rallyboy

where is the bit in the report blaming human activity? It says climate change is occuring, as it has done with fluctuation for however many million years - a bit like telling us that summer follows spring. Not quite a scoop, I think Gaddafi is more of a story.

it's disgraceful, he was on the legal bit of Dale Farm when they tasered him - and other than financing world terrorism and murdering his own people while personally pocketing millions of dollars of oil revenue, what did he ever do wrong? Dune me old mucker, I think your over-trolling is getting you politically confused - you will struggle to support Mrs Thatch and the main financial backer of the IRA at the same time. Try a more subtle one and see who bites.

the ref showed he wasn't up for dishing out too many cards when he let go the first half deliberate handball blocking an attacking pass, also the West Ham player who was pulled up for a foul and responded by running at the ref and screaming in his face was let off - so Chaplow even getting booked was a bit much by those standards. As for Baldock's plan to put Lambert off a free kick, I would have thought teaching your keeper to call for crosses might be time better spent - their defence was chaotic at times so whose idea was it to concentrate on a bizarre decoy run-up impression? - a ploy that has prevented exactly zero free kicks being scored in the history of football. Oh well, their problem not ours.

11,000 v 32,000 That is the final word on who has the bigger fanbase, even Ho wouldn't be daft enough to argue that point again. While some Saints fans are now starting to believe that we may be able to achieve something this season, I still haven't met a pompey fan who will honestly accept that we are doing well, and it is on merit. The delusion continues. Apparently we are still 'lucky as teams don't know us', we will 'fizzle out', 'it's a marathon not a sprint'. Every time we beat someone they are dismissed as not that good. Nige is sounding grounded, as are most fans, I have raised my expectation from top ten to perhaps top six, but no one sensible is vocalising the thought that we will comfortably win this league on the strength of a couple of months. So yes it is a marathon, but it looks like pompey pulled a hamstring in the warm up area. Anyone had a member of the very few congratulate us on a good start and our decent squad?

West Ham looked clueless at times, did we make them look that way or did Sam get it so wrong? Had that been a boxing match the ref would have stopped it before halftime. Well done Chappers. I was right in line with the backheader and for me it was heading for the inside of our post all the way until the last metre - I guess you make your own luck. Had they equalised there would have been a steward's enquiry. What a night. The days of shaky late capitulations are long gone - we now have steel, several leaders - and we scrap when we need to. On course for that top ten finish And as for that record attendance, you can take one off because that bloke from the Telegraph was obviously somewhere else.

it won't be easy but my tip would be try and agree as much as possible between the two of you - any amicable agreement will save thousands of pounds, and months of hassle - however annoying it might seem to have to negotiate on something that is clearly yours. Don't get into a £5K legal fight over a £1K stumbling block. It was a while back but mine was okay, though I did come across a solicitor who offered to represent me. He asked if I was paying for the kids, I said I was. Whe he found out it wasn't under a court order and I was doing it out of my responsibility as their father he was very confused. It was beyond him why anyone would pay for their children's clothes and food unless legally forced to, he was baffled, he thought I was an idiot for doing that. So he represented an aspect of possibly the most offensive professional industry I've ever come across. Don't get on the wrong side of someone like that, agree stuff between the two of you wherever possible. Though if you've been sh2gging her mum/sister/brother/daughter - you may have drifted beyond the negotiating stage, if little Baj has been out on manouevres you might have to hand all your keys in and look for a nice bench!

get an oyster card, stick a tenner on it, top it up and use it every time you are in London - cheaper fares and saves a lot of messing about deciding what zones you have to cross. Just spent a couple of days in Camden/Hackney area - it was nice to come home!

so they lose 25% of their attendance for being on Sky? Do they get that many people in one pub watching it in Greek? That means Man Utd should budget for 18,000 empty seats at every televised game....better let them know. And Sid, it's beyond comedic - surely it's cruel to call them bestest now! When there was a group it was banter but now there are so few it seems insulting.

See how many we get on Tuesday night but I think the attendance debate is over - a towel came over the ropes halfway through round one. Seems to have got to the point where we could fill their whole 'stadium'. It might be polite to let their season ticket holders have their seats and we'll settle for the other 12,000 - though even then it would still have to go to a ballot. Difficult to believe how quickly their fortunes have changed, and they haven't even been caught by the taxman yet. Is it time to retire 'the bestest' tag?....Or shall we keep it alive for comedic effect?

you have to take your hat off to the russians. They offloaded a truly awful manager, demanded money for him - and they kept a straight face until they got back in the car. I guess the real test is yet to come - let's hope they have an equally awful replacement lined up, which is quite likely.

Ho me old mucker just putting aside the amusing image of the CIA waterboarding Phil in his orange boiler suit, just to gain access to his busy mind - I'm not sure I follow the idea that the Liebherr family will want £50M just to break even.... Can you just run those figures past me again, perhaps with a little more detail....

well that's cleared all that up then. While Ho tries to bore the thread to death, Phil encourages Ho to suffer a mental breakdown by attempting to make sense of all the clues.

would you buy the top of the range, low mileage, one owner Audi that could really do with a new parcel shelf, OR the rusting 1975 insurance write-off cut-and-shut Trabant that has a terminal engine problem, four wheel clamps attached, has already been involved in two fatals, has outstanding parking tickets and comes with a list of dodgy former keepers that looks like a court listing? Whatever the Liebherr family decide to do in the future they currently have a really attractive asset - a progressive business with good facilities, great footballing potential, and in footballing terms it is debt-free - a rare and sought after beast. It ticks every box and would generate a very good price on the open market. And before Ho starts on debt, I'm not saying we shouldn't keep an eye on outgoings, but money lent by the owner to a valuable business is not debt. However, lending money into a business with no structure or chance of repaying just so you can take control of it and usher it through insolvency using your pet administrator as a paid puppet is called loan sharking. So no, I'm not worried about the 'debt' created by the sensibly-planned and successful rebuild required during our exit from administration.

knocking out away shirts half price is standard business practice. In May! With that and the ticket deals, a cynical man might suggest it could indicate a cashflow problem. But I'm sure it's just a reward for the hardcore support from the cash rich owners.

