rallyboy

Another home defeat, no goals, blatant red card, clueless manager pleased with the team's effort, and the few are chucking coins at opposition players. What a lovely bunch. It's Eastleigh that I feel sorry for - the pompey circus is heading their way!

Back in August they must have dreamed that their star striker would score a late winner on a Friday night in March and keep his team in the play-offs. Makes you wonder why the Trust is paying him to play for Oxford.

Though it was a bargain, and I'm finding it quite a comfy swimsuit to wear at the computer, it's a little 'draughty' and the boys keep popping out of the barracks, so I might just use it to make curtains. For the whole house.

The main problem if they don't get planning permission is that their heroic saviour Mr Robinson's only interest in the club is....planning permission. Without the Tesco gig, for him it is like an away day at Fleetwood - there is no point. The Property Developing Trust would lose much of their financial support and be left with 100% control of a bit of useless wasteland. But it would be theirs! So I reckon the council will embrace Tesco and their lovely plans.

That is a significant protest. I'm not sure what the favoured route for Nutjobs is on this one. Tesco are looking to landlock the stadium forever and the future protection of the stadium now looks pretty fragile, but the only way the Trust works is with the property developers' cash on board. The club needs that money, and they have already dropped their pants to make it happen. With Tesco being powerful enough to push stuff through and most councillors having little clue about planning law, I suspect it will go ahead. In the meantime we will have to put up with more made-up figures about income for the city, and job numbers will be conjured from thin air - plus threats that the club will fold if the nasty local community prevents the supermarket from happening. All these arguments will be put forward by politicians who are interested in nothing more than harvesting the votes of the dim. The whole farce is a big paperbag of sh!t. Sick buckets at the ready, if it all kicks off the plucky poster children of the far right will be wheeled out again to give more pocket money.

Before they spend their winnings on horse brass, tarmacing equipment and bouncy castles, perhaps plastic surgery should be their first priority? But I have to admit, that heather of theirs has been way luckier than I thought.

I just had a look at their run-in. Though I still believe they will scrape home, the few must be wondering where the points are going to come from. They still have to go to Bury and Northampton, Bristol Rovers at home, and just like Avram, those fixtures come thick and fast in April.* With a modest squad they are likely to run out of legs, so it could be a tight margin that keeps them in the football league. With goals at a premium and relegation likely to be decided on one result, it is a brave man who doesn't patch things up with Connolly and recall him. Brave, or clueless. *April works in Horton Heath.

I make that 81 league places above them. From memory I think they were 53 above us at our lowest point? - a swing of 134 places must be a world record, making us the bestest ever! It has been an astonishing turnaround. Glad I'm not on the wrong end of it, that would be horrendous - especially if I had been gobbing off for years between toy sales. I'd have made myself look a right ****

I still can't see them getting relegated and I fear a damp squib tonight when those around them fail to use the games in hand, but I'm happy to be wrong! Looking at the poor quality in that division I think you have to be exceedingly woeful to drop, and they are not the bestest at being rubbish - but it's March and they are still in the hunt for non-league football, so you have to give them credit for that. If they don't make it out of the division at the first attempt, it shouldn't detract from what they have achieved this season - and in the last five years. I cannot think of another club that has been managed so badly, over such a long period of time, under different regimes, and at every level within the business, on and off the pitch. The only thing still standing in the rickety ruins of the club is a little fat-driven spin machine that occasionally churns out soundbites about great fans and the massive club. And despite the calls for this thread to be closed two years ago, it's the delusion of the few that helps to fuel this corner of the forum - this little oasis of hilarity where nutjobs and their camels sup. Where else can you see a garage door in a bikini plummeting into a pool and emptying it of water? What other thread gives you international updates from court cases, free financial lessons, and pictures of toddlers going to the toilet in a giant potty that was drawn at a cost of £1M in architect fees? There is something for everyone!

Parachute Payments will cover that. (keep this sentence, cut and paste, feel free to use under any circumstances, it is copyright-free and has no expiry date)

I wouldn't take those awards too seriously, someone at the FL obviously has a sense of humour. Let's not forget that they gave pompey the community award at the same time as they were raping the local businesses - and the club that couldn't pay it's own wages let alone return the money stolen from the cancer charity, took two tables at the awards - and then took offence when people laughed at the irony. Sorry, I forgot for a moment, didn't we agree to write that whole period out of history, bar the cup and the win at SMS?

Indeed - there should be better communication from the PFC board to the PST board. Club information often becomes public before the PST board knows about it. PST board should be getting a monthly update on the Club finances and have received nothing. So the Trust has no idea on the state of the club finances... Less surprising bombshell from the marketing campaign for businesses to chuck a grand down the blue hole - “When Pompey win we have a successful city” is not working as a slogan. There was no response to the News article.

The club that invented air CVA.

That is the definition of portsmythmatics in a nutshell - All the money goes to the theatre, the rest goes to pompey and Sport Relief! So 100% can be converted into 120%-130% quite easily, in the same way that a giant cheque can be taken back off a kid in a wheelchair as soon as the photo has been taken - anything is possible in the land where a one million pound debt can be reduced to £40 and most fans gloss over it, or are just too thick to notice. What a strange island. At this point I should really confess - it's only just dawned on me that many moons ago I was taught maths on said island - and at no point was any of this latest stuff covered. 7 x 9 was 63, 6 x 8 was 48, at no point did I learn a table where 140 was reduced to single figures. Odd.

