rallyboy

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.

deluded ******s.

nice story, once you plough through the rest of the vague and irrelevant stuff to find it! I skipped 80% of the content and didn't miss a thing, even the reference to a football uniform. Over-engineered is the polite term.

with Barbie Boy posting so many gems there before his street cred was shot to bits, it's difficult to pick out the funniest, but I did stumble across this one from 2008. It starts off with great hindsight, but tails off quite badly... As for potential investors for our respective clubs, you (saints) need more than £10-£15m in players to get a squad to get you up. You need a whole new team, maybe even a whole new squad. The problem then is that you'd need another whole new team to have any chance of competing in the Prem. Let's say someone did buy you for, say, £15m. Then spent £25m to clear your debts. Then spent £20m to get a team that would challenge for promotion (but not guarantee it.) Then, if you did get promoted they'd need to spend another £30m to get a squad with even a realistic chance of staying up. I make that around £90m to gamble on a team currently in the championship basement. Buy Pompey for £70m and pay £100m for a new stadium (a large chunk of which will be funded by supermarket chains), get a guaranteed £60m back a year from gates and TV (increasing when the new stadium's built) along with a squad good enough to guarantee staying up. If you were a wealthy investor, which one would you back as the winning horse? By the way, our academy team is currently above yours in the league. Who's got the superior set up? Top tips there from the expert, particularly on the academy! I miss his input, though I also feel slightly guilty about laughing at people with obvious mental health issues. Oh well, Christmas soon, busy time for toy shops, he'll be okay.

in their defence, the ground is one big toilet. Cue picture of Harbourdome toilet....

while they still manage to generate a few laughs with deluded claims, pompey have become a little bit irrelevant. They didn't even splash other people's cash yesterday to help them rip up League Two. We could do with the next minor insolvency event, just to let us know they still exist. Or perhaps another drink driving debacle, just to remind us of the quality of management they have in place. Maybe Alfie's hot mother has more strong views on world events and will find another paper naive enough to give her a platform? We can but dream.

that image was too much for Avram, he's just been nicked heading south at 135mph. And he struggled with roundabouts, it was like trying to use the steering wheel with a Krooklok on.

Lampitt - Trigger! And I can see Whittingham, Cotterill and Appleton taking down a chandelier....

Nice promotional picture of the two of them on the pitch in their show costumes - when is this Erasure gig?

Top quality Nutjobbery! That is what this thread does best - journalism and research that others are either too dim to find, or too agenda-driven or easily-led to accept. That's the end of the road for the poster boy of the Trust.

another excellent spot. Suddenly our little heroic football urchin's clan is exposed as fame-hungry, self-promotional, and willing to say anything to get in a paper. They're giving all his pocket money to pompey...but they can afford to splash out on bottles of water, and as well as being the mascot of pompey future he is also embroiled in the fight against creeping religious intolerance in schools and the imposition of Islamic values on the classroom. Do this busy family have any views on Syria? We need to know!

I think the point earlier was, if the loan has been repaid in full, when is the council going to be removed from the charges? Does that take long? As for today's spin... In many ways we are a Premier League club with a vast catchment area - err, no you are not, you are two divisions below Yeovil, Doncaster and Bournemouth, in a modest catchment area, squeezed by much bigger clubs on both sides. We have a very tight line to walk between driving a personal experience and still retaining that big club feel - no you don't, you are two divisions below Yeovil, Doncaster and Bournemouth, there is no big club feel to retain. You are a small club. Maybe it's time to drop the delusions of grandeur. Though I suspect seeing what our semi-youthful team did last night to a club two divisions superior to them might stop the clamour for a return match with the scummahs anytime soon. I 8-1 would relish that fixture.

I thought they had delayed Robinson for a while, but it looks like they owe him about £100K a month? It doesn't sound much until you equate that to match tickets, and take into account the summer. But with this new policy of fans paying off the debts, the real losers are the big-hearted and rosy-cheeked urchins. Plucky little Alfie won't be seeing pocket money until the year 6628.

the justified fear of relegation has created a culture of anti-football teams - anyone want to see Stoke v Fulham? Sunderland were a good example, AND we gave them a head start, they will be very happy with an away point. I noted West Ham's main attack seems to be from free kicks in their own half, taken by their keeper. He launches it into the penalty spot area and they hope for the best. They will nick goals, and by playing nine across the back they will get points. Sadly we don't get points for being pretty, but I think I would rather lose the odd game 4-3 by playing football than painfully grind out 0-0s and 1-0s all the time - as long as we stay up! We are better than that, but we will come across a lot of sides that will waste time from the first minute and wrestle players to the ground unpunished at every set piece, so we need to be good enough to break them down and take the one chance. That's where £12M+ players come into their own, or should do.

I thought it was announced earlier this week that the loan had been repaid in full... Meanwhile, I have just read something so sickly that I would fear for the wellbeing of my computer if I copied and pasted. It will no doubt appear here soon, carried on a wave of blue hope....you have been warned. Sick buckets at the ready.

Yes, it is a difficult job, but if Mr Mason isn't capable of performing to at least a mediocre level he shouldn't continue to accept the cheques. You don't catch me attempting brain surgery and then excusing a few deaths by the fact that it's difficult. He was so inconsistent it was an invitation for players to take liberties, and they did. If the ref doesn't ref the game, players will. When you see Sunderland defenders not even looking at the ball as corners come in, something is wrong. Thankfully O'Shea was way too busy fouling people to think about defending our equaliser, and Osvaldo, having already been held in an unpunished headlock, was happy he could get away with a blatant shirtpull. I'm quite happy to defend the refs who get MOST things right, but not the refs who deliver woeful efforts. When man on the street 50 metres away from an incident is proved by TV to have read it in live play better than the pro who is five metres away, something is wrong. And it's not sour grapes - last season one of the best performances I recall at SMS was Howard Webb...in the Sunderland home defeat. He was fair, consistent, in control. Is that too much to ask in a professional sport where professional officials earn big money? They're not doing football a favour and helping out, they are paid to deliver a specialist skill to a decent level. Let's hope they don't give Mr Mason a difficult fixture. If he couldn't cope with wild characters like Rickie and JWP, please keep him away from games involving Terry, Suarez, Mourinho etc.