rallyboy

Hilarious new myths currently being hyped up in Deluded Town - 1. Saints are £24M in debt. 2. The Liebherr family have abandoned us. 3. We give away 12,500 tickets for every home game - apparently all women and children get in free.... (Which is seriously going to annoy the woman I go with as it cost her about £375 last season.) And this little gem off The News site sums up the insane ideas being sold to anyone thick enough to buy them - I work in business your club is in debt, you have got to remember sunshine Pompey are a far more better business venture than your present owners your owners are not that rich ok pompey are a unique club buoyed on having the biggest support in the south and a far bigger catchment area ok just because you have a bigger stadium,you will not attract the players like pompey will etc,you have to realise we have very encouraging owners they were the ones that wanted to purchase Rangers, but they were far more rewarding in getting the sleeping giant of the south coast which was POTENTIAL. That needs more than a few commas to sort it out. And while new myths are generated every day to distract from the fragility of the few's current state, I still await the exact details of the mythical dock strike.

Cotterill's getting the paranoid excuses in early doors, apparently the fixtures are against them now. The Blues boss believes his team have been dealt a tough hand following the release of their fixtures for the 2011-12 Championship term yesterday. But he backed them to respond to a testing start to the new season. The man is an idiot.

FMPR - you quote wages paid by a club that has flirted with bankruptcy for five years and another that's sailing full steam ahead towards administration. I think Charlton have had long enough in the wilderness to realise that overpaying and losing money may well be connected. West Ham are starting to look like pompey when it comes to gambling the club future - the Nolan signing makes Lampitt look shrewd. So I would suggest that those figures are not paid by championship clubs run sensibly, which sadly are few and far between. £15K a week is reasonable for two or three of your best players perhaps - but it shouldn't be the base rate for the lowest paid, average squad players that no one else wants. Sonko was no bargain - and even he knows it.

Halford was on £15K, presumably all loanees were on about the same - massive wages sanctioned by Lampitt. I would estimate their starting XI last season was costing about £10M a year before tax and NI - lucky they didn't have a full squad! Shedding a few big earners but continuing to overpay those coming in will mean they need to sell approx 22,000 season tickets - to stand still. I see why they are keen to increase capacity. Luckily they have new owners to cover the shortfall, and add more loans to the business. How long before the CVA is delayed again? I'd be surprised if the creditors ever see a penny - and the football authorities will pretend it hasn't happened.

so to put it into context, Sonko, an underused and failed loanee brought in by Cotterill and Lampitt as a result of their suicidal, badly named, and blatantly flawed quality over quantity scheme, cost the equivalent of 1,500 season tickets at £500 each..... An amount so damaging to cashflow that it even shamed the man taking it. Did many Norwich or Swansea players earn that sort of wage? Chanrai must be livid at how they wasted money last season that he could have walked off with. Cotterill's management last season in the transfer market looks shockingly poor. So keep up the good work Steve, please build another squad like that one!

it's been a taxing time!! Very good. Then we had - Lampitt will be meeting with you all on Wednesday that's another thing they got right, that was their entire fanbase in one room. Plucky little few, bestest ever. Yeah - bestest at being deluded!

so Chanrai is back exactly where he was prior to administration - He's a loan shark who will take control of the business if his money isn't repaid. Why would stinking rich Russians not pay him off? a. They don't have much money. b. See a.

here's a new excuse for delays in getting things done, Mr C talking about his forthcoming 6-a-side US holiday, currently one game in 12 days - Cotterill said: ‘The reason it has taken so long to get out in the public domain is the person who organised the trip has been very ill. ‘But he has carried on and got it sorted. We were running out of time but he has got it sorted. ‘I’m thankful to him for doing that, despite being really ill. followed by the greatest truth he has come out with so far - and ‘I’m in their debt, really.' Yes you are Steve, and so many other people's too.

Pompey have delivered a ‘hands off’ warning over Steve Cotterill in the wake of intense talk over the manager’s future. The Blues insist they have not received an approach from Birmingham following speculation the midlanders were keen to take Cotterill to St Andrew’s. And chief executive David Lampitt vowed there were no plans for the 46-year-old to leave after another dramatic day at Fratton Park. Wow there, one moment.....so the only thing missing from this dramatic day was in fact....drama. The club insist that Birmingham hasn't made an approach, Birmingham don't even have him on their radar. So no club has attempted to speak to Cotterill. No one wants him. But Lampitt has issued a hands off warning to make sure that the bloke that no one else wants, goes nowhere....well done. This is like a really poor day at Max Clifford's office where blatant spin doesn't even have enough legs to create one plausible story. What next, Nugent told he has no pompey future, as he heads past jct 32 of the M6 at 100mph? Lampitt hits out at Ben Haim's relaxed attitude to wage collection? They do treat the few like idiots, and they can't all be that stupid.....

I can't see how riding bikes naked is going to discourage serial rapists - especially as most of the cyclists looked like pervy middle aged men. Though the one who was painted like a tiger was no angel, so he was gagging for it.

get in there Lampitt, this looks like a pompey type of signing - Everton could let Yakubu go for a fee of £2m. However, the player's wages of between £35,000 and £40,000 are the stumbling block Re Nugent, I could see him running down his contract as the club was heading for the rocks but things have changed, we're told there is a brave new era and an arena is around the corner.... Why would you not hold onto your top scorer if you have rich new owners?

the lure of Horton Heath could prove too much for Avram, he'd jump at the chance. He could be slipping his CV through their back door at this very moment.

