rallyboy

That's not fair, it was pompey who sold him and a contract is a contract - they deserve the cash to pay dividends to their many shareholders. It's as if the authorities have got it in for them, making them pay off a tiny percentage of debt from one of their many administrations, instead of letting them splash out on Lidl bubbly. It's a blow, half a million quid goes a long way in League Two, even though they are debt-free. Never mind.

Valid point about who calls the 'challenge'.... Incident occurs, players kick up fuss, play continues. Ref carries on reffing the game but asks 4th official if something happened that he missed for whatever reason, it may even be a specific question as in Rugby League - 'did no.5 get the ball?'.... 20 secs later he gets info and makes decision. The players and crowd know it may well be being reviewed and will feel some further justice is being determined, even if original decision stands. This means that the refereeing team retains power and control, no manager can halt the game for any reason. It might reduce the number of ridiculous mistakes that have crept in - that and a bit of consistency and explanation would go a long way. It's a difficult job and no one is perfect, but some of the mistakes we see are not the work of professionals who have been trained correctly. Any help that can be given to them should be. At the moment they are being hung out to dry, and they can't even explain why they made a decision, sharper fans will note that he was unsighted or it was a very tight call, others will just vilify. There is no simple answer, but we certainly don't want a complicated one. Leave power with the ref, and give him more tools.

Am I the only one what think's that Awford should not of bin either our English teacher nor the manager neither? Sort em out Mack, they has gone all feral again and need your grammar input. Is she about?

I don't see any reason for the few to panic, they've just been to one of the bigger clubs in the division and they did put up a plucky fight. Their time will come, they'll get a glorious giantkilling three points at somewhere like Morecambe or Shrewsbury, and then we'll look silly for mocking how smalltime they've become.

Putting aside obvious stumbling blocks, strengthening from last year by retaining most players but also bringing in the new ones would have been an expensive exercise. With our recent history I would have been nervous had we spent that sort of money with no attempt to balance the books. We clearly overspent on Osvaldo, perhaps on Ramirez, you don't need too many of those mistakes before the balance sheets goes a bit storrie. I'd love us to be able to finish as high as possible but it has to be through sensible spending. Call me safe or risk-averse but I don't want us trying to compete in the transfer market with Chelsea or Man City. I'd rather we punched above our weight in 6th-8th, unlike Liverpool who believe they can win the title, or Spurs who think they can finish in the top four. IMO they are both weighed down by delusion and thus doomed to underachievement. I'm happy that we are gently cautious and have made a profit on summer business, I don't wish to play Dagenham, pompey or Rochdale again anytime soon, other than in the preliminary rounds of a cup competition. With every year that we retain our status and build well, the gulf between the Premier League and the Championship widens. We are in a good place.

If United value Shaw at £31M and have just paid about £60M for the other dude then we'll have £45M for Morgan ta. Barring that, they can sod off and compete for sixth with the rest of us. If we have no further exits today (all the best Jos) and the performances continue to improve, then personally I think we can judge the summer business to be a slightly fraught but heavily-disguised success. : For everyone apart from the owner... If that really was her best attempt at a meltdown-inspired asset-stripping firesale, then I'm afraid she doesn't know what she's doing.

I've been told that Newport kicked pompey off the park and the ref let them get away with it.....also I heard that pompey spent too much time diving and the ref was a homer. Was it somewhere in between perhaps?

I await The9 telling us of his day out....how was it? Okay-ish?

Nice.

As we're between administrations and Indiana Jones is still out there somewhere in a tomb or jungle trying to locate the missing 12th month of the accounts, there is time to ponder Tesco's strategy and guess at the next move... Everything would point toward them shelving this sort of development at the moment. Presumably they have a deal with Robinson so he might get some compensation if they u-turn, I guess he has another agreement with pompey if the development completes. If it doesn't he is left with land to sell and pompey don't get their all seater 50,000 stadium/hardstanding for a burger van. The land only has value if a buyer is out there so it could even return to wasteland for a while, or Robinson might even see it as his opportunity to move on? His motivation has always been the Tesco deal - and of course his love of the club. His shares could be bought by a another begathon, but I don't think they could muster the millions he would need which would turn him directly into a greedy villain. They might even find themselves in the rare situation where someone controls the club for personal gain, and they want them out... I do hope pompey haven't spent the Tesco money already on their plan to return speedily to the midtable Championship position that is rightly theirs. But if the store does go ahead then the Fortress of Fat is landlocked for a generation, so I see win-win - though a Tesco pull-out would give more laughs, a dash of panic, and might allow our favourite Toyboy to step in and negotiate his fabled £20M fee from the city council.

