rallyboy

following Appy's begging, this sinister 'transfer' development doesn't reflect well on the few. Is someone really going to stump up their own cash for more players? If so, they've obviously been happy to stand around and watch creditors getting raped, they then stood around with hands in pockets and watched a second raping. There was outrage, the poor fans were misled, it wasn't their fault, they were as much victims as the mugged local businesses and charities. They shook heads, tutted and expressed disappointment that their club's dodgy owners has treated people so badly.... But as soon as Appy asks to buy a striker, is someone really rushing straight down there, climbing over the wheelchairs and the dying kids, pushing the war veterans and bankrupted builders out of the way, desperate to chuck their cash about like flash shallow morons? Morally bankrupt would cover it. How could you stand around for two years watching your own city being shafted, QA cancer wards being closed due to taxation cuts, the British Legion being robbed - and you then judge that Appy's begging is a worthy cause? It's unfair to tar all with this particular brush, I'm sure some of their fans are embarrassed and they made efforts to sort charities, BUT anyone who coughs up cash and chucks it down the blackhole rather than helping out the community is a disgrace. I do hope they name them, I would really like to know which companies I need to boycott for the rest of my days. IF this happens it'll just be ANOTHER staggering flick of the V's in the face of all the businesses robbed by their club - and the connection between 'the innocent fans' and the criminal management will be a little cosier. A transfer scam like this would make them one big happy family. And any fans who let it go on without question would be right in the mix among the money-launderers and thieves, they could no longer plead the ignorance card, they will have supported the robbing, and the gaining of sporting advantage through financial doping. It would be disgusting - lower than Jo Cala's basement and dirtier than Avram's least favourite Y-fronts.

when Birch says there is enough money to run the club until January, what he actually said was, there ISN'T enough money. BUT....I can use the money that is needed to pay creditors a year from now and when I've left, you'll have a serious problem. And by the way, I'll rack up another million in admin fees by then, so you'd better produce another 1,000 pledges just for me. Nasty pantomime villain Ben Haim might be out of sight and out of mind, but there is still a big earner with his snout in the trough, gobbling up vast chunks of the gate receipts. Slowly does it Trev, you should never rush a deal when the meter is ticking, in your own time son... The Trust need him out asap - he just spent their inheritance on a home point against Bournemouth - they really are living the dream!

what will happen tonight? I suspect the bestest fans in world football will fill the Colchester arena to capacity and make more noise there than West Ham or Millwall ever have - it'll be like Boca Juniors v River Plate, but with more caravans. And despite their record-breaking vocal passion for the game, the plucky blue army will be polite, respectful, and a pleasure to host - everyone will say so. While on the pitch, a bunch of random unpaid strangers who have supplied their own bicycles to get there will pull together around a single blue flag. Their kit may be unwashed and in need of repair, they may be the cheapest squad ever-assembled in any sport, but when they hear the crackly motivational tape of Avram's finest hour they will physically grow in stature. Appy's unruly bargain basement troops will suddenly become Appy's glorious pride of battling lions, roared on by the biggest travelling support Colchester has ever seen! They will bravely chase down every ball, cover every blade of grass and fight for the shirt, committed to give everything for the most famous badge in the sport. Oh yes, they may be on the ropes, but they will come out fighting for the honour of playing for one of the weariest sleeping giants in football. pompey will never die, not with these blue troops standing firm against all odds! Unless their legs get tired after an hour because they didn't eat enough roadkill on the M25 section. The result will be a fantastic victory, a battling draw to save the day, or an irrelevant defeat, because the fact that they fought bravely against the odds will be enough to warm the hearts of the loyal thousands. Much the same as it was for last Tuesday's heroes at The Austerity Game - the now discarded young braves. It's so difficult to remember who is good and who is bad, who is flavour of the week, I need the media to tell me. And all of this irrelevance will be there just to distract Portsea - to gloss over the fact that the only thing that matters is that the Trust is still potless.