if I hadn't seen them dodge these rules before I would assume that the mix of an embargo and the FL monitoring their spending would prevent them from outbidding richer clubs. But with the blatant cheating that accompanied the last embargo I fully expect them to ignore the latest court action, deny knowledge of the debt, run roughshod over the authorities and assemble yet another team they cannot afford to run. In fact their new owners have even more clout in certain circles than the previous ones, so the FL better watch their backs if they try and impose any sanctions at all on these fit and proper people. The authorities welcomed them to their league with open arms, so they can't moan if they find their family pets sawn in half on the living room carpet.

the Ben Haim problem isn't a new one, though it is a serious issue. The Russians bought the club with this ongoing so they should just pay him and move on. None of us on here did due diligence but we all knew he was unpaid, so if they say it's news to them they are idiots who have just set sail into a sea of sh1t - without a boat. Did Chanrai forget to mention the court cases and the CVA as well?

perhaps the new owners were just unable to make the FL meeting, they are busy running their multi-million pound businesses that will bankroll the club. If protection money isn't paid, those crackhouse brothel owners won't torture themselves - 'business' requires dedication and that takes time. Or could it be that they have seen the comical yet professionally negligent headline on the current Sports Mail that says Build it and the Blues Fans will Come. They must be in meetings with international construction companies to get the arena upgraded into a Superdome without delay, to squeeze in the 50,000 of the bestest that were locked out every other week last season.

nice one Mack - 'Welcome to Portsmouth - the city of quality matchday programmes' - that should be on a banner across the M275. On a completely random note, I've seen Arsenal and Chelsea hospitality tickets printed locally as well, presumably so a London company didn't produce twice the required amount.

nice one Mack - 'Welcome to Portsmouth - the city of quality matchday programmes' - that should be on a banner across the M275. On a completely random note, I've seen Arsenal and Chelsea hospitality tickets printed locally as well, presumably so a London company didn't produce twice the required amount.

Mack, you're sounding all depressed old fella - cheer up, you have rich new owners, a magnificent manager who performed miracles last season even though every ref had it in for him, and the Russians are about to go on a massive spending spree that will make Redknapp look like a spendthrift - things are looking up! And don't forget, Saints are in deep financial trouble, losing money every week, we don't own our stadium and we are heading back into administration any day soon. What more could you want from life?....

had me worried there for a mo - thankfully Kanu has denied these retirement rumours so his ridiculously inflated contract will continue to cripple their wagebill for another two years, until he's 50.

well here is my confession - no joke, this is for real! I recently stumbled across John W******d.... I thought it only polite to mention the subject of football - he wasn'ty too worried about my roots, he said he knows loads of scummers. Rather refreshingly I got more sense out of him that your average pompey supporter. No excitement about new owners, big spending sprees or any of that gloating denial rubbish. He just wants to watch pompey, and he doesn't care what division they are in. We also agreed that life outside of the top flight for both clubs hasn't been the end of the world (!). So when I next meet a dim skate who starts on about new stadiums, 4-1 etc, I can honestly say that I've heard more sense from a CWAB who wears clown shoes and a big hat.

seeing how the football authorities have punished reckless spending, kept crooks out of the game, and not allowed any clubs to trade insolvently, they will need a complete change of their own staff to make any of this work. I wouldn't trust the current lot to be able to sit the correct way on a toilet, so I have no confidence in them enforcing financial restrictions. And the ideas proposed seem to be designed to make the Prem a closed shop and keep all other league clubs in their place - unable to compete. With massive cash in the top division and similar restrictions imposed at all levels it will be the same three up and down - until the end of time.

Norris was a done deal, and that was before Cotterill had this massive transfer warchest to build his promotion team with. Or perhaps there's a new problem... Players regarded pompey as a poor club that would outbid anyone. Now they have rich new owners, they can pay even more! A bit like us when everyone thought we had Chamberlain money burning a hole in our pockets and upped prices for any potential signings. pompey gave out long £20K a week contracts when they were trading insolvently, so no decent player will want to come for less now they are rich.

this is the best place to find comedy on this site, less of a thread, more of a gentleman's club for acidic and educated wit, ably supported by facts that regularly emerge and blur the line between jokes and reality. We must have a meet up sometime, put faces to the names that have been a feature on here - maybe Ho will join us? And while we are revisiting great comedy moments like Crab's fine efforts, can I do my Avram Grant gag again? The one about him having a semi coming up....and I thought he was clothes shopping when they said he was splashing out on a new thai...... Anyway - what the hell are the Russians doing? They've had ages to plan the takeover and hit the ground running, anyone would think they don't know what they're doing - and that can't be the case.

Saints hero Peter Storrie is back in football...ish - on the committee at Liss and currently on a campaign to become chairman. Lucky Liss. And there are murmourings once again about the safety certificate on the Fratton Pk arena - that's a couple of very wooden stands, and there's a limit to how many times you can chuck flameproof paint on them and get away with it. They have two big ticking timebombs awaiting massive investment. I know they can shut half the ground and still get everyone in but it's not an ideal scenario.

I'm curious to see exactly what they have bought.... Loan sharks don't lend interest free for a year or two then surrender all gambling cards without a decent payday. If the figure of £15M is accurate it really wouldn't surprise me if he has held onto the ground and is renting it to them. That was his original golden ticket to halt the child-maimer's plans, without the ground he has no control over his business enemy, nor the new owners. With it he has full control of all - and the opportunity to ask top dollar for it down the line. I can't see why he would include it for less than £20M - or has he still got first claim on transfers in? There must be some little gem in the small print if he sold 'the club' for £15M. Let's remember that any allegations aside, and there are a lot of them, these are the guys that couldn't produce enough funds to impress Bournemouth enough to even start negotiations. To do all they want they need £100M to start with. Their personal wealth isn't big enough to buy Bournemouth. So, did I mention? - the figures don't stack up.