sidthesquid

Why would a bank (allegedly) be prepared to put in £35 million in August, then six weeks later not give them a penny? I suspect Gaydamak didn't believe they really ever had it which is why he went with the Clown in the first place

Whar a woeful game of football. Coventry ****e, Pompey even worse. Their players look shell-shocked.

Suddenly the world seems a better place

I don't think two or maybe three million pound signings and a couple of smaller ones is going to be ruinous. If we were spending £5 mill on a player or Sol Campbell appears on £40k/week, then I'd be worried. But without the mortgage, with most of the dross off the wage bill and having spent virtually nothing on transfers since Burley's splurge two years ago I don't think it is anything to fret about. Charlton & Norwich would have spent much more than that last year in the CCC

It doesn't actually ,matter where the cross is from if it is directed at someone in space and with a bit of pace. How many times have pacy wingers like Antonio skinned their full-back only to blaze the ball into the crowd. Personally I think he is a much better footballer than he gets credit for, who seems to take a lot of stick, whilst Harding, who is pretty hit and miss at times, is hero-worshipped however bad a game he's having. I'm happy having both of them in the team.

I still think this is where the fun and games really lie. And what the EPL are quietly cr*pping themselves over. Somewhere deep within this hornets' nest of Israelis/Jews aiding and funding an invisible and unknown alleged Arab owner lies the dead hand of Arcadi Gaydamak. The EPL should never have let his son own a football club. The fact that it has been used as nothing more than a money-churner is plain to see, even to us simple fellows. And now, as the reputation of English football is dragged through the mire, nobody from the EPL is prepared to open up the nest full of deals within deals, loans to an insolvent company from former (or perhaps still current) friends of the father of the ex-owner, financial advisors with serious criminal records operating in the shadows and all the rest of it, for fear of what they'll find, and worse, be held accountable for.

You have gone up greatly in my estimation. Anyone who gives a home to a retired greyhound can't be all bad. (Perhaps your P*mpey affiliation/aberration was just down to a bad choice of friends as a boy)

Even if he did want his money back we are now being run as a solvent going concern, not a money pit

Reality is a lot less - most are borderline prem quality playing for the bottom team & no-one outside prem has any money to spend 1 David James (G) - free 3 Younes Kaboul (D) - up to £4m - only one woth anything 4 Aaron Mokoena (D) - came as a free 6 Hayden Mullins (M) -came as a free 7 Hermann Hreidarsson (D) - Free 8 Pape Bouba Diop (M) - £1m (at absolute most) Also on huge wages 11 Michael Brown (M) - Free - age 14 Mike Williamson (D) -£500k 16 Steve Finnan (D) -free - age/fitness 17 John Utaka (F) - Free (due to massive wages) 19 Danny Webber (F) -£500k 20 Tommy Smith (F) -£500k 21 Jamie Ashdown (G) -£250k 22 Richard Hughes (M) -£500k 23 Kevin Boateng (M) Can't be sold Can't be sold, but still worth c. 4m (for accounts) 26 Tal Ben-Haim (D) - £2m tops plus big wage 27 N****wo Kanu (F) - Free 29 Antti Niemi (G) - Free 31 Asmir Begovic (G) - £1m 33 Angelos Basinas (M) - Free 35 Mark Wilson (D) - £500k 37 Gael Nlundulu (M) free 39 Nadir Belhadj (D) - £4m I reckon absolute tops is £15 million (£20 if you include Boateng). Only Kaboul, Belhadj & poss Ben Haim woth anything more than a weeks wage bill and a lot of the biggest earners are unshiftable even for free

This thread could be heading on towards 500 pages by then

Please tell me that Mr Jacob's news isn't that Paul Allen fancies a crack at South Coast soccer after all..... I've enjoyed this thread so much I will be gutted if the fishy ones suddenly come up smelling of roses

