owed £30m+ wanting to get their money? What are they supposed to do send a congratulations card to them saying "don't worry about the money you owe us, keep doing what your doing, your da best club and fans in da world!.....

What ****es me off about that news piece is they don't talk like they have done anything wrong. Like they are being victimized or something! As for those aa comments about cutting to the bone that is just sick. They have just jetted off to the states! If you or i were making cutbacks i doubt we would be going there! Maybe butlins...

Oh my god an ice sculpture! That must be the new one Cortese supposedly had comissioned to replace the one of Ted outside the stadium! And if you look real closely you can see Kelvin is wearing a Texaco shirt, they must be our new sponsors! Cortese out ffs!

I think it is important people remember we are still in league one.... From the clips shown on here he does not look so bad. Looks very fast. Scored some goals in a dire team. If we put him into our team he would get more chances and probably score more goals. He has fast pace, he lookslike he has good ball control in those clips as a lot of the goals he took it around the keeper or defenders. He can score with headers. Looks like a player with a bit of potential. Our team is in desperate need of pace and he looks lightning fast. People are saying why not get Papa or Antonio. Maybe Reading wanted to keep Antonio and Papa didn't want to move to us? We assume that because they have not signed it must be our decision that they are not here. We live in the age of player power. The day's of agreeing a fee and expecting the deal to me done are long gone.

So then it was 15th/16th wasen't it that they had to wait to see if there were any challenges to the CVA? This week will be the week if we find out if they have indeed got away with it! I wonder if HMRC are going to challenge would they wait until the last possible momment?

I remember going in The Beach in Ocean Village once, the fact i remember it is not a good sign! And they had that Way out West place too. God that sucked. But seeing wasted people fly off of that mechanical bull thing in there was quite funny! Health and Safety probably wouldn't let drunk people on something like that these day's!

If we take away our 10 points deduction and first 10 games off last season and base it on the final 28 games we would of been promoted last year. We had a good team last year but there was still a lot of gash in there too. A lot of those have now moved on. We are adding better players to the squad now. We need a few more to act as cover. If we get those in then i expect a top 2 finish. No excuses. We have to get auto promoted next season. I predict we will win the league! I hope we put out a z team in the JPT and Carling cup. The cups are nice and going to Wembley was a great day out but the league is priority this year. Having other things can lead to distractions!

Great signing and once again Cortese and Pardew stick two fingers up at the mongs on here! Welcome Frazer. Good to have you on board!

I imagine Cortese is the guy who sit's down and talks with the players about contracts and things of the financial side. I would find it more strange really if the manager was the guy negotiating the contracts. All i read from that is a guy basically saying thanks for giving him a new contract.

If the owner is putting his own money in to cover the losses how is that bad exactly? If he took out loans in the clubs name then fair enough that would be bad. The club is not under pressure to make any profit now. Didn't they say they only think they would make a return when we are in the PL? To try and use that as a stick to beat him with is just dumb.

I think it is too easy to blame the manager, we always do. Like today people saying with 20 mins to go we took off Defoe and put Heskey on. Who else was there? We had Crouch and Heskey on the bench. Either of them would of meant the same style being played. Everyone was crying out for Joe Cole and in his 45mins or so in the cup he did feck all. It is easy to say "if you did xyz then xyz would of happened". The reality is it probably wouldn't. The players are to blame, pure and simple. Many of these people earn so much that they now live in a different world to the rest of us. They forget what it means to play for your country. This is why in my view we need to now drop those with huge egos and start looking at the kids. Those nippers will put a 110% into it and do us proud. The manager has proven his ability. Won every cup you can win, even qualified with ease. We tried the whole "get a manager the players like" in Mcclaren and that ended in us not even making it to the finals. You can't make a team around pre-maddona type players. If you look at the Brazil team they have dropped those type of players. It is time we did the same.

I think if she is married or got kids etc then should be a total no. Don't be a home wrecker as that is just lame. But if they are not happy in the relationship and the guy is a douche , their not married etc then all is fair in love and war! But if its a friend then no, you don't want to cross that line!

Basically the players are to blame. When you earn 100k a week i wonder how important an England shirt is to them? If we crash and burn tonight i think we need to change the system in English football. We have so many good foreign players but a lot of **** ones too, those **** ones are still better then a lot of our national team! We just arnt producing great players. If we fail we can't blame the manager anymore. We are so quick to place the blame on anyone but them when in reality they are the ones not bothering to play. They will take a lot of heat. If it happens then we need to think for the future, do what brazil did and drop people with huge egos who consistently fail to perform. If we go out tonight players like lampard, swp, Barry, heskey, carragher, james, king etc should be removed from selection. If your going out there to play like that then they should let the under 21s be there instead. They will at least put in the effort. I hope we win, but the pressure on the players is now huge. Rather then play well were already hearing excuses as to why there not. The players owe us big.

Wow a lot of player bashing in here just because he didn't sign! Surman is a good player but he has not had any great seasons here. In our relegation year he played just as many crap games as good. As others mentioned where would he play? Puncheon in my view is a better winger i am sure his assists and goal ratios might prove that. Morgan is getting better every year and alongside hammond have formed a good partnership. Surman screwed up by leaving us as it has hurt his development. It would of been nice to see him sign but it doesn't make us any worse that he hasn't.

