saintbletch

Thomas Dolby - The Flat Earth

Don't know. But surely the new South African owners will now be negotiating with their supporter's trust if they want 100% control of the club. As a minority shareholder I guess it gives the trust little power but can the trust insist on seeing the books, SoA or the details of the hot, hot, hot takeover?

The National - The Virginia

I like the fact that the government machine is now trying to bully the anti-bullying charity into proving that they were contacted by Downing Street staffers. That said, something smells a bit fishy about these allegations (calling the anti-bullying line, not that Brown is a bully - I can believe that).

February 2012 - Sydney. Scientists are desperately trying to find a solution to the massive number of carnivorous ants swarming across Queensland and New South Wales.... She swallowed the spider to catch the fly......

Sasha: "Peter I want you to run the club insolvently and continue against all your business instincts to spend far more money than the club can actually generate organically. I want you to pay over the top for players and pay them ridiculously high wages even if this goes against your own valuations of their worth. And even if the club being insolvent might leave you in prison and liable for some of its debts, I want you to soldier on. It's also important that you ignore the grief and heartache that your actions will undoubtedly cause the loyal supporters of this club. Plough on despite the fans' concerns and doubts that will eventually become anger and abuse, hold your head up high knowing that you're just doing your job and serving my best interests. Oh and here's £1.2M + bonuses per annum and a little bit more being tucked away "off-shore" for you when it's all gone tits up." Peter: "OK, Sasha. You're the boss"

This is a good point. I hadn't thought about the rest game that each team would have every week. It would play havoc with fantasy football selections!

As odd as it seems given the evidence of the Premiership table, I have to say that I think both Hart and Grant have done very well to continue to get their teams to actually "turn up" for each match. Each time I watch Pompey I don't see them playing like a company on the brink of extinction or a team at the bottom of the Premiership. They're not a great Premiership team but I would expect them to have zero belief and to capitulate to 3,4 or 5 nil losses week in week out. But they're not. Perhaps it's one or two key individuals on the pitch rather than the manager? Unfortunately for them I think it's the 60,000,000 - nil result in the high court on March 1st that might finish them off.

I bet her friends were wondering to themselves - is she really going out with him?

Great result. Pleased Barnard got off the mark. Hope he settles now. I only caught a snippet from the Radio 5 update from the ground... "Puncheon beat 2 men and then...." That'll do for me.

A poster who is a recently retired HMRC employee said previously that HMRC's motivation is more pragmatic than that. He said they would simply be looking to mitigate further future losses through unpaid taxes. That it sends a message will be secondary.

Well I found it interesting that Victor Cattermole is Hong Kong-based and doesn't appear to have a very big pot to **** in. And yet his approach to invest in/acquire PFC appears to have been part of PFC's the submission to the court at the first WU hearing. A cynic would say that another Hong Kong-based business man who needed a bit of stalling time asked his mate to go through the motions to keep the court and other potential "buyers" on their toes.

Ludovico Einaudi - Una Mattina

You also know this because it's exactly what Steve Clarridge said last night on Radio 5. I will concede that he did offer the crumb of comfort that perhaps a fan might allow his passion to override logic and get involved. He went on to say that compared to West Ham your club has nothing to offer an investor (I'm paraphrasing but that was about the meat of it). That doesn't mean you won't change hands again. After all from where I sit the same logic has applied through most of your previous 3-4 changes of ownership.

Agreed it's a shambles. But IF it were to happen as you describe then I'm sure Hull would have been given chance to vote on the matter along with the other Prem clubs (-Pompey). Their vote would have been noted and then in accordance with the PL rules on such extraordinary matters, the majority (whatever the ratio is) will win out.

He is either a very secret billionaire, a puppet or a Walter Mitty no-mark. I've seen the contract that members of the "club" are asked to agree to and it mentions "investment trees", "subscriptions", "referrals", "rebates" and "fees". It does indeed look like a networked marketing scheme with a pyramid structure whereby referrers enjoy benefits. Oh and it's based in Hong Kong. Now where is Chainrai based? Not again surely?

You're right but there is one important point in the PL's plan. Next year PFC will be the Fooball League's problem - not theirs. The PL only has to get PFC through to the end of the season and if they can do that and PFC completes its fixtures, then they will have got our of jail.