Done! I'm a fair & generous chap and it sounds a fair deal alround to me

An interesting post from an almost articulate Skate on f365 forum, put on the parallell thread on main site by Instinct: The theory is that Sasha Gaydamak is still indirectly in charge of the club (using it for money laundering) and is basically withdrawing the vast majority of income from player sales, TV revenue, gate receipts etc into his own accounts, whilst using loans to pay for day-to-day expenses, thus building up the debt. This will go on until the club inevitably enters administration and in most likelihood folds completely. A few things to consider – - Despite all the player sales over the past year or so (Diarra, Muntari, Johnson, Defoe, Crouch, Distin, Kranjcar, Mendes) bringing in around £80m in income, plus the Sky money, ticket sales and other revenues, which must total around £150m, there is still no sign that the debt situation has changed – we’re still struggling to pay basic expenses such as the player salaries, this despite now having one of the lowest wage bills in the league. Were our debts really that big to begin with? Unlikely. - Pretty much every business Sasha Gaydamak has ever owned has gone into liquidation. - Ali Al-Faraj is still a complete unknown. He was a supposed “billionaire”, yet no-one had ever heard of him, even in his homeland of Saudi Arabia. He is yet to turn up to any games (not even Man Utd at home, despite word going around that he would attend) which was originally put down to permit issues, yet his “brother” has attended some games. No-one is quite sure who he is or where he got his money from, and all that has been released of him is this one photo: Is this man in the photo Ali Al-Faraj, or just some random Arab being used as a smokescreen for Gaydamak’s cash cow scheme? Is Ali Al-Faraj even a real person, or is he completely made-up? And if he isn’t a real person, how the f**k did he pass the FA’s Fit and Proper Person Test?! Keep in mind that Al-Faraj reportedly didn’t spend a penny on buying the club; all he did was take over the clubs debts. In theory I could have done that – all I’d need to do is fool the FA into thinking that I had the financial clout required to run a football club. And as we all know, the FA are useless bunch of tossers anyway. - Two men called Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir loaned us £15m in September to help with costs. These two men co-founded a company called Ameris Holdings, who sold 65% of shares to Sasha Gaydamak’s father Arcadi (who has an arrest warrant out for him in France for arms dealing during the Angolan civil war. He’s been sentenced to six years but is now hiding back in Russia as they have no extradition treaty with France) Anyway, Arcadi used to be owner of Beitar Jerusalem *****il July this year) but ran into some problems with Israeli law and had his account frozen. His business partners Chainrai and Kushnir sued Arcadi for failing to buy the rest of the shares of their company Ameris Holdings as was apparently agreed, and were awarded £16m from Arcadi’s frozen accounts. They then lend Pompey £15m for apparently no reason at all…. seems like a good way of transferring cash from one frozen bank account to another active one, no? - Another face currently hanging around the club is someone called Danny Azougy, who has been brought in as a financial advisor. He is an Israeli lawyer/accountant and multi-time convicted fraudster you used to work for, yep, Arcadi Gaydamak. Quote: “Disgraced lawyer Daniel Azougy is controlling the club’s finances, despite a string of convictions for fraud dating back eight years. He was found guilty of FOUR counts of embezzling client funds in Israel in 2002. He was sentenced to five months in prison – but did not spend any time behind bars as he was allowed to do his time in community service instead. Azougy was also banned from practising law by the Israeli Bar Association for FOURTEEN YEARS. Then in March this year, Fratton Park’s new finance man was sentenced to two months’ community service and a year’s probation – and fined £25,000 – for a securities fraud resulting from a dodgy share transfer back in 1999.Azougy was found to have lied to the Israeli Stock Exchange bosses over the deal. He got off with a light sentence because the offence happened 10 years earlier.” Azougy specialises in liquidation and was appointed by Arcadi to deal with the asset stripping of Beitar Jerusalem towards the end of his reign. And here he is again, no doubt appointed by the same person to do a similar job. - Two other names, Roni Mana and Yoram Yosepov, have been linked as potential investors to the club. They denied it, but admitted on record that they are acting as “business advisors” to Ali Al-Faraj and claimed they persuaded him to appoint Avram Grant as manager. Type the name ‘Roni Mana’ into Google along with Gaydamak and you’ll see, unsurprisingly, they have quite a history of dealings too. The first result says Mana “has been the middleman in all of Gaydamak's recent business transactions”. It’s clear that the people being deployed by the club are Gaydamak’s people, not Al-Faraj’s, if he even exists. - Where does Al-Fahim fit into this? Well, my theory is that he intended to buy the club back in May and had a serious backer lined up (probably Thaksin Shinawatra as reported) but that went down the pan. Once it became clear Al Fahim didn’t have anywhere near the required financial means on his own, and after he failed to attract other investors to pay off the remainder of Sasha’s demands, Sasha went with Plan B – Al-Faraj the mirage – and decided to rape the club for everything he could. He clearly doesn’t give a sh*t whether the club survives or goes bust, and why should he? Al-Fahim is left sat there as a non-executive chairman, owning 10% of a worthless company, with no money and no decision making authority like the useless fat ***** that he is. So there you have it. Clearly there’s a lot of dodgy stuff going on. I’m 100% sure the Gaydamak’s are still in charge, and as they have no invested interest in keeping the club afloat, I really can’t see a happy ending to it all. No investors are going to want to buy the club – not when you consider the current league placing, shocking infrastructure and (somehow still) massive level of debt. Now the winding up order has been set, the end seems to be nigh. The club is getting f**ked up the arse and I honestly reckon we’ll be out of business in the coming months. Possibly administration as early as next month. Bottom line is, Pompey look fooked.