Ok maybe someone can answer this for me! They have an agreed CVA, let's assume HMRC don't appeal and they officially come out of admin. They agree to pay back the amounts owed at the agreed rate of 20p in the pound over the space of 5 years. If HMRC supposedly had 18% of the vote at £24m then that means the un-secured debt was at least £120m. Which would mean they pay back at least £6m. Or £1.2m a year. Or roughly £23k a week. Is that correct? If it is do the parachute payments pay that or is that seperate? Because if it is seperate and they fail to make any of those payments they will be punished for it correct? It is all well and good paying rich football players but failing to pay the tv repair man who fixed your lounge tv still constitutes a violation of the CVA. Because there are so many of these people owed money you would think eventually at somepoint they will miss paying someone!

I pretty much agree with what adrian just said. I understand the whole "It is their world cup, let them do it their way" thing as that is fair enough. We would not like it if say someone stopped us singing Britannia with the trumpet/drum etc.. But the difference is as others said the point of instruments in these places is to spur on your team to play well and win. These horns have zero effect on that. If there were no horns for 80mins and a team were losing 1-0 and some people started to blow those horns how does it install confidence to the team? Doing it before the game has started until the game has ended makes them pointless. Thus far i am dissapointed in the way the World Cup has been done in SA. It feels very second rate and that is largely down to these horns. The pace is very slow because these things just drain your energy. I thought Africa was known for it's collective singing? For it's culture? How is Vuvuzelas connected to their culture? If it had some symbolic point then i would agree with it, but it doesn't seem to have that, it's purpose seems to be just make as much noise as possible. In that case why not just get some huge speakers and play some bee buzzing sounds really loud...

Maraddona likes them apparently

I think you make a really good point nick. If we had lost Lambert and say Morgan we would of been up against it for sure. But the difference is while those players left he was given a lot of money to replace them. He was the person to choose the players and you have to say they were a mix bag. Some good but most truely awful. If you look at the season just gone i think one thing is clear to see, Pardew has made good choices with his signings. I will hold my hand up and say most of them i had never even heard of i.e Waigo,Antonio,Puncheon,Hammond,Harding etc. but they all done very well. Football is so different from his time at Ipswich. Money has destroyed the game, the gulf in class between the teams is no longer what it was. The big 4 has turned into like the big 7. Nobody will repeat what he did by taking a club up and finishing 4th in the PL. But since then he has done ok, not great. I remember when we appointed him someone said "He is a guy who will take you to the races but your never win it", i think that is a spot on summary of Burley. When the big decisions needed to be made he normally got them wrong and that normally results in either losing a playoff/cup game.

Pearson came in with no money, no pre-season, a massive injury crisis especially in defence, a team which were well on the slide before he took over. I am not going to criticise Burley as that is in the past. But Pearson did make a difference. In his 13 games in charge he got 16 points. That is not a great number. It is only great when you compare it to the previous 13. It was a big increase of points. For the money Burley spent and the players we had you would expected more. If Pardew spent £12m i am sure majority of you would expect auto promotion. I wish him the best at Palace but for a manager to have been managing for 19 years have 1 promotion, 4 sackings from his 6 jobs (2 mutual) i don't think that is an all too impressive record. Just like with Scotland i don't think he will do much there. He is not a man manager, having no money to buy players will test him. It will be interesting to see how he get's on like that.

Exactly. The problem is the debt numbers being claimed. In the Guardian piece they say "The hearing revealed that although HMRC's claim went up from £17m to £37m, the club's administrators managed to reduce their claim to £24m," Which means even AA realises they were owed more then the £17m first thought. Which is an increase of 41%. That is a massive increase of debt owed. I think if they go to court and all these numbers are thrown about the judge will go against them. It will proove they were trading when insolvent. Which would mean financial iregularities, which other clubs have been done by before. It really now boils down to if HMRC still want to go after the club, the individuals or neither. If it is the individuals then the club will get away with it. If it is neither the club get's away with it. If they go after the club then this will drag on for a very longtime yet.

To be fair he has thus far not met any resistance to what he has been doing. The only hint of that was from Griffins report. IF HMRC take them to court then that will be the time he has to justify his position and the decisions he has made. He will have to explain his actions and how he got to those conclusions. Until we have a proper report from the meeting we are all just speculating but right now he looks good because nobody has called him out on his statements. HMRC have remained quiet. I would be very surprised if they and others didn't make a challenge. Because basically these numbers mean only HMRC were aggainst and everyone else was for it, which personally i find hard to believe.

Well there is no shock there then! What it all boils down to is the % of the debts. Android has obviously made his allies % higher at the expense of HMRC. What they do will give us an indication of what is to come. If they challenge which they obviously will then this this get's dragged out for at least 3 weeks more. If they go into a court case with HMRC then Portsmouth will have to answer a lot of questions. Most notibly how the debt has managed to increase by nearly double since they were in administration. The administrator is supposedly not allowed to take on more debt under the companies name. Why were these debts missed in the soa? By going to court these questions will need to be answered. However if the HMRC come out and agree to it then in that respects they have got away with it. But the FL can still take action over various things. Until it is all agreed then the embargo remains. As for the squad they have to play in CCC. They will struggle. They were poor in PL and now have a depleted squad. They still have to sell players to get the money to pay the football creditors.

The only way AA is getting 75% is if he is making the HMRC debt % less. Which you have to imagine while he is decreasing the HMRC debt % he is increasing one of the others %. Which obviously will mean they go back to court. Question is will he want to do that? It would not surprise me to see the CVA agreed, HMRC claim foul play and take them back to court and Android walks. He can then say he got the CVA agreed making his reputation as an administrator slightly less tarnished. Then at court HMRC will just rip them apart. The whole pay people 4p a year while they spend millions on new players and wages will not go down well at all.