sidthesquid

Finally, after these months, it is starting to feel like justice is being seen to be done. I might be going soft, but start next season in League One with a squad they can afford and minus 17 on the board & I will feel our work here has been done.

Just another reminder why the DCFSBs need to be punished. Does Coventry's plight sound familiar? http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/football-league/dark-clouds-hover-menacingly-over-fading-sky-blues-7665774.html

I think you are spot on - the NA/NC way is to choose players that are intelligent/grounded/ keen to improve, bring them in and get them Saints fit mentally as well as physically. One or two of the deals that allegedly fell down were for players that probably on close inspection didn't quite meet their requirements. I also think football is evolving and raw pace/strength are being replaced by intelligence and close control. Hence why we are where we are (& Reading tbf) and BFSam's old school tactics have got West Ham where they are. Also, look at Norwich & Swansea - bright young managers with bright non-star footballers. The Saints way is the future.

It is Kelvin's fatal weakness, I'm afraid. In my opinion, anything in the six-yard box HAS to be the keeper's. We are right in line with that goal & it was so close in it had to be his, because if contact is made he has zero chance of reacting, as proved the case

God help us....

Have you borrowed Peter Storrie's calculator? £24mill divided by 16 months is £1.5 mill per month. Now that's what I call proper loss-making!

He played for quite a while for Havant & Waterlooville & also for Bognor. I heard his name mentioned on Solent the other day - I think it was for Gosport in the Southern League.

I agree. That 2005 game hurt like no other in my life. It wasn't so much the score, but the manner of our defeat and what it meant (ie relegation was a reality). The Cup game was an irrelevant blemish on a great season - Wembley, getting our club back etc, as we watched them implode. And Saturday, at present at least, feels on a similar scale. As long as we go up and they go down as scheduled, it will be no more than an annoying little footnote in our history. (Also, we played okay, as we did in the cup game, so you can't ask for more.) Personally I am over it and looking forward to a derby with a serious & long-term local rival on Friday.

I don't think any of us really like them - just that your enemy's enemy is your friend & all that......

Strangely, that outcome works for me, too.

The only thing that matters - way more than all the rivalry carp - is 3 points in one of our last 3 home games.

Maybe some humourist at FL headquarters rang them this morning and told Birch he could 'Pay it when you like, old chap.'

Yep, have to agree. Our support sounded great even at 3-0 down.

My head says we will go up, my heart is suffering the anxieties brought on by forty years of supporting the Saints. But can everyone stop all these ' 'When we go up, when we are champions' threads because they just make it worse. Trust me, we've got chickens at home and I NEVER count them.....

I actually think Birch took a calculated gamble on not loaning out Pearce, Ward & Varney after a couple of better results - one last spin of the wheel to try & avoid relegation. In the Champ there is still a slight chance someone might turn up out of the blue with the cash required, League One - not a skate's chance in hell. And at that point another few hundred grand on the final figure barely even registers.

Actually I am shocked by their apathy in the face of adversity. There is no excuse for boycotting the club now. Anyone connected with any previous regime is now out of the club & it no longer matters anyway. It is all about your club facing its darkest hour and standing up to be counted. When we faced it, in the last few games at SMS after admin attendances went way up. We forget it now, but we were facing exactly what they now face & we responded brilliantly. They are just walking away. There is no defence they truly should be ashamed.

Reading between the lines - Appleton is saying that there really isn't much point worrying about offloading anyone else - in the Champ 75% chance of liquidation, in L1 100%, so let's have one last desperate roll of the dice before being ejected shirtless from the casino. http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-past/appy-last-loan-deals-can-wait-1-3642298

It'll be back on come Thursday

I think the thing with the Skates that has finally really got to the supporters of other clubs is this second admin. Those not fully in the know could sympathise a bit with the 'chasing the dream' thing, but what has really been seen to be extracting the urine is the total disregard for their staggering debts as they wracked up new a whole new set of costs on unsustainable wages and failed to pay their taxes again. To be honest, even I might have had a bit of sympathy with a plucky Pompey squad full of frees and acadamy players battling relegation and admin. But they made no attempt to act right up the moment of no return. And then whine about a conspiracy. And the bit I still can't get my head around is the role of Lampitt in all this. He must have know Antonov was dodgy - at the very, very least he knew that he had bought the club on the never-never and it must have crossed his mind that this was because he didn't have the cash he claimed, yet he sanctioned the continuation of the outrageous quality over quantity wage-fest that may yet wipe them out. He looks a bright chap, obviously worked hard to get to where he did in the FA, he sounds plausible, yet a few months on Portsea Island and he just seemed to go troppo to the point where Storrie's financial planning looked like an austery regime. Very weird.

A couple of legends imo. Kanu clearly can't be arsed to play (and why should he at 65) so like all good lead-swingers he has a mysterious bad back, while he sits at home drawing his £10K+ a week. Nice work if you can get it. http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-past/appy-veteran-strikers-can-t-cut-it-any-more-1-3637088

I'll almost miss him when he's gone. I struggle through 40 lines of gibberish, then a little pearl at the end. He just sets them up for you to knock down, doesn't he? Is he a masochist whose sistermotherwife won't give him a good thrashing. Is he so dense that he thinks irony is what his sistermotherwife does to his shirty before goes to work? I'm lost for words. In response all I can say is, Der, go figure.

One of the more astonishing things about the saga down the road is that, after all that happened first time around they set about, under the guidance of Lampitt, to more or less exactly repeat the failings of the first debacle. With the exception of TBH, most of the players on unsustainable wages that Birch goes on about were signed after the first admin - mostly older players on huge contracts without relegation clauses that were always going to be a millstone. Delusion and stupidity seems to infect them - I think it's something in the swampy mud that surrounds them.

I think it's a forward-looking marketing strategy - Havant & Waterlooville tickets are £10. Aggressive pricing at £9.50 might just tempt a few more towards Nottarf Krap for the relegation six-piointers against Staines Town or Boreham Wood next season

I'm actually surprised at that dismal turn-out. Bristol City at home is surely the BIG game of their season - win it and they have a shout at surviving, lose it and it probably is all over. Our last few CCC games, when we were in admin and looking doomed, were all 20K plus. Surely thast is what good support is about.