The England set-up and selection policy has left the national team back in the dark ages. We will never win the World Cup again. There, I've said it, the elephant in the room has been introduced to everyone - sorry if that was a bombshell to anyone. The last eight years should have been the clue.

Come on hurry along, big page coming up. And when we get to 1976 May I be the first to shoehorn the date into a sentence for no reason. I'll be curious to see how that colour experiment went, I fear it will look a bit scary...

Too late, I've moved on - I'm off to the main board to seek out as many threads as possible that don't interest me, and then to comment in the strongest possible terms on subjects of which I have no knowledge whatsoever. To fit in I shall also be suggesting that Rickie is a greedy Judas who should be booed at every opportunity and removed from the website - and that we should employ Glenn Hoddle without delay or I shall never go to any sort of sporting event ever again. Yeah, that's right, we have normal views for normal people over there, unlike you saddo nutjob freaks on here still banging on about the mafia and criminality and unpaid debt, all from a club whose supporters heap filthy abuse on Saints on a daily basis. I can't see why you people find their little blip so entertaining. It's not like they came to our ground and abused a dead man's memory. What is so funny about their hard-earned season ticket money being used to pay a bloke to drive their manager to an industrial estate brothel? And three relegations in quick succession is no laughing matter, you are just jealous. Their supporters have done a fantastic job and deserve our praise, while we have to suffer asset-stripping and firesales, pretty soon they will have a 48% share in a length of fence.* So leave it, and get on the main board with normal people. *there are no shares, they are donations!!!

okay, will do, thanks everyone, bye.

sorry Lord T, you forget, we did just the same... We left loads of debts, we didn't pay our CVA, our half-empty ground St Fairies, in Little Delhi, is owned by the council, while the meagre attendances are propped up by free tickets to asylum seekers. We owe £35M to an offshore loan shark, and our owner, the daughter of an SS tank commander, has asset-stripped the company bare and is desperate to firesell during the current meltdown, before we plummet to non-league. Apparently. And at this time when the role of the Nutjob in modern society is being debated, when you have to put up with being told these things on a weekly basis despite pompey walking away from criminal charges, massive debts and financial irregularities unpunished, you don't ask for threads to be locked, you stick Dr Marten right in and joyfully harvest every last laugh from their hilariously predictable and crushing demise. Is there anyone who was at Fortress Fatpipes for the 4-1 defeat who suffered the accompanying ridicule and think it's time to be nice to them yet? For each one of them, I'll show you a pompey fan who feels the cup was illegal, didn't celebrate, and refuses to accept it.

Mid-table Championship level is Fulham, Leeds, Brighton etc. That's quite a leap from League Two, even over a couple of years... It makes Cortese's Champions' League dream look like the target of a sane man.

pompey fans have done a great job! Nice wind-up! But don't announce that on the main board, there's people on there who despise Rickie and dislike half of our current team - god knows what they'd make of your fishy love-in! Anyway this current takeover hasn't completed yet - and it's a bit late to halt bitter, that ship sailed long ago! Try living on the frontline and hearing anti-Saints stuff and portsmyths everyday, then see if you can ignore the rivalry.

Without wanting to sound too much like a bitter jealous scummah, unless you are playing them at rowing or University Challenge, a win over Cambridge is no big deal! Just sad to see that the ref found the game too big, it was his cup final after all. (deluded myth no.646) But the sleepiest giant is awake and Fortress of Fat is ready to cook chips again! The old stadium was packed to the rafters, it was rocking - sort-of, only a fifth of the ground empty, which is no problem in League Two, it's a great gate, really. RB you old cynic, it's fantastic support. Unless of course you have spent the whole summer talking about full houses and the best support in world football, and then at the first opportunity, you fail miserably to back it up. Time for the spin factory to ease off the accelerator and get real. Go buy some fence and kid everyone that you have a training ground.

They seem to let anyone umpire at Wimbledon these days.

