rallyboy

don't be so smug, they are on the up! Last saturday was rock bottom - this week they got beaten by someone I've heard of. The swing in league places is approx 130 now.

Pack the Pork - isn't that a party game favoured by Uncle Avram? It would also explain the issues with fatty pipes.

oh yes Mero, I remember you leading that huge protest against him pumping money into the squad. You and a bloke with a handful of Barbie seconds stood firm and managed to get the whole ground to boo the players he brought in. And I'll never forget that protest where you all stood outside at kick off time and chanted for him to leave. A great sporting moment that paved the way for community ownership.

I miss all the criminals, and the prossie-bothering managers. And Ho and his funny old ideas, and the underwater casinos with Saab dealerships and a seabed-based Mr Clive factory outlet. Oh well, that was a golden era of comedy, and we were lucky enough to be there.

The Russian former owner of Pompey was the primary mover in a ‘colossus fraud’ worth over £400m which forced the bank he controlled to be nationalised, a court has heard. Vladimir Antonov, 37, and his Lithuanian business partner Raimondas Baranauskas, 55, are fighting extradition to Lithuania where they are suspected of stripping 470 million euro (£396m) and 10 million US dollars worth (£6m) of assets and funds from Snoras Bank. I seem to recall that despite this reputation, he was welcomed with open arms by pompey directors and fans alike... Yet it took a Nutjob ten seconds on Google to discover the way that he did business. pompey presented him as a prospective owner, he was then given a clean bill of health by football authorities, and this stolen money was used to strengthen the pompey squad. I guess that explains why so many of their fans feel so bad about results they gained while using this stolen cash, even though they weren't to know what he was like. I remember I was as staggered as everyone else when a man who is involved with professional hitmen turned out to be a little bit criminally-minded. If he looks like he's involved in organised crime, if his father has been shot, if people around him are involved in professional hits, if one of his business associates has been gunned down, if he has his own page on a mafia website and the FSA say they don't want him in the UK as he is involved in mass fraud and money-laundering, then you have to wonder how dim you would have to be to welcome him into your club. Presumably someone else's fault.

it's very simple - the visiting players raise their game because it is their cup final - the pinnacle of their careers. The home players backed by fanatical support that they have never experienced anywhere else, have turned Fatpipes into a fortress. This world-leading backing has spilled over into pressure, thus making the home side the underdogs in someone else's imaginary cup final cliche - but on the plus side, it gives them additional plucky and battling status. Meanwhile the referee who will have recently been officiating Championship games etc, fresh from reading his inbox full of anti-pompey emails from his bosses, will be overawed by the occasion. He will find the cauldron of hate atmosphere of a League Two basement battle similar to an Istanbul derby, and way too big to cope with. As a result he will give decisions to the team with hardly any support in the arena. So any defeat is clearly the fault of other people. Team selection, recruitment, coaching, and an obvious lack of squad fitness have no bearing on the league table.

That’s why Sports Direct want to get behind our shop – they see this as a massive deal for a massive club. Perhaps one day someone at the club will recognise that it's over. Like concentration camps and rationing, they were big in the 1940s. They are now in the bottom tier, on merit. I fear it will take a home defeat by some team we've never heard of to make them realise that they are not massive. Repeating the claim just make them look silly, and fuels this little bonfire.

surprise, surprise, Robinson controls the future of pompey. He waves cash, they have to dance, and approve any plans he submits. That's the debt-free pompey owned by the fans. Massive. And if you sat on Terry's handcarved playschool chairs to eat off the famous £500K table that is from the Mary Rose and rescued by Prince Charles in person, they're so short you'd have your chin on the placemat. Who ordered the chairs, Snow White?

I can only imagine the furniture expert was overawed by the quality of the items, or the passion of the people stood about watching. Presumably the Premier League sent out emails to all the antiques experts telling them to undervalue them. I find it very difficult to believe that those chairs that were off the Victory/Warrior/Gosport Ferry have been either bigged up as something they aren't, or that they have been overvalued in the past by people close to the club. Did any of their experts manage to carbon date Kanu within a decade or two?

I would be amused if that were true, but with all due respect to the informant, I have yet to meet a skate who has any grasp of finance, business - and in many cases, reality. So I think I'll await the official accounts which I'm sure will be filed on time, and with an air of transparency.

is that the Salisbury City who were hammered by the football authorities for a debt that must have been about 1/1000th of the pompey debts? Let's not forget that pompey were done a huge favour by the FL when they wrote off their most recent points penalty into the last relegation. By all the regulations they should be bottom of the league on minus 1 at the moment. Whereas they are in fact riding high, on the brink of play-off glory. Yes, the future in bright. Really. Any other clubs considering fan ownership must be going back to the drawing board.

Where do you start? No, I can't, it's too cruel. Apart from us jealous few, football has moved on and forgotten about them. Ouch.

what an interesting version of events that is in the BBC press release promoting Antiques Roadshow but dressed up as a news story. They seem to have glossed over the whole builder who was financially-crippled by money-laundering liars and child-maimers, retains expensive furniture as security to try and get back some of the thousands of pounds he is owed aspect of the story. But it's always amusing to see another portsmyth sink into The Solent! Victory, Warrior, The Ark? They were off some old boat.

someone's getting confused about set pieces and open play. Sure, we haven't scored one this season to rival Brazil in Mexico 1970. Yet. But I believe that even Barcelona count goals they have scored after free-kicks, corners and throw-ins. In fact anything post-kickoff seems to be taken into account.

But they had half the England team playing for them not long ago... So I'm sure they still care really. Back then they were all over the international team like Avram at a wet teeshirt, trampolining contest - in mid-December. Despite the unpaid Crouch, Defoe, Johnson etc glory era, it's possible now that for the next decade or two, the last England player they paid money to watch score at Fortress Lardydome will be Sir Rickie Lambert.