One interesting little problem he might come up against is the good old Fit and Proper test. Is there any way the PL or even the FL could allow him to re-purchase the club after the fiasco that is going on now. Surely even the PL would want to retain some little bit of credibility..... Wouldn't they?

Quote from one of the brain donors on Portsmouth News site forum : just a thought, but is not a transfer embargo a restriction of trade and a bar to employment? If so, then surely illegal, as per Bosman. Don't you just love them?

Totally agree - who cares about Stoneham? It's about as relevant as discussing whether the captain of the Titanic should have turned left, not right, & missed the iceberg. It's done, finished & consigned to history, just like our fishy friends soon will be, but that is happening now.

I particularly liked this quote: "The club has shown a complete lack of class," one dressing room insider told the Daily Mail. Though you do wonder where he'd seen some previously down there

Can't remember how to post a link, but more on the Skate City Shambles on here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article6977045.ece Oh, I clearly can remember after all.....

I love the way that somebody keeps putting out positive stories, even taking the BBC in, then the Portsmouth News puts us all straight. Maybe the sports editor is a secret Saint

To quote Farmery : "The key problem is that there is a complete lack of transparency about the ownership position at the club. The 90% owner is a British Virgin Islands-registered company [Falcondrone]. Establishing who are the shareholders and directors of this company has proved virtually impossible." Isn't that what the Fit & Proper Person Test is meant to be about?

Storrie was actually pretty honest yesterday - officially admitting more than has been admitted before. They really are up sh1t creek, aren't they? I still have that little nagging fear that they will get away with it, but more & more does it look like they really could go all the way. Only the mealy-mouthed cowards at the PL can save them, and then only temporarily. Admin only works if all the creditors accept so many pennies in the pound - with us it was mostly one large institutional creditor who could see the sense in at least getting something back (& not having the bad publicity). With them there are so many creditors & so little value there isn't much point settling for a penny or two. Also, are Chenrai, Lens, all the other murky unnamed Middle-Easterners really going to care about bad publicity? Amusingly, though, on their numbnut forums they haven't grasped the fact that the likes of Utaka & his £80k/week aren't going to be their salvation. They say things like, Oh, we'll get £3-£4 mill for him. No they won't. As we discovered with Saggy, he is worse than valueless - he is a huge cash drain. Rather than raising money on him they are stuck pouring nearly half a mill a month (all in) into a bottomless pit till his contract expires. We're all going to miss this saga when it finally comes to an end

I live over here on the dark side, too, and the Blue Few are pretty scarce, I'd say, around Chichester (so much so that my lad's club had Doddsy over to present the trophies last summer). Many more Manure shirts than Poopey ones on show. It is part of the Skates problem - their catchment is tiny if they can't count Chichester as theirs. There as many Brighton as Skate fans & as soon as you go east there is not a Skate to be seen.

They have to keep existing for the misery to continue. A straight drop to BSq South would just give them the impetus to rebuild quickly. Relegation followed by administration followed by relegation followed by more administration and so on, sucking the lifeblood from them would be so much more fun and would take them a generation to recover from, by which time I'll be too old to care (much)

I find it strangely reassuring to read your comments - there are so few constants left in our uncertain world.............

We'd have still filled it or as near as d*mn it for the FA Cup. Especially in a time of crisis. They are back to their long term core of supporters now the JCLs have fooked off. They'd do well to match that for the FizzyPop game next season