rallyboy

Lampitt has no choice. Forget any takeovers and get the finances under control - cut the wages to fit the budget of a season in the championship. If he does that he has nearly a year to generate the investment for the CVA (if they intend to pay it). If Ben Haim won't move you have no choice, play him and cut the wages offered to new players, play the kids (if there are any left) It is very simple - as a businessman Lampitt has to steady the ship. IF a new owner does come in you can then offer them a far more sustainable business in which they can invest. Lampitt is ignoring the debt in the traditional pompey way, like previous bosses he is allowing the manager to gamble the club's future and everything is vague. Without new investment another £20K a week signing would be insane, but still they chat to players. The club is so badly run it has gone from funny to annoying. Drop the mad US trip you nutter, tell Cotterill to quit moaning, the job is the same as it was the day he came in and he still has no money, and be honest with the few who are confused and dim. He and Cotterill love spin, they just have to say 'we are in big trouble but we are in this together, we cannot strengthen the squad we have to bring in cheap players and results will suffer, but there will be a club at the end of it for the bestest fans, and together our plucky little club will be back.' Or some other shallow siege mentality nonesense aimed at simple folk. But to plod on with a budget reliant on new money, continuing to spend a la Storrie, is absolutely bonkers. The elephant is still sat in the corner but he is now playing a trumpet and letting off fireworks.

I always thought leaving The Dell was sadder than getting relegated, on the back of Matt's incredible finale it was suddenly over, yet league failure creeps up on you in September and becomes inevitable. It's very rare to get relegated as a shock on the last day, we went down in 2005 not because we couldn't beat Man Utd but because of the ridiculous results achieved over nine months, it was no real surprise. Perhaps Birmingham, Blackburn or Wolves might get a late fright tomorrow with goal difference suddenly dropping them.... The next relegation was about survival, what happened on the pitch had by then become secondary. To think that since all that sh!t we have taken 50,000 fans to Wembley and won a promotion is amazing. We really are part of a special era. And that hilarious Hoddle gag still makes me laugh - a man who has failed in every job since leaving us would have turned the tide.... Unlikely looking at his poor track record - so maybe its time to move on from guessing who would have achieved what.

I take it they have agreed terms with the David Norris charged with the Stephen Lawrence murder? Or is that the Liam Lawrence charged with taking money under false pretences and impersonating a proper footballer? It's confusing. But by outbidding wealthier clubs they are trying to sign a player discarded by one of their competitors? If that's the standard of their signings it's like administration never happened - Norris must think it's christmas. Not rated by Ipswich, overpaid, over the hill, long contract - plenty more where he came from, keep up the good work Stevie boy! Are we going to be swooping on Brighton and Huddersfield's released list to seek out someone we can pay £20K a week? I think not - and I don't think either of those clubs will be looking at the likes of Pulis as their star signing. Sometime soon the FA should tell them, 'this business plan of yours is pure fantasy' I'm starting to feel sorry for them now, the madness continues unabated - it was funny for the first year, now it feels cruel to mock. I've lost count of the number of times they've shot themselves in the foot and reloaded - even starting off with the extra ones they must be all out of toes by now.

Someone sharper than I could tell me if this is correct... It seems there are huge legal benefits from blatantly running a club into administration. Your Business A runs at massive profit, let's say a money-laundering, organised crime connected business - your Business B, FC Skate is run into the ground. The club is unsustainable and as a result of overspending does well on the pitch, while it's failure as a business supplies the loss to balance the profit of Business A. Thus saving a load in tax on your two businesses.

that's the breach we pointed out at the time! - no doubt the Prem will now hit them with a penalty should they ever return. Then halve it if they confess. Jumping on that now is a bit like their first couple of months of last season - pointless. Find those irregularities, that's where the penalty gold is.....