Appy's Daily Rambling from The News with supporting notes for those that don't talk Portspin. Today he tries to convince us he has cornered the market in players who decline higher offers from other clubs to work for him for peanuts. Appleton believes he is working to a budget which is among the lowest in League One. No he doesn't. ‘That gets us to 17 but we need another three players to be competitive. Why? Isn't club survival more important than sporting advantage? ‘At the moment the budget is a lot smaller than suggested. No it's not you clown! ‘I would imagine it’s among the lowest in League One. That's more about your imagination than the budget then. ‘I’d be amazed if it isn’t in the bottom three. No you wouldn't, then again I don't know of another club in the division in such dire financial straits, so it should be the lowest by miles. ‘If we pick up an injury we will be snookered. No you won't, you'll just put on those puppy dog eyes and plead to the league that you are 'special' and need help. ‘Even with Jordan Obita and Liam Walker, that leaves us with 17 players. More like 25, don't forget those forgotten heroes of last week, the battling plucky young braves. ‘It’s nowhere near enough to get through a season. Yes it is. ‘We need a minimum of another three players. No you don't - there's a difference between want and need, ask Avram. ‘I don’t know how we are going to do it or where the money will come from but we need to find it.’ That's insolvency talk! Tomorrow Appy explains how he didn't really outbid Sheffield Utd, it just looks to the whole world and the player involved like he did.

why write a simple letter when a cliched, sugary, vomit-inducing, factually-vague one will do? Dear Chinny, please can we meet to discuss the ground, we'd really like to reach an agreement with you, lots of love, The Trust. That would do, but oh no, he doesn't get the facts, poor old Chinny has to hear their lifestory - and my other top tip would be, send it to the bloke, not someone else. The more I see of The Trust the less convinced I am about the quality of their management and business plans. They look far removed from a professional outfit and they seem to have little grasp of the facts with all the disinformation about legal issues. I know it's a tough gig but they do look a little bit Mickey Mouse. They'll have to up their game when they sit down at a poker table with Chinny. He won't be taking prisoners, and he certainly won't be interested in their Disney movie for 10 years olds script about how he can be part of some golden future for children everywhere by giving them the ground. Methinks the Trust don't walk the walk, mainly because they are struggling to talk the talk. (and the minor issue of finding £15M by Friday)

I wondered what had happened to Musical Youth. Nice to hear Sooty on the organ again as well. Methinks someone's been watching too many Danny Dyer movies during the school holidays - no doubt Dr Dre is as frightened as we are.

Get the bus out, order the fireworks, paint the post boxes and alert the Lord Mayor - the plucky battling troops only went and got a fricking point at home to Bournemouth!! But how can the media get so much wrong?? Solent just told a caller that pompey will get -10 'because you are not allowed to start the season in administration'. You don't have to be a Nutjob to graps the basic facts, especially when it's your occupation. Fair play to Barnard! From the commentary I guess that it was in front of the Fatpipes end of the ground - in the style of Nathan Dyer. After the abuse he will have suffered, I do hope Barny wasn't over the hoardings looking for gobby cage fighters to 'defend himself' against. What with them being the greatest fans in the world they won't be pleased that a scummer halted their little party. Ive seen it before when the chanting is silenced by an equaliser - grubby faces, gob****e shirts bulging with beer bellies, jaws-slack, eyes all over the place, facial tattoos contorted in hate, spitting abuse. No doubt the blokes joined in too. Let's be honest, when they last tried to pack the park, people had to shout to be heard by the bloke next to them, we thought they'd all gone in fancy dress as blue seats, so 17K was a decent effort. When seasonally adjusted that actually comes out at 46,500 - so everything is good!..... Though a quarter of that crowd was needed to cover the administration fees for seven days, 1 in 4 people gave their cash to Birch today. . They will be fine - as long as they have two homes games a week until Christmas, pack the park everytime, and the Trust finds £15M down the back of the sofa.

yeah, I know I could do with spending a bit more time on football forums... There's always one hardcore nutjob who will do all of the clubs, talking of hardcore, is the first handwritten draft of this thread ready for the printers yet?

