rallyboy

what have we learned today? ...they think they bought a club that is 'clean, with no debt and no tax issues'!! This was the golden opportunity for the interviewers to ask about CVA, football debts, small creditors - only the BBC probed a little. And they don't want to talk about their Bournemouth bid. Fratton Park? - fantastic atmosphere, fantastic supporters. Apparently. Cotterill agreed to the budget before they started the season....he and Lampitt are responsible for the running of the club. Loads about the academy plan, it just sounds like the standard already well established by everyone else. They have a plan for the land that they are confident they can buy, they just don't seem sure what that plan is yet. Commercial side relies on having more space, they are at Fratton for 3/4/5 years.... They want to work with the community - perhaps paying them might be a nice start? They weren't asked about any of the important stuff. Not a lot there really, surprised the interview took three months to plan, it was the sort of thing Al Fahim came up with off the top of his head while selling Cornettos in Frogmore Road. And as a note, I see from the picture in the News they obviously invited Dave Richards from Prodrive down to a game. DR has been a key man in world rallying hence the connection, he's loaded and is used to the finer things in life - having been invited as guest of the owner he must have been horrified at the state of the ground. Are they perhaps trying to drag investment in from motorsport contacts? Pity, HMS Ecclestone has sailed. I'm off on my travels for a week so feel free to prod the few on my behalf - would like to say I'm just going to Butlins but me and Phil have a series of prestigious launch event parties on glamorous yachts with supermodels and a few 'A listers' from the golfing world. So if you are near Bognor do call in.

joking aside, South Today will now have loads of pompey fans contacting them with questions to put to the owners so if it does turn into a fluffy little PR event that is well out of order. They should be asking serious questions about the small creditors, the CVA, the state of the team, the ground etc. These guys have had months to come up with solutions, they should now properly update their customers, even if there are only a handful of them. Vague promises about being confident of 'trying to buy' a bit of land and the standard stuff about an academy would make the interview a little like a Cotterill league campaign - mostly pointless.

well I look forward to a Paxman-style probing interview from the ruthless Sally Taylor, firstly getting to the bottom of their business reputation, then their plans - which seem to mainly involve saying they are going to try and buy some land off a bloke who has them by the short and curlies. The child-maimer has waited for this day - its name any price you fancy time! Hopefully we can also expect a full committment to retaining Cotterill as long as possible.

I have deluded skate mates who tell me we are winning because no one has seen us play and we will fade away when we get found out - presumably they don't see highlights in Nottingham or Birmingham.... If the few knew that we haven't even been in top gear yet they would be even more worried. None of them seem ready to accept we have built a better side than them, on less money, better coached, and are tonight top of the table on merit. Is it to much to expect a reality check to the east and some acceptance that we are the only team in Hampshire at the moment? Sometimes you just have to accept reality - don't you? I think it's seven months too early to get excited about the whole season, but we have made a decent start towards a top ten finish - and that 12 point gap could take 10 games and a massive change in fortunes to turnaround. I see no way back for pompey, but we should campaign to keep Cotterill in charge as long as possible - unless the prossie-bothering relegation specialist is about. We still owe him - he keeps getting sacked before we can get at him.

I'm not so sure that the ruthless banker will be that ready to move on when he delivers the next promotion. He was quite emotional when we went up in May, this project is the last link to his old mate, I don't think he will let it go easily nor lightly - however much profit there is to bank. And we know what he's like in the transfer market, he'll be a nightmare handling any sale, he'll want to know exactly what you have planned and is likely to chase away a few billionaires just because he doesn't like the look of them. So I suspect Nicola is in it for the long haul, even if that means finding alternative funding at some point should the family stance alter. He's not perfect but he is absolutely loyal to the Markus dream - that's the club run as a proper business, winning games, playing football the right way. I look around the leagues and personally feel we are currently in good hands from the boardroom to the dressing room, and you don't get to say that very often, so enjoy!

no they're not, they refuse to accept it, they consider they are technically 3-0 up. Or the ref has it in for them. Or Cotterill is doing a tremendous job against the odds, the dark horse, the sleeping giant, plucky little whatever etc. Or some other drivel.

thats the thing with the Spurs case, it could end up at £1M plus £1M in costs - quite a figure if most of your season ticket money has already gone to one player. Ditto the small creditors issue - how many hundreds of thousands of pounds have they already spent in management time plus accountancy and legal fees, calculating, checking, and distancing themselves from £120K of debt....

the irony of football thinking it has great business principles to share!..... This is little more than 'an evening with' dressed up by PR - there may well be some man management skills worth hearing about but let's not pretend football can teach us by example much else about running a normal business in the real world. And I notice that the star attraction is listed as 'currently the manager of' which gives the distinct impression that in the thriving world of football even this great innovator's fragile status could change at any moment.