Post-relegation, the club is GIVEN millions of pounds to cover wages. They ignore those debts, keep the cash, and spend it on MORE wages. They then have the cheek to fail to pay these wages too! And they expect sympathy as it's not their fault. And that's one of the annoying bits that needs repeating. The club has been GIVEN money to pay off the players, this isn't extra money they have to find. Why should the players have heroically left with nothing, when THEIR money had been donated to the club by the Prem? The Parachute Payments are for a reason, BUT if you choose to splash them on shiny tat instead, shiny tat that you don't even pay for, don't moan when it all goes Pete Tong. And if you then buy the business knowing all these debts are due, don't moan, just pay them. While we are on debt and criminality, let's bang a few nails into recent history... The cup was won with a goal from a player who will have to wait eight years for his wages owed. The cup run was financed illegally as there was a question over ownership, an offence admitted by the CEO. It has been shown that the club was trading insolvently through this whole period. The then-owner is commonly described now by the few as a criminal, a member of the current regime even went to great lengths to expose how the club had been run illegally. That glorious team was assembled with no backhanders nor unusual tax arrangements, that misunderstanding was all cleared up to everyone's satisfaction in a court of law.... But they still want to keep the cup!

come on Lord T, you're being petty now. The kid is only 19, you can't expect him to step straight into a competitive division like League Two, he needs time to develop. Any club that is throwing kids that young into pressure cooker games like Fleetwood or Morecambe, alongside former Champions' League strikers, is asking for trouble. That's no way to bring on the next generation of England players, or Welsh ones, youngsters need to be sampling the atmosphere at Dover and Gosport before they can walk out at Fortress Fatpipes. Only then can they fill in question 12 on the press release template for back page lead story no.4 - 'biggest crowd I've ever played in front of'.

you know me Lazlo, I have been ITK before! I'd be surprised if this long-running comedy doesn't offer up more laughs. Jobs for the boys, and girls, debts to address, history to selectively gloss over, poor infrastructure, deluded fans, reality hitting home - yeah, a few more laughs at least.

Just had three attempts at writing this post but didn't want Mr G dragged off to court! Hold tight Nutjobs, you are in for a cryptic ride... Best thing I can say is, a reliable friend of mine recently spoke to someone who was very close to previous regimes. It was made VERY clear that much of what was suspected on here through the last five years was at times pretty accurate. Deals, envelopes, unusual activity. The insider view is, how they got away with it in court was at best a miracle. But that is history and I'm sure that most of the current directors would be horrified at some of the stuff that went on. Though, on reflection, if I bought an old graveyard and I knew that some odd burials had taken place, I might employ one of the key people who knew where all the bodies were. In fact I might have little choice, what with the stuff that they know. They could do a lot of damage to my new graveyard business by highlighting old stuff, even though it wasn't done on my watch. Continuity is always good.

Has Guy put together a disjointed budget team of lower league runts that is prone to making late defensive errors because they aren't fit enough to compete for a full 90 mins? No, the team is great, it's just that they freeze because their own fans are so passionate. Yeah, that makes sense. pompey are finding every other team's cup final, too big, for themselves!... Let's try and keep track, that'll be the home team, the referees, and linesmen, all overawed by the League Two occasion. So that only leaves the away team able to cope with playing in front of the greatest atmosphere in world football. That explanation has to be Nutjobbery at work - come on, own up?....

they might not be able to afford to sack him now but I'm sure by the year 2021 they will be able to pay him off - so my message to them is, go for it, you know you want to. It'll be fine, something will come up, the Parachute payments will cover it, they'll be ringfenced, probably. And while you're at it, get Lampitt back on board, give Storrie a call - get those outgoings firing on all cylinders again! I've seen the CVA details and looked at the income, I'm pretty sure the figures stack up. Nothing can go wrong.

Gobern was just ahead of his time knowing that Cooper would one day sign for pompey. So rather than being late or dangerous, that was an early tackle - and a last spectacular chance to get a two-footed challenge in before the rules tightened.

Love the Franny one, and the three attempts by Cameroon is a classic that builds to a great finale. Player survives previous challenges, horribly off balance, enter steam train from stage left... As for Souness, in the style of some dinosaur commentators working on MotD now but still living in 1972, it was just mistimed, Souness had the ball, he's not that type of player.

Though the amounts were known, it is funny to see the details of each deal laid bare. They have gone from secret squirrels to help yourself, welcome to transparency land! So superhero Norris will have to wait a total of four and a half years to be paid for his wonder goal at St Mary's that earned them one point and prevented us from gaining promotion. To put that into context, it would be the equivalent of us still paying McGoldrick for his winner against Cardiff in 2009 - if anyone can remember back that far, AND pretending that he was still worth every penny in 2013, every month! Cup final hero Kanu will finally get his last wages (if he's lucky) EIGHT YEARS after the cup final!

That's published as if it is news but it has always been the case. The Trust agreed to pay off debt at that much reduced level, and people who chucked their grand down that blackhole knew where it was going....If they had half an ounce of education and hadn't been caught up in the blue wave of euphoria over a 'share' issue. No one can moan about that debt now, it started off at £24M. Though the page of photos of the players has confused me a bit about heroes and villains - where do they all stand now, greedy or battling? I guess we can we decide that on a daily basis when we rewrite history. All six months of it. They'll be fine, paying it is all part of becoming the largest and most plucky, partially-fan-owned community club that the history of sport will ever see. And charges on all pfc assets by the PFA will make sure it happens, unless the union has used them to bet on Indian cricket matches.