what an informative day! We've learned that - 1. if we try to sign an expensive player, that means we are exactly the same as pompey. 2. we have both been in identical administrations that ended the same. and now I discover that 3. when seasonally-adjusted and Google-translated on a steam-driven 1982 Amstrad, our attendances are the same too!.... Perhaps the two cities should be twinned - only their mother can tell them apart. And as a minor point, when you say that's the same as they WERE paying Ben Haim - they are STILL paying him! Let's not forget, if we offer a player £30K a week, it's about the same money they are STILL giving Ben Haim, Kitson, Lawrence, Norris and Halford - to play for other people. Oh no, hang on theyre not.... They are chucking THAT money at members of Appy's European Holiday Club instead - ****ing it down a black hole rather than saving it for it's original purpose, and the purpose agreed last week. They don't really do 'earmarked' or 'ringfenced', if it isn't bolted down it's fair game. But Birch knows what he's doing... Yeah, sorting the VERY short term, and not worrying about whatever occurs once he's away and on his new yacht in Miami. They need about the first 4,000 fans tomorrow to pay this week's admin fees! Maybe Birch hasn't quite got rid of ALL the high earners has he? So how do the former players get paid? Who cares, worry about that another day, something will come up - and as it says in Latin above the entrance to Fortress Fraud - Play the game at whatever cost, and tell the creditors and charities to go **** themselves.

let's get some balance here.... Reasons for nutjobs to be irritated. pompey seem to have ripped up the rule book and signed loads of players while ignoring debt - again. Appy is boasting about having a new budget, when in fact he has no money at all. They've delayed their points penalty punishment and been treated leniently compared with other clubs. We're going to face another media campaign about plucky strangers battling for the shirt, and the fantastic bestest packing 14K into the fortress of fat. If they overturn the penalty they could be competitive with their new squad. The few are getting all gobby again now they think they've pulled another fast one. If we lose at Man City they'll be all over us like Avram at a wet teeshirt contest. Reasons to be nutjob cheerful. That picture of the bus! The Trust business plan is £15M short. Clever Trevor says they have seven days to collect their pledges and get their act together. Also next week the Trust needs to convince former players to throw away millions, before the dust has even settled from their shafting by Birch. The Trust cannot meet the criteria of the council loan, meaning they cannot buy the ground. For the first time the business is worth more to Chanrai, dead than alive - his best return is to get at that floating £3M of PP and the ground, right now. The players they've signed are not going to be ripping up trees - let's remember that these are mainly the runts of Lg1 and Lg2 litters. Also there has been no approval yet for these signings - which offers comedy potential. Delusion is still rife across the island. Their pipes are full of fat and the clock is stuck on 1950. Kanu's lawyer is still calculating his claim. There's an old woman out there on a mobility scooter. They WILL get a points penalty. Their heroic manager really isn't up to much. The business is not sustainable long term due to the massive creditor deals. The few cannot grasp the basic elements of pantomime, it's not that difficult to decide whether someone is heroic, or a nasty villain. We're playing the champions.

the bottom line is how can a club plead poverty and say it has nothing to pay it's creditors, yet it has money to bring in new players? Now I know they are all eating squirrels, earning peanuts and living in fricking tents, but if you suddenly have £50K a week to spend, how about paying off the dying kids you stole money from? Perhaps stick with your plucky young braves who were the flavour of the month 12 hours ago, and clear a debt or two? Mmmm, you know, maybe keep a local business solvent by PAYING THEM?? They do stuff for you, you pay? Does it ring a bell?.... So they kept a tight rein on the finances for precisely 95 minutes. And they are now being clever by exploiting the FL restrictions on the Golden Share. When they exit admin they have to adhere to all kinds of spending limits - but all the time they are not exiting admin, they can do whatever they want! Birch has stitched the FL uysing their own rules, he has no financial restrictions at the moment because they are chugging along in admin quite nicely thank you. The insult to the much-embargoed Bournemouth is breathtaking, what next - make Luton give them their ground, get Leeds to send players? The Trust is potless and today their capital has been spent - Appy just invested next year's rent! The football league is VERY gullible - the club is a disgrace.