Putting aside ownership and tax evasion, with pre-season starting in about five weeks, if I were Stevie boy I would be keen on gathering a team together VERY soon. I would also regard any p!ssing about in the US as a major distraction. Managers are already organising deals, the best players will be gone, and there is nothing at pompey to make a free player hold out in case they are interested - unless the madness continues. Sadly experience says that the stupid spending will carry on, I couldn't believe they carried on last year so I wouldn't be surprised if they sign someone on high wages again*. Other than one or two elderly Prem journeymen I can't see them finding enough quality to create a decent squad. The problem for the few is that they will get all excited if they sign someone like Robbie Keane or Wayne Bridge but they don't realise that it would just be Ben Haim revisited. Those sort of deals might get them 5/6 pts a season but would cripple the recovery of the business. Lawrence's wages could have generated several players from an academy over the next few years. But they made their choice and it was to pour millions of pounds into player's pockets and out of the game. Instead of young players development it has been spent on big cars, tattoos, and shiny tat. *Dave Whelan mentioned the figure of £20K a week as a Prem wagecap for solvent clubs - pompey offered two deals at that level in the championship and with massive debt - that just shows how barmy the pompey finances continue to be.

If this was a Russian/Chanrai stitch up I think they would have the flats and shops up by now. Chanrai may have got caught because he was trying to get one over on the child-maimer - just take control of the ground and the arms dealer couldn't do anything with his land. He then discovered he couldn't do anything either. or more likely, It was greed based on poor due diligence. His loan was covered by the stadium and the parachute payments and the transfer income - he couldn't lose.... On paper that sounds plausible. Lend £17M to a business with £20M of players, £15M of ground, development opportunies, a poorly managed £50M turnover, a few small debts hanging around - what could possibly go wrong? From that prospectus there is no way you couldn't get your money back. Then it turned out the transfer income was far less than estimated and already spoken for - and the parachute was redirected to the football creditors - and those small debts turned out to be HUGE. I've never classed him as the owner, he forcibly took over a business that defaulted on his loans - no one wanted it so he took over the club in an effort to get his money back - but there was no value in it to cover his loan repayments and suddenly he was caretaker of a business worth less than it's debts, and trading insolvently (another clear breach of FA rules). I believe the term for a potential buyer in these circumstances is the greater fool, and he hasn't found one yet.

no indication of the Russians pulling out anywhere, other than one random comment - that's if they were ever really in. Finally Steve Cotterill is making sense! - Without our fans behind us we would have really struggled. They weren't behind you Steve. You really struggled.

Liquid, was that up near Carlisle? Ten years ago I was pulled doing 100mph up there, by a grubby looking Mondeo estate. Very miserable copper gave me a ten minute lecture including telling me he had followed us for seven miles between 90-100mph and seen me bullying traffic out of lane three - which I wasn't, it's just the nature of doing that speed, you catch stuff. There is hardly any traffic up there and having taken ages through Birmingham you want to crack on. I sat quietly and nodded at my telling off, feeling a 6-9 pointer coming my way...he then chucked in the little gem, I'm a training officer so I have no jurisdiction on the motorway.... Have been told since there is a big training base on that stretch. I drive more sedately these days, and heed any Octavia with too many aerials and a big parcel shelf obstruction. Re the A3, the tunnel has all kinds of radar for safety, CCTV, and there was mention of average speed cameras.