No. Despite an appeal by Bob Stokoe, 1973 was downgraded in CVA1 to 395. It was further downgraded in CVA2 to 4AD. Which either means that the Romans hadn't turned up yet, or that these four pages will be spread over five years. Luckily they are ringfenced, making them the pluckiest bestest most passionate virtual pages on the internet. Which makes me jealous.

It's difficult to judge what is happening in someone else's head and the default assumption of most people is that their viewpoint on others is the correct one. 'How can they be depressed, their life looks great from here'. Clark Carlisle did that great programme where he explained that as a footballer your entire life is defined by what happens on the pitch. Make a mistake and you are a failure, it isn't just a game, you are a failure as a human being, and he couldn't see beyond that failure and considered suicide. When someone gets to that state the rest of us can't understand it. He has a big car, a mansion, so he gave away a penalty, it's only a game.... And how could he do that to his kids? We don't know, and nor does he, because his mind is in a state far beyond anything we can comprehend on our spectrum of normality. Applying logic to someone at the end of their tether is pointless, they are operating at a different level. Gary Speed - what the f? Few outward signs, so many unanswered questions. What was happening in his head was obviously very different to what we could see in him. While the train or bus jumpers look selfish, when they reach that point, they don't have the mental clarity to even consider what happens afterwards. They don't mean to mess up our commute or upset the driver and emergency crew, they may just want the voices to stop, or their torture to end. I don't want to come across as Mr Caring, I'm as selfish as the next man and probably more insensitive when it comes to asking why the victim couldn't have just done this at home rather than blocking my motorway - and I think I'm joking when I say that...deep down. But in the cold light of day you have to think of the people they left behind. And in this latest case many people confuse success and wealth with happiness - even though people who are purely driven by money will never have enough. Make a million, you want ten, make a billion....see Ecclestone, he should be retired and doing what ever he wants, but he's driven by greed and wealth, and it won't make him happy. In fact he doesn't even look happy. Robin Williams had everything material around him, but I'm guessing that he had become someone who was just wanted as a prize dog that did tricks for people. Wheel out Robin, he'll make us laugh for a bit. Being poor isn't any fun but money doesn't equal happiness, and success is brief and fleeting. You don't want to be reliving the past all the time. The other slight problem with being stinking rich is you can change anything. A court charges you with fraud, you pay them off. You can go anywhere VIP. Someone annoys you in business, have them dealt with. Money can make you all powerful. But one day you will get old and ill, and your money will achieve nothing - you will age and you will die, and this lack of power must hurt even more if you have always been able to buy your way out of trouble. I watched a family member die and it really struck me at that time. You could be richer than Abramovich but all the money in the world won't save you. The most important thing in life by far is your health, physical and mental. People worry about debt, war, Shane Long, parking tickets, home defeats, the state of their lawn. If you have a roof over your head, and food, and your health - you are doing very nicely. *Dr RB is not a qualified health professional and most of his advice should be ignored.

What is the ownership situation of this new training ground? I realise that ownership is not an exact science down that way but it is being spun as theirs, I just wondered if that is true. Is it land owned by Roko, leased to the club long term, plus an agreement over sharing gym facilities? Or is it a proper training ground? If it is the former, the only thing the few will own is a fence.

Bizarre style... Or a pioneering new way? Lazy cut and paste sentences. Likely to annoy many. Odd layout. Criminal some might say. Killing journalism through machine gun delivery. Subs to blame?

It makes you wonder about Pochettino's judgement. He has taken a job where a 5th place finish is failure, Spurs have a divine right to Champions' League football, it is their destiny etc - so he has to take a fairly ordinary squad above Man Utd and Liverpool. Now he thinks he can buck the trend of the huge fees our players have raised and can buy Morgan at half-price. I look forward to seeing him fail, on all counts.

Rather worryingly some of the madder conspiracy theories have been proved correct - arms dealers, non-existent owners, money-laundering, fantasy accounts, mafia connections, prossie-bothering managers, underwater casino plans etc. Nutjobs just ask the questions that should have been asked by the few for the last ten years - plus the odd ones that don't need asking... So out of interest, why the unusual declaration of an 11-month accounting period? - and where did that speedy £50K suddenly appear from?...some fans who had mysteriously missed all the previous begging requests, or a greedy property developer claiming another little chunk of the pie?