How about the club just pays its debts and lives within its very small income - most of the rest is irrelevant. If they did either, this thread would naturally fade away, Ho wouldn't have to bore it to death. And Lampitt and Cotterill stop bleating about how life is tough and the whole world is against the sleeping giant. Their jobs are exactly the same as they were the day they enthusiastically bounded up Frogmore Road for interviews, they knew the score then - so get on with it and shut up.

Chelsea and Man City are happy because Man Utd may have started well but they will fizzle out. Tis the number one plan for coaches worldwide and always has been. Hungary waited before they came to Wembley and it worked, it was the Liverpool ethos in the 70s. Shankly, Paisley and even now Ferguson is renowned for it - rather than recognising areas you can improve on yourself you just hope someone else fizzles out.

I've always imagined him as a Jason King sort of character, perhaps mixed with a bit of Leslie Phillips - a sort of moustached, cigarette holder brandishing, lovable throwback to the empire - our own desert playboy... As a brother in arms from the thread that tells skates what we think about their activities his very existence is a thing of legend. There will be folk songs about him in years to come, if someone can get Gdansk or Tiger to rhyme with anything.

it doesn't help when many commentators and ex-player pundits are still living under 1970s laws of the game. 'That was a late flag'...no it wasn't, he wasn't offside until he went for the ball. 'It was ball to hand'....yes, the hand he was holding out to block the path of a raised cross. And my favourite - 'but he got the ball'....sort of, he came in studs first at knee height from behind, and after crippling the player the ball happened to make contact with his foot. I thought Norwich were hard done by at the weekend, possibly by a linesman or two - There was a blatant dive for the penalty, then up the other end the defender looked round to see where the forward was and swung his arm to block his run at the ball, making contact with his face. The pundit opinion? - 'it wasn't intentional'. Yeah right. Its decisions like that which can lead to players thinking they have to ref the game, because the ref isn't. I always assumed that half the time the abuse heaped on refs at St Marys is about pressure. A ref has never changed his decision when pressured by players or the crowd. But you can be sure it's in his mind for the next one... Imagine if Darbyshire went down a second time and the ref thought he had been clipped, but six Saints players ran over remonstrating about diving, and the crowd started booing...suddenly a simple decison has enormous pressure. And thats the fun of reffing I guess.

it was the same at the Millwall game, we had the ball, they couldn't get it. As far as holding out goes I did enjoy the MK Dons injury time last year. Kelv punched one cross into Hythe, Lallana gave it evrrything to block crosses, then Lee Barnard ran the ball from halfway to the corner and won a foul. That was a battle - this team has shown it can be clever and it also has steel. For me the late nightmares of Boro and Everton have been banished.

made me chuckle - that should make the final cut when someone edits the thread into a handy pocketguide.

we've been spoilt for a year or two, regularly whacking five past a few weak teams who have tried in vain to outplay us. It's tougher this year for all the players and one or two are still finding their feet - as far as Fonte goes the disruption at the back has been the major factor, and I thought Jos did well going out wide to cover a couple of times. That said, we are doing pretty well for a team that has suffered injuries and hasn't hit top form - there are a lot more positives than negatives to dwell on. One of the things I do like is that we are no longer the one team that everyone wants to beat and they save themselves for it and give everything. We had the madness of Rochdale admitting that they all but sacrificed their next home game just to put up a massive physical show against us. In this division I don't see any small club regarding us as their cup final, except maybe one little minnow.

if I were Ho I would be more worried about the current league table than coming up with lame excuses for the behaviour of club staff and owners. Even though we haven't fired on all cylinders we do appear to have taken the initiative in what was meant to be a battle for local bragging rights. In fact it's been a non-event so far - despite the money spent on their squad and the excellent job being done by future England coach Steve Cotterill, the massive and bestest sleeping giant does seem to have found it difficult to wake up, and one might observe that were it a boxing match the ref would have stepped in already. What happened to us being two divisions adrift? Seems a long time ago now. I'm sure Brighton and ourselves have just been lucky. Most weeks, for two seasons.

does Cotterill not realise we get to see the highlights? Who is he trying to kid because I can't believe that the few are thick enough to buy his spin. Why say Lawrence was innocent when he could have had two straight reds? The man is an idiot - I do hope they don't sack him. One trip to Horton Heath and he'll be as funny as tactical genius and serial relegation specialist good old uncle Avram. Go on, give Cotterill a microphone, let him do a speech on the pitch....