how is that whole liquidation autopsy going? If I were an investor I would be awaiting the outcome of the tax cases and the result of the look into the last few years before chucking my money down a black hole. Then again I haven't got £300M from organised crime that I need to deal with. Interesting to see the rich list at the weekend, I didn't realise that the owners of Huddersfield and Brighton are absolutely loaded. The Liebherr family didn't seem to qualify so we weren't included which suits us fine, but if you were estimating which Lg1 club was likely to be able to bankroll a promotion campaign it would have been Swindon (!) with owners worth £450M, then Hudds £274M and Brighton £240M. In Lg2, Cheltenham's owner is worth more than Al Fayed - and ten times as much as John Madejski! The Swindon example seems to show that the owner could be worth millions but if it is tied up in companies or they are reluctant to chuck it at lost causes, the club can have the image of the division's paupers. With a fortune worth £450M you would think you could find £5M to change a season. The myth that we are paying our way up the league could be just that, there are teams with access to far more wealth than the Liebherr's sensible business plan allows - I would like to see a comparison of wagebills between the top three, I'm not sure it's as clear as we thought. So if pompey are looking for a rich owner and want to know what they require, in the championship we have Watford's owners at £865M, Bristol City £750M, Ipswich £625M, Hull £590M. West Ham's owners are worth £740M - and they are struggling to find enough funds to stabilise a club in a similar situation to pompey - so the alarm bells should be ringing. On paper you think that someone with £20M could crack on and make a go of pompey but that just doesn't happen, it is people with massive fortunes that take a punt with that sort of figure. If we look at Marcus, I believe he was valued at £3B? He stood to lose maybe £5M-10M max if he couldn't turn us round - small change for a businessman of his stature looking for a project to enjoy. On our previous guesstimates I still reckon a new pompey owner needs to commit £100M to turn the ship around and sort the ground etc, it could even be double that. Put that together with the details above and that for me is the key issue - with pompey's problems a multi-millionaire won't do - they really need to find a billionaire. Who would release and risk a fifth or sixth of their entire wealth on a football club project unless they were a big fan? As they have just proved with Saab - the Russians simply don't have enough money.

Don't know about Peter Sellers, I see Avram more as Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff lumbering around a misty graveyard in the early hours dragging a corpse behind. That's two clubs he's buried now. Just heard it all kicked off at the West Ham end of season dinner as well, presumably one or two fans wanted clarification on some of the management decisions that have crippled the club - I'll bet the DVD of the season will be a big seller too. As social events go that must be up there with Arsenal's and Chelsea's glorious laps of honour last weekend. When you look around, we are doing pretty well! I'm getting bored, can we crack on with these tax evasion cases.

lest we forget absent friends! - what would Ho add at this point if he hadn't been shamed into permanent garden leave? The deal has already been done with the Russians and if what my ITK mate tells me is true they are richer than Abramovich and the Man City crew combined - they own the entire Middle East oil reserves and the left half of Russia. And the nicer bits of China. There is no delay - they have to wait for the last Prem games so they can announce some key signings without being in breach of contract, and Chanrai has had his cash, and cleared all the debt with the advanced 17,000 season ticket sales. Lampitt has already agreed terms with Wenger and he's bringing Fabregas and Van Persie with him, looks like he has signed the unsettled Drogba as well, to replace Nugent - he was going to buy Lambert but it turned out the scum don't own him, he's owned by three Wirral consortiums - will be worth points penalties - should see you pony-fiddlers chucked down to Lge2. Cotterill is staying on to work alongside Arsene until Mourinho can be freed up from Real, and they were both spotted deep in conversation with Lallana and Oxlade-Chamberlain at Port Solent Tesco cafe....£600K for the pair I heard. Cortese wanted more but he's just desperate to sell as he knows the business is in big trouble since his new investor Bin Laden was found, I know a bloke at scum council and he tells me they have served a writ over unpaid rent of St Marys. Wenger has a few young players he will bring with him from the academy as well, they will be training in Andy Awford's back garden until the training ground is completed at Titchfield. Terry the builder should have it done by October, quicker if he can get a second wheel barrow, or a wheel for the first one. Says he wants cash upfront. This US tour isn't about games so the fixtures don't matter, it's all about global image rights, Cotterill has set up some massive deals with US corporations, it will make pompey one of the biggest sports brands in the world - it will open up overseas markets and bring in billions. This funding will immediately be made available to Wenger and Mourinho to bring in Europe's best players while Awford will be delivering the best youth academy to guarantee success for decades. It should all be announced next week, so quite an exciting summer ahead for the bestest 250,000 fans.

back to West Ham - they are pompey revisited, too many players who are paid too much for anyone to want them so only the good ones will go in the inevitable firesale. Natural selection will leave them with overpaid journeymen, add that to the massive debt, reduced income, and a complex budget to rethink on the stadium. I cannot see them bouncing straight back without huge loans - further gambling the future of the club. Yes their little porn gang has planned promotion campaigns before, but they must now be setting a record for the number of relegations, and things have changed since they brought Birmingham up.