March 2013....a busy commuter train.... where did you holiday last year Mr Trousers? Oh, we had a nice fortnight in Italy, the weather was good, we visited museums and vineyards, it was very civilised. Where are you holidaying this year? Holiday? HOLIDAY?? I haven't got time, I'm still trying to catch up from the 180 pages I missed last August, so shut the feck up and leave me with my laptop...I've only got to December.....apparently Whittingham has praised his plucky young braves after their 4-0 home defeat, and the Trust reckon they nearly have enough funds to pay some of the September wagebill...

Phil's right, if this is true about signings then nothing has changed, Birch has taken the sticky baton from Storrie and Lampitt and is running with it in the hope of sporting success. He'll justify this by saying a League One club is easier to sell than a League Two... Perhaps, but an MOT-failure Metro without a spare wheel is the same value as one with - we ain't talking Ferrari money here Trev. All he's done is shuffled his garden bench on the lawn so it's closer to the sun. For the potential new owners the current league position isn't a massive factor as they want to stabilise over several years - does he think the Trust will pull out if the club is in the bottom half of the table? The playing squad is irrelevant, as are results. Their aim should be to start the season, then break-even while seeking funding. In the grand scheme it matters not a jot whether they beat Bournemouth or not - there is a much bigger picture, and if the administrator can't see that then there is a problem. So the more money wasted on short term fixes to gain a sporting advantage over the likes of Crawley and Stevenage is damaging the few future. Sign them up Trev! If he offers enough contracts they will be spending cash faster than the Trust can get pledges. After witnessing literally years of insolvent trading there was a part of me that said, they have finally cut their cloth, they are playing kids - they are not getting away with it, and behind all the abuse we dish out, you have to begrudgingly admit that they are at last doing the right thing. IF they do sign players today, we will have to accept that after a decade of cheating, the brave new era of frugal spending and sensible accounting lasted exactly 95 minutes. Future generations will remember that great time when they were financially sensible - that single night in Plymouth will be known as the austerity game. And they wonder why we're so interested in them? Putting aside the hilarious PR campaigns about battling plucky hero/villain players, young braves (!) and cartoon storylines that rewrite history as we go along, and ignoring the ridiculous portsea pub myths peddled by the thick to the even dimmer, and I know this is the most alien of concepts to them but ....they only have themselves to blame for our obsession. Any normal club wouldn't have got into bed with loan sharks, arms dealers, people on the run from war crimes, the mafia, banned directors, potless arabs, money-launderers, people who don't even exist, or illegal football agents. What is there not to be interested in?! A proper club wouldn't have paid someone to drive their manager to a brothel, or ignored their own wagecaps and treated every greedy player as a loyal hero. They wouldn't have boasted about hosting the World Cup at a fantasy sea-based stadium that required compulsory purchase of a billion quidsworth of harbourfront estate. Call me a nutjob but yes, I am interested in undersea casino projects, and a cash-rich saviour from the midlands who sells leather jackets in the street, it amuses me. This thread has been fuelled by the insane soap opera script and just when you think it can't get any madder, they launch a new cycle of overspending. Yes, we are obsessed. But it's the script writers at fortress fatpipes that have made us this way. If they stopped doing crazy things we would stop watching - it's car crash telly, I can't help myself, and when someone chips in amid this chaos telling you that they are about to sign Riqueleme and Maradona is in town - well that is just the Barbie-pink icing on the cake. So I plead guilty to Nutjobbery, but on the grounds of diminished responsibility - it's their own fault for being so interesting.

unless I'm an idiot and I'm always happy to be advised by those than know better, the key seems to be that for the first time the club is now worth more to Chainrai if it is liquidated. There's £3M sat in an account (has Birch claimed the other £2M PP?). Presumably this is earmarked for football creditors etc but it makes the club very briefly and falsely cash rich. Stick the ground in as well and you have a liquidation package worth claiming. No need to trade, pay creditors or endure the hassle of managers and supporters, or risk further investment - just pull the trigger, keep a straight face and claim your £3M in cash and a development opportunity that could generate another £10M. Chinny just needs to squeeze the life out of the Trust and he's there. Or does Birch intend to use this vital £3M to bring in new players and ignore the other debts, just to keep his little gravy train on the tracks for another month or two? As for this optimism from the Trust...wake up and smell the fat!! - look at the figures! Too little, too late.