All good advice in my opinion. I'd add Light/Dark - Try to bring the light levels down in the evening before sleeping. We're very sensitive to light and dark. Light stimulates us and at a very base level in the brain it means wake up, be alert. Dark means sleep. Modern life has upset this natural relationship. TV/Computer - Don't use the computer 2 hours before going to bed. Try to avoid too much TV. They are both stimuli and also light sources. Reading - I read every night under a dim light and usually no matter what state my mind is in when I go to bed, I usually find sleep easy to find. Although a good book might keep me reading for hours - but that's another problem. Worry - Worrying about sleep in my experience becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's trite to simply say don't worry but focussing on it will make the problem worse. Diet - Don't go to bed with a full stomach. Don't eat late at night. Sugar - I am very sensitive to the amount of sugar I consume late into the evening. If I have too much sugar I really struggle to relax. My wife on the other hand is able to eat just about what she wants. Temperature - Our body naturally goes through a temperature drop/rise rhythm. To bring on sleep the body temperature falls and before we wake our body temperature rises. Don't have your bedroom too warm. Relaxation - Some great advice earlier in the thread and another very simple exercise that I've used is to double your relaxation. When we think we're relaxed we often aren't. To test this. Lay in the dark and try to relax and take note of how you feel. Then try to become "twice as relaxed". And what you find is that you relax far more than you were. You can repeat this and in my experience when you think your relaxed, you really aren't. Stress - When I had sleeping issues it was related to a particularly stressful job and my inability to deal with it. It was explained to me that you should spend time going through the major issues on your mind and, even though you might not be able to solve them, set a time in your mind when you will deal with it. This removes the unsolvable problems from creating the stress/worry cycle.

Oh dear. Endeavor Plan is the entity that the Guardian believes was named as a interested party in documents to the High Court. This from Victor's LinkedIn profile... Apart from being some of the most impenetrable marketing speak I've seen in a long while, it appears that it could be a pyramid or networked marketing scheme. Ponzi to buy PFC?

Yes. I know.

Much of what you say is true. My Mum and Dad live in Gosport. A few weeks ago I nipped out to a local takeaway while visiting them and it was full of Portsmouth fans wearing various bits of training kit. I realised then that a lot of "normal" people would lose something very important to them if your club goes under. On a human level, I felt for them and their club. I hoped you'd survive. Last week your team knocked my team out of the FA Cup with a side that you can't afford to pay. That really grates with me. It's cheating. I feel cheated. I left the ground proud at the way our 3rd tier team performed and any desire to see you survive was removed. I don't want you to "not exist", there's no bitterness, no twistedness, I just no longer care if you do. And whilst its true to say that many on here were lobbying for the -10 points to be taken away on a technicality, most realised that it was fair that we were penalised as we had transgressed. At the time we just had trouble dealing with the consequences of the penalty and were desperate to find any way out and anyone to blame (ring any bells?). When your fan base comes to terms with the fact that your club has transgressed and when the dust has settled then I hope they lay most of the blame in the board room at PCFC Ltd and away from the Premier League. But I also hope they keep a little bit of the blame back for themselves because one key difference between your plight and ours is that many of us were asking questions about the various regimes' stewardship of our club long before we went bang. I'm sure on reflection you too will come to realise that the book should be thrown at you. Just as it was thrown at us - although it might just be that your book is little heavier than ours was.

Me too. He's opinionated and I don't always agree with him but he calls it as he sees it.

Hmm. As I pondered earlier in this thread, all of the debt charge holders were likely to re-schedule the debt repayment ahead of the SoA. So the question is now whether they can get enough operating capital together to survive, if the massive debt is now deferred.

Very good indeed!

If Sol Campbell is anything to go by, then it might be standard practice for Pompey to pay their players image rights separately from their wages+bonuses. I think it's a tax dodge, or at least it appeared to be in Sol Campbell's case. He registered a company somewhere "off-shore" and that was paid his image rights. This left only his wage and any bonuses to attract tax in the UK. I wouldn't be surprised if John Utaka did something similar. So he may be right about his wage but his total remuneration, including image rights and bonuses may be considerably higher.