I've had no time for the prossie-botherer since he brought an illegally assembled side to St Marys and strutted about on our pitch so I was well chuffed to see West Ham go.... BUT What bunch of undignified clowns sack their manager within an hour of the final whistle, needing to borrow an office at someone else's ground to do it? How about saying, we will sit down tomorrow morning when the dust has settled and see where we go from here - then sack him in a professional way. Rather than a shrewd business decision, which it would have been in January, it now looks like a spoilt child has reacted badly and hit out at the nearest grown up. Doesn't reflect well on West Ham - lacks any class. They are just a bunch of cockney porn barons, and as for Brady advising young people on business - yeah right love, you know what you're doing don't you! Cue calls from the few to bring the great coaching expert uncle Avram back as DoF....

bybye Avram.

best thing about the playoffs is that I have no interest in them. Thank god we avoided that lottery, imagine our whole season boiling down to us desperately trying to get a late late goal against MK Dons or similar - it's been great today without that hassle!

Mack me old mucker, you do trade sensible banter on occasions and you do accept that we think you all fiddle with your sisters and badly tarmac old ladies' drives for cash - but I do sometimes look at your postings and wonder what language they are in. Was that a borderline racist attack on one of your own players, disguised only by the fact that you got your pet chimp to google translate it from Skate into semi-English? Though it's always nice to see the rarely spotted quadruple consecutive comma formation. So we like that you come on here with generally realistic banter but we're worried about your state of mind - it all looks a bit frenzied...in future calm down before you punch the keyboard.

he has two years to go, that amounts to costing the business about £5M - or half of their entire wages budget if the club was run sensibly. He can't get those crazy wages anywhere else so presumably they'll have to find £2M to pay him off - that's if someone takes him.

Don't knock Marlon King, everyone deserves a 14th chance. Who releases every player they can - unless it is purely about cost-cutting? The spin says please buy season tickets because we have new owners, while the facts suggest there is still a massive financial problem that needs addressing now. While the few sink and the red tide rises, let's hope Mack doesn't see Cortese's master plan as quoted by our new scout supremo - it has everything that Corp Ho claimed was going to happen to them - apart from the Harbourdome, Maradona and Eto obviously! I won't get too excited about the Champions League just yet! Let's get out of the championship first, and that's not going to be as easy as some people think. WARNING - do your own punchlines gag appraching - If they hang onto Cotterill I still reckon pompey can get out of this division before we can.

Pompey are to join a ground-breaking scheme offering young talents the chance to make a name for themselves in the futsal world. The Blues are to give aspiring players the opportunity to join their all-new futsal and education scholarship. The Blues are one of eight sides in the south chosen to compete in the league alongside Exeter, Bristol City, Plymouth, Cardiff, Bristol Rovers, Cheltenham and Reading. Former Blues favourite Paul Hardyman, now head of sports and coaching at the Pompey Sports & Education Foundation, believes it is an exciting development for the club. ‘We’re delighted we’ve been chosen to be involved and it’s a bonus we were picked above Southampton as well! Yes Mr Hardyman of course you were picked above Southampton, because you are so special! - alongside those other galactico-producing, coaching giants Cheltenham, Plymouth and Exeter - Wenger is always down at Cheltenham keeping an eye on his next target, trying to make sure Liverpool don't beat him to it. Nicola has missed a trick there, I bet he wishes we had an after school club too rather than an internationally-respected academy. Just more spin for the few to lap up.

funny thing Mack is that it really wasn't as painful as you think, especially when we discovered that half your team was illegal! It was just nice to make your entire fanbase come to St Marys and face a wall of noise. If that frightened them they are in for a real shock next season, there is a proper atmosphere home and away now. I remember Swindon gave a better showing than the few that season, we were slightly disappointed by the silence of the fish. Anyway Hypo's right, getting stuffed at Fratton, that was bad, but losing to a team two divisions above you that you outplayed for an hour? No. But as a result I do follow your favourite Uncle Avram's career with great interest, he was the dirty old man who went on our pitch to celebrate and discovered it was difficult to run with crusty grey Y-fronts around your ankles - he looked like he was heading for a semi then. I greatly look forward to his next sacking - should be very soon, should have bought in January but that's always been his problem, never knowing when he should splash out or not. You can't take his spirit!! But you can have three points anytime you want, the West Ham buffet is always open, help yourself. But hot on the heels of all the 4-1 talk, I think I'll stick with the reminder - four broke owners v one billionaire though it sounds like you might be making that 5-1 quite soon.