calm down my pretty nutjobs, let's step back for a mo... Chinny says he's done. Do we always believe him? Err no! He's either going to negotiate even harder, or he can now see no benefit from continuing and has decided to cut his losses. I have to say that the lack of PPs and his statement do suggest that he's given up trying to keep the diseased beast alive. So this would leave the door wide open for The Trust to deliver all those grand promises they've been making. They talk the talk, let's see if they know what their boots are made for. Their own figures at launch were as follows. £3M in pledges - surely they will struggle to deliver more than £2M in a hurry? £1M in the bank re season tickets - to be released slower than Greg Halford doing a crossword. £1.45M loan to buy a ground for £2.75M - an offer that has been on the table and ignored since June, and loan conditions that make it impossible to get. Likelihood of Chinny accepting that offer now? About the same as their former hero manager being able to walk past a drunk woman in a mini-skirt touching her toes behind a Horton Heath skip. £2M for players who now have agreements totalling £8M+ - ....non-starter. £850K CVA £11M in PPs to come - of which they thought they had approx £6M to play with = major shortfall. So they have a few stumbling blocks, in fact approx 12 million stumbling blocks, and they are all £-shaped, and required asap. I was amused by Jimmy's suggestion that Chainrai lends them the money - it worked so well last time, and it could be their only option! Likely scenario? Trust gets into talks all excited at taking control.....meeting goes great until item 1 - the accounts. They study the debts, reality finally dawns, they run for the hills. I hope for the sake of their sanity and house deeds that they do finally realise what we've been shouting at them for fricking years - the figures do not stack up. While happy to abuse anyone who deserves it, I've never been too smug about doomsday scenarios as they've wiggled out of tight spots in the past and Nutjob parties have had to be cancelled at short notice. BUT their options for avoiding an imminent grilled bread situation do seem to have narrowed significantly today.

so are Sky jumping the gun and catching up on the fees dispute, or have they got something concrete?...or is Chinny playing extra-hardball as he knows he's the only real game in town? Most likely wants to pay nearly nothing on Friday afternoon, though Trev says he needs three days to liquidate so....over to you Birchy. What are the gutsy young battlers going to do this weekend if they aren't allowed to play Bournemouth? They'll just be hanging around outside shops. These young people are already loitering with criminals, it will only get worse, this is not a good development for society.

as they appear to be in a little bit of a pickle - I've just had a great idea! How about they take whatever budget they have and instead of spending it on enough players to compete for a season, they get fewer players, but pay them more? We could call this new policy, 'less but better' or 'few and classy'. And perhaps they could set a wagecap to keep this budget on track, and then pay twice that to the first player they meet the next day? They could also loan out perfectly good young players to pretend they haven't got enough to put on the bench... I can't see anything that could go wrong - whatever way you look at it, the figures stack up.

the way they are being treated is outrageous. Chelsea and Man Utd have debts but are allowed to sign players, and why weren't they docked points when they changed owners? Man City were even protected by the football authorities when they stopped a dodgy bloke taking control, but there's no such help for plucky pompey - it's just not fair. The FL have consistently forced them to have criminal owners yet the authorities take no responsibility and rather than helping the club out, they punish them - twice for the same offence! All pompey want is a level playing field yet the league won't even let them sign player-coaches, or other criminals. The sooner Portsmouth City Council give UnAppy a promotion warchest the better, there are loads of top players who would love to come to fratton because the club is a sleeping giant. The city will lose hundreds of millions in revenue if they don't support the club now - it might even halt the development of CalaTown, the underwater theme park. The fanbase was proved to be the biggest in the world, and the academy is as good as anything in the UK - if there are any billionaires out there who would like to roll back the years and become millionaires again, pompey is a fantastic opportunity for them to do just that. Hopefully justice will be done and pompey will be able to once again compete on a level playing field, get out of League One at the first attempt, and finally return to where they belong.