It must be difficult not to have your head turned by the money involved. Agent. My client wants to buy player X. Seller. He's not for sale. Agent. They'll pay £10M. Seller. No thanks. Agent. He's already been tapped up with a massive pay increase. Seller. He's not going anywhere. Agent. How about £6M...and there's £1M each for you and I to make it happen.................... Seller. See you at the services in 10mins. And completely unrelated - I'm not convinced about the huge profits claimed on transfer deals like the Johnson one. A player rockets in value....that means he has either developed amazingly - or he was deliberately undervalued in the books for the initial deal. Perhaps agent fees were quite large, or perhaps his signing on fee was massive, he may have had a few million for image rights, or perhaps there were other monies moved to other parties who smoothed the deal through.... I'm sure some agents can make any deal happen, but they will want a huge slice of big profits, and that cannot appear in the books. Then you add in his wages on and the huge profit looks a bit paltry. So I'm sure there was a profit, but we all saw the agent fees in the accounts and we all know that there seems to be a lot of money unaccounted for. Perhaps the forensic investigation will explain a few of the odd deals.

mmmm, I'm starting to wonder whether the figures stack up.... If I was forced to offer an opinion I think I might suggest that perhaps they don't. So when did/will the russians realise, and what is their exit/crisis plan?

so Forest will pay pompey £300K to take Cotterill off their hands?? This is where the Russians' WRC experience comes in - fire up the Scooby and get Cotterill to Nottingham before they change their mind. I'm pretty sure we did the same driving Burley to Scotland.

Steve Cotterill celebrated Tal Ben Haim’s unlikely Pompey revival and insisted: He’s a key part of our team now. Yes Steve, he is key, mainly as the club is passing all of their matchday income directly to him! His contract is nearly as big as the club itself. He is key to holding the business back from rebuilding in a sensible way. He's a big chunky millstone around your neck Stevie boy - but you keep telling us otherwise and maybe one day we will believe you...

pity you didn't wake up some of the England rugby team. They just need Gerrard and Lampard failing miserably to reproduce club form in the middle and it'll be like every flipping football world cup we've been to in the last three decades. I still reckon we can have the French at cricket.

presuming the russians have trousered the season ticket money the matchday income is starting to look like 5,500 x £15. Which is just enough to pay Ben Haim and a cleaner.

as one of those who doubted their wisdom, I still don't see how the game was a good idea U.P. A personal donation by the owners would have been worthy and constructive, but a predictably poorly-attended game where the tickets have to be all but given away doesn't really support the cause. At least they did something? Many clubs do a lot of things for various causes, but they think them through and don't set up games that will lose money when a donation would have been sensible. So I still maintain it wasn't a great idea.

though the few become fewer by the day, let's not pretend that we'd have got 20,000+ for a similar game, the mistake was holding it at all. It was well-motivated but emotionally self-indulgent by the owners - they would have done better to just put their hands in their pockets if they wanted to assist the families, or to get the players to wear t-shirts in a warm up or similar. Holding a high profile fundraiser just adds to the hassle over charities and their relationship with the club. So IMO the game could be considered a poor business decision - though hopefully the win keeps Cotterill in place for a few more games, I really did fear they were going to dump him in this break.

any wagecap and a common sense attitude to finance is nothing to do with the CVA, it's to keep the football authorities onside as they still want to see projections and budgets that make sense, all part of the post-admin agreements. Lampitt's major role is presumably to make sure that his former colleagues accept any bonkers plans they submit. So yes they can pay someone £100K a week.....but they'll find that their golden share has gone walkies pretty sharpish if they do. Pompey also need to get into the little thing that other league clubs have to do - to file accounts. And we don't mean a fantasy version as per the Premier League set, or the ones where you withold wages to manufacture a profit.

even now as Cotterill is being regularly exposed as a failure, the spin and hype about last season continues. He didn't perform a miracle with no funds, he took one of the most expensively assembled teams in the division and rather than competing for promotion as they should have done, he turned them into relegation survivors. That spin can be filed alongside the stuff about Avram being a good coach. And just to show how dim Clott and Lumpitt are, their suicidal quality over quantity plan that fell apart so hilariously last year is being repeated. Not through the state of the business, or outside pressures, they actually discussed it, agreed, and chose to pursue this course - while the russians say they sat down with the manager pre-season and agreed this plan as well. Anyway, bring on Avram please - his record will be just what they need, the league table never lies, and I can give my favourite prossie gags another airing.

all these £15K-£20K a week players are fine and dandy with the occasional £36K one thrown in, but I thought the financial statements and budgets presented to satisfy the authorities suggested that their would be a wagecap of approx £10K a week, with the need to bring many new players in on £3K-£5K just to break even and meet the CVA.... I don't know if anyone has mentioned it in the last 854 pages but it would seem that the figures don't add up. If 14K was a breakeven attendance to cover the outgoings, what attendance is required to cover the massive wages overspend? And I repeat, the first £250-£275 of every pompey season ticket goes to pay just one player.....the bloke they pretended they had sold to West Ham and whose wages they used as a loan to themselves to massage accounts for the russians' due diligence. No problem here, we've made a profit for the last six months... The equivalent of us paying Lambert approx £70K a week. An insane business plan - yet another that demands an immediate return to the Prem, not a season of survival.