He's done a remarkable job - we are playing the attractive football Markus wanted, Nige plays the game the right way (see Poyet) and we are winning more than we are losing, which is always nice. Tis a great time to be a Saints fan - and to emphasise that I can currently hear Cotterill ranting like a deluded looney on Solent - apparently they were better than West Ham by a million miles and the ref got every decision wrong. Happy days. The future is red and white - as is the present!

though ownership can be a complex and murky business, the paper trail for income recieved shouldn't be too difficult to follow - Liverpool pay £xxM for Johnson - easy question, according to Liverpool's accounts, who did they pay what to? If they paid it to PFC, it's either in the account or it has been paid out of PFC to a third party - if so, who, why and how? You can't put a note in the cashbox - taken £10M for stamps. So you cannot 'lose' tens of millions between clubs without leaving some sort of trail, or breaching most UK tax and FA rules. An individual lone business perhaps, but not when all clubs involved are monitored. The forensic investigation should throw up some answers.....

surely the CVA proposal was a legally binding document upon which the creditors made their decisions, including the one to vote HMRC out of the picture? By including club owner Chanrai's personal offer in the CVA proposal, AA made the committment to pay the small creditors in full a requirement for a penalty-free exit from administration. Any experts wish to throw some light on that? And even if they have found a legal loophole to further rape the local community, we all know that legal things have never bothered the FL who have their own rules and will take action against any club trying to get their golden share in a manner they don't approve of. I'd like to think that any attempt by the club to distance themselves from the club's debts just because of ownership change will be robustly dealt with by the authorities. The league can't make them pay anything - but they can stop them from playing.

smacks of poor due diligence by the mafia. Everyone knew about the small creditors problem, it was in the public domain. Any sensible company buying the club would have had Chanrai sign paperwork agreeing to sort the payments himself, or would have taken on the debt themselves and knocked a bit off the purchase price - either way it would be sorted. Ignoring it and not realising it would be horrific PR for the club is an odd way of going about things. And this is a U turn and a new stance, pompey previously were 'working to pay it', now they claim it isn't their problem? As for Chanrai, the few must be confused. Is he the man who financed the 2nd illegal cup run and the win at St Marys and saved the club when no one else would, or is he a crook who has ripped off locals, and the man responsible for any problem the current regime has? I 4-1 think that will be another juggling act as they endeavour to be selective about their view of his role. Either way the small creditors money is absolutely nothing to a big company - the damage done everyday by it hanging around is enormous. It gives the impression that they haven't got two cocaine-scented rubles to rub together.

trouble is she's such a looker that you'd just have to wouldn't you....they do make a lovely couple, wonder what the kids will look like...

that can't be right, the likes of Claridge and Merson keep telling me they have fantastic support - the cartoon image the media likes to have of them. Having just got round to watching the How to Buy a Football Club documentary I think I can see why Lampitt was moved on. These sort of things all went on under his nose, and while its difficult to get to the bottom of ownership and dodgy dealings, it was his only task. I don't recall too many successes for his department... But on the positive side, to stand out as incapable among footballing authority figures is quite an achievement, so he should get credit for that. At least he's getting hands on training in how it's done, which may stand him in good stead should the old boys network return him to his former role. And the other message that came out of that programme - boy were we lucky to find Markus and Nicola! We must have been touted about, though £15M to buy the rights to pick up Sheffield Utd's £57M debt plus agency fees doesn't look that attractive to me. Football is in trouble - I'm hoping we have avoided the worst of it.

the last world cup was the final straw for me. Every two/four years I would have my shirt on in front of the telly, national anthem etc - we would have 'a golden generation' or 'a great chance of winning'.......and then it all turns to sh)t. There are only so many times that it turns to sh)t before it dawns on you that it is never going to happen because we aren't good enough. I won't be fooled into thinking we can compete again. Describing the international set up as a load of lazy overpaid sex offenders going through the motions might be considered a bit harsh - but I would rather watch a Hollyoaks boxed set than England v Wales, in fact I would rather chuck £55 out of the front window.

listening to his horrendous display on Solent I noticed his self-proclaimed position as a sensible financial man was questioned by the guy who pointed out that the state of the accounts had got worse on his watch. If that is so, he's had it. He'll have to fall back on his people skills and earn a living training people in customer care. With his financial acumen and attitude he's starting to sound like a common version of Rupert - he's a ruddy-faced 2nd hand car dealer. Sounds like an ideal future business partner for one of Sandbanks' finest, perhaps when Spurs start flirting with administration.