well Westwood has magically turned from a coach who was not registered as a player, as that would break the league embargo, into.....a player. A sly move widely predicted on day one of him coming in under radar. Suggestion at the time was that he was being brought in as player-coach but wouldn't be registered with the FL yet, so are they the first team in league history to have signed a player while under embargo? And thats ignoring the fact that they made someone redundant and then replaced them... This all opens the door for UnAppy to bring in another dozen 'player-coaches'. It's the little tricks that make me chuckle, they just keep on pushing the limits. From all I hear about Plymouth I think it'll be a tight affair between two of the league's worst sides. It looks like win-win. Either they get hammered out of sight, or they win, and maybe earn a home tie against us.

How do the 7,000 who have just chucked their hard-earned cash into the Chanrai pension fund feel now? It could be an interesting few months. Though I still find it impossible to believe that they will stick to wagcaps. The wage deferrals from the former squad equate to in excess of a staggering £40K a week for four years. That means UnAppy is going to have to work with £2M LESS than his total annual wage budget - which might explain why Portpin has reviewed their budget - Birch has been dishing out agreements to plucky heroes like crazy. For hardcore nutjobs the pattern is a familiar one. Chanrai is never going to pay a single penny of any agreements. Expect another 'odd' sale of the business to dodgy unknowns, followed by a vague dispute over who is responsible for debts. When the club budgets for the next year and ignores these debts, instead of saving money for creditors they will just pay it out on new players to gain a sporting advantage. We will then get to the point where Lawrence or Kitson or whoever asks for their agreed money and the club can't afford it, because like a lazy kid in a sweetshop they will have stuck their little fat fingers around new shiny stuff and ignored forthcoming problems. Cue headlines about greedy players trying to kill off the club....when the real issue will be poor/criminal management. But Rallyboy you nutter, the FL will be all over them preventing them from overstretching themselves... Yes, like it was when former Integrity big-hitter Lampitt was controlling spending - when in fact he was sat on the lap of the mafia, wiggling his booty like their little crack ***** and giggling like a girl. If Chanrai takes control he will ignore the FL, the UK law - the man is a ruthless loan shark who has AA sailing his interests very close to the wind, and often beyond - he will do whatever he likes. And once the new season leaves the station the league is powerless to prevent them doing whatever they want. They won't chuck them out mid-season, they won't risk more penalties that could be challenged, we'll just be more outraged - but you can see it coming this time. We will rant on here about how they can't do that legally or morally, outbidding championship teams, ignoring the wagecaps needed to pay off creditors - but experience says that Chinny will do whatever it takes to get his money back, whether that is investing to make the business look healthier than it is or just ignoring creditors or 'selling on' - and he's not going to be handing over his skinny little cash cow to a Trust, unless he can rob them too. As long as he's getting drips of milk out of a dangling udder he will continue squeezing. Anyone who attempts to shaft the administrator while keeping a poker face, owns more front than Redknapp Developments. So nutjobs, accept that they are about to pull some dodgy stunts, then when it happens you'll feel less annoyed. :

Chinny - what an operator! The guy has no shame, if you shook his hand he'd have your watch, and your shirt, and your jacket. Even though it looks impossible from this situation you have to recall the loan shark saying that he would get ALL of his money... As for Birch, he'll be wishing he'd liquidated it like he would've done for any other business - less fees, but you get them. I thought we'd just found a caring side and he was ready to fall in love with the franchise again, but Balram's as ruthless as he was the day he took control the first time. Plenty more laughs to come. If I was UnAppy I'd be less concerned about a squad and more worried about my job. Surely the old Chinster is looking to clear the decks and run a club on a shoestring, but you can be sure it will be out of someone else's shoe.