I think you'll find that MoneyPenny actually stood up and said, would the prime minister like to join me in a shallow PR campaign for votes in portsmouth by glossing over the demise of shipbuilding and talking about other stuff? And he said, indeed, let's heap praise on the local football supporters, big-up their little fantasy about 100% community ownership - and also remind everyone that I appointed a minister for the city so I really care about you all, so please vote for the tubby one in the swimsuit. Think I'll go and find her on YouTube flopping off that top board and hitting the water like a garage door - it makes me laugh just thinking about it!

Hey Richie, if only you had a quality striker on the payroll, someone who has played at a higher level and can deliver in League Two - someone who could finish one of those half chances to win you games and make you look like you know what you are doing. Perhaps someone who knows enough about the game to expose your own coaching skills as outdated and ineffective? Best you get him out of the club so he doesn't make you look silly. You can't have dissent in the camp, especially when the dissenter has worked with some really professional set-ups recently and may well know what he's talking about.

12,780! That's just over 2,000 paying customers - or as the Express would say, 40% empty. The proceeds for those two home games in four days can't be anywhere near enough to meet running costs. Two points nearer dropping into non-league and 312 mins since they scored - but on the bright side, they did get one shot on target, the booing wasn't too loud at the final whistle, and they don't have to put diesel in the open top bus.

If the players they want to offload take a 50% cut on their contracts, pompey will have to find about £750,000+ to pay them off. That's a lot of pledges. I wonder what's likely to happen... Players agree to massive paycuts but still leave with the abuse of the few ringing in their ears? (And they never get paid.) While equally poor replacement players are signed on equally ridiculous terms because the chance to play for such a massive club in packed stadiums was too much to resist. That and the unsustainable wages and length of contract not on offer elsewhere. We are all locked in a relentless cycle of groundhog seasons as the Trust persists with the policies of doom that brought the club to it's scabby knees. Overspend, fail, gamble, fail really badly, walk away from debt, and repeat. This thread will eventually consume itself.

That'll be a heart-warming Chris Evans interview when a previously-pleasant kid pops up on national radio tomorrow all cross-eyed and sweary - singing about Savile and paedos, ringing a little bell, and trying to explain an imaginary dock strike.

If the minister is really that impressed by the suicidal business model that produced a crowd of 17,000 he could propose selling warships for £100, or paying workers 50p an hour. He's just desperately pandering to locals and harvesting votes, but there are two heavyweights already on that mission and he is on their patch. Unless he's willing to squeeze into a 2-man lycra tent and flop off the top board with the agility of a wardrobe, he's too late for the title as the top self-publicising Trust-loving MP in the south. Re the attendance, the whole point of discounted season tickets and matchday giveaways is to a. Pack the park to inspire the players. b. Encourage people back by showing them a great game. That'll be 0 out of 2 then. TOTAL matchday income from that huge crowd is £40K? The same amount Man City will get from about 850 people. And not even enough to pay Kanu's wages due this month.

If it were a horse that idea would have been shot at the first motorway services on the road to Cheltenham.

‘I didn’t think players at this level had long contracts – until I came here.’ I can't believe that a manager would take a job without checking the details of it, even if the job was presented to him on a plate by his mate. The same mate who sanctioned those long contracts... Barker will be moaning next that the club has some financial issues that he wasn't aware of. Must have been another shock when he discovered what division they were in. Who will be brave enough to tell him about the end of the PPs?

Citizen journalists! That's the way forward - I've got a phone so I can be a TV cameraman, I've got a pencil, I'm Paxman. I've had my haircut by my Nan using bacon scissors and I can read the PTS thread so that makes me an investigative journalist despite the fact that I'm clearly a PR stooge with a specific message to deliver. Whoops, I seem to have missed the thin line between stating that a former club owner sold landmines for a living, and actually naming someone else as a crook. I appear to have been sued because I have no grasp of the libel laws, maybe I'm not a journalist after all... So yes, newspapers have sadly had it and online content is the way forward if they manage to sort out revenue streams, but Marlin may be right, you have to be very selective about where you gather each version of news available. And that's before you even worry. About the writing. Styles. Used to deliver all the spin.

The fact that his fine work is published next to an advert for microwave chip pans that can be bought in pairs to save money, tells you what sort of audience he is pandering to. Presumably his making-up of stats and the glossing over the mostly-empty away section just to big-up a little club pootling along in the shadows of ALL of its neighbours, goes down well with those who like their main vegetable intake both microwaved and in a nostalgic deep fat fryer. I think perhaps that this publication and 'journalist' are better off giving up on educated football fans and sticking with their core readership - the sector who believe that Iceland is a delicatessen. Like a scabby mongrel infested with fleas, they deserve each other.

Gobsh!te have agreed a new deal of sorts, all sounds a bit half-hearted, though the Property Developing Trust has a rather worrying business model. As our member and shareholder base increases our administrative costs also increase so any additional revenue to offest these costs are welcome. The more donations you get, the more money you need to cover costs? Nice. Beautifully written too.