Most likely outcome for the summer? - Liquidation investigation discovers no evidence of malpractice though does suggest that irregularities and missing documents have hampered investigation. Former directors warned of their future conduct, AA criticised in strong terms - no action taken. Most tax charges thrown out, Storrie found guilty so club warned of future conduct and fined a tenner - they don't pay, pausing briefly to flick the V's in the taxman's face as they leave court. The few protest vehemently about ward closures at QA due to tax shortfalls, but see no connection. They also deny Storrie's charges have anything to do with the club. New owners come in without investment and add yet more borrowing to the crippled business, becoming the 3rd or 4th party to use Fratton Park as security - it now has a value on paper of £80M. The CVA is further delayed when the Russians discover it exists. Lawrence ironically demands more player recruitment while taking the pay of four. They bring in players other championship teams cannot afford, poaching several from under the noses of Prem teams. The wages v income equation still doesn't stack up. The campaign to bring in the recently sacked Avram Grant fizzles out when it's discovered he wants paying. Lampitt and Cotterill talk up the season, no one believes them. Many continue to feel they have got away with it. A Russian poses for the press wearing a pompey shirt over a bullet-proof vest. The small creditors continue to wait. New washing machines are delivered. Harry is seen at Fratton. It starts to finally dawn on the big creditors that they will never get paid. The club survives the summer and looks to have turned a corner - new owners, new squad, all looks rosy. But those wages days just keep on coming every month and the income can't keep up, especially when the small print shows Chanrai's ludicrous payback terms and the Russians discover the parachute money is already accounted for. And where those Russians go, Interpol follows - and how come the ground was half empty but the attendance was 20,000? Odd. But bestest of all while all this goes on, the few know that there's a 4-1 drubbing out there with their name on it. Tis their destiny.

most calamitous mistake - Puncheon's decision to take on Nige and Nicola. best five mins of the season - 1. Brighton away! 2. injury time v MK Dons. We were hanging on to an amazing turnaround - they threw everything at us and it was the moment I realised that the team really had steel and resolve. Lallana chased everything and Barnard ran the ball half the length of the field to make it safe - we looked like proper promotion candidates. A defining few minutes that said everything would be alright. worst damage to property due to over-celebrating - 1. half my sunglasses, Barnard v Orient. 2. phone bouncing out of pocket and on to the Northam concrete, Chaplow v Man Utd

wonder which of the pompey predictions will happen first, Matt leads the Russian consortium to a takeover, or Lambert agrees terms with Cotterill - difficult to judge. I'd be surprised if Norris signs yet as they seem keen at the moment to reduce the wagebill to zero until they have income, and he'll be wanting £20K a week as that is the level they have set. Even clubs in serious financial trouble have been able to afford summer wages, any club that needs to postpone new signings until the middle of August is a business on a knife edge. So those alarm bells are ringing again - luckily the few can stick fingers in their ears and still have enough free to count into double figures.

he'll do well to bankrupt Spurs but I think he's giving it a good go. They now have a Champions League wagebill with Carling Cup income to look forward to. I would imagine their business plan involves some big borrowing for the new stadium and a reliance on increased gates to finance it. A dip in form and attendances could be disastrous. Then again West Ham have that scenario tied up already - they have the look of the classic Prem team that has gambled on big wages and is heading for a big wakeup call - firesale, wage restructuring, sacked manager, fighting for their lives in the championship. That is a business on a knife edge and needing six points from two games - as is Wigan. Blackpool and Wolves look to have more sensible planning behind them.