by sharing a city with the bestest, which lucky local companies will benefit to the tune of £820K today? Come on, someone must know... These ba$tard companies have made over £200K from pompey since they opened this morning , and it can't all be Birch - where is the rest of it going? No wonder Storrie was worried about image rights, the club is being shafted by the local community that is coining it in on the back of pompey's good reputation. I heard that running a pub in a recession was similar to owning a goldmine, and in the shadow of the arena it's like printing your own money at the moment - but these thriving businesses in pompey that make £6M a week from the club are just parasites, and should be coughing up commission to Birch. It's not just business that make a mint out of pfc, it's those charitity leeches as well, they should give something back as most of their donations only come in as part of the £300M of reflected glory. It's all very well paying for 'lazy kids' to have oxygen tanks and operations, but what level of trim is Brian Howard going to have on his next Lexus if the locals continue to rip off the football club? It's outrageous, and this is where football is destroying itself - being too lenient with the thieving community. I understand now why Portsmouth City Council has become involved, taxing residents to pay back the lost revenue is the fairest way for the football club to get some of it's cash back. Lawrence does a deal? I should think he fricking well does at the levels that Birch has agreed! We were given the impression that players were writing off monies and being heroic, then Saint John spots the little bombshell from Vernon-Jackson that they have already agreed £8M - and that didn't include Lawrence and Kanu. If spread over four years, they need to payoff £40K a week!! They aim to operate on a wagebill of £2.5M a year - but most of that has already been agreed for the plucky ten.... Though it might be easier to not pay them.....and just reverse the bus back through the debris of the football creditor rule. Do the figures stack up? I expect the midfield brickie trialist whose family live in Spain on fish and chips and Eastenders will be the bloke to ask, he seems as sharp as the son of the kitman when it comes to world affairs. I know if I was looking to build a team the first place I'd look would be a foreign building site, that's where Wenger and Ferguson find most of their players. Back in the day Giggs was a plasterer in Portugal on the site managed by Thierry Henry, while the Neville brothers did cavity wall insulation and gardening in the Loire Valley.

Let's cut to the chase - so there is NO guarantee that the parachute money will be redirected to the council - half promises or gossip don't pay the bills, they need written assurances. That £300M figure is completely bonkers - good to see fantasy accounting continues down east. And any councillor who believes that figure should be immediately sectioned - even presenting that as a fact brings the council into disrepute. No councillor is brave enough to stand up and point out the folly of becoming involved, perhaps they saw what happened to innocent players when they rocked the boat. And if the council want street cred as shrewd business people they will say, forget the loan, we'll buy the ground and you can dance when we click our fingers. Or will they buy ALL the land for £20M and give it to the club, as originally suggested by the Toyman in one of his madder posts? Are we heading for 'love to help, need more info'... Or will they just meekly wave goodbye to more taxpayer's money? And while the councillors admit they are taking a big risk, the Trust just said that there's a 90% chance of repayment - for that amount? Wrong answer!

will Danny Boyle do the Fortress Fatpipes closing ceremony? Thousands of swarthy brickies swarming across the pitch building houses and industrial units for cash in hand, hundreds of flatbed Transits, not a tax disc to be seen. Then we have TCWTB piloting a fishing trawler up a river of fatty water, Storrie jumping out of a helicopter with no parachute payments, Lampitt and Cotterill filling the arena with three dancers.... The rehearsals have been good, then again they've had long enough to get it right. At first I thought they were giant chimneys rising up from the ground, then I heard the motivational speech and saw the Horton Heath signs. It isn't a kids show that's for sure. My favourite bits were the child-maiming landmine tribute section, really spectacular and beautifully-choreographed, you actually believe little legs can fly, and the European pensioners being tortured and shot in the face so their cash could be given to Kitson and Lawrence. It was a stark reminder of how they've funded themselves recently, but done in a fun way. Finally a really fat Cher tribute act came on, gave Avram a happy finish to put out the flame, before joining Shep Wooley for Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves in the shadow of a giant bulldozer driven by the grim reaper - it was inspirational.

They're going to Wimbledon? Isn't that where the Wombles gather up all the damaged crap that nobody wants anymore and try to fob it all off on unsuspecting new owners? So it's not a match tonight, it's a business meeting. Great Uncle Trevor Bulgaria is trying to recycle some old sh!t and stitch someone up with OriNewco.