rallyboy

However, any hopes that Chanrai will look to 'invest' in PFC to try to restore the club's Premier League status look doomed. The club management team has been instructed to develop a 'break-even' budget for the coming season. Impossible, hilariously so! You couldn't run a car on their projected income without the Sky money - they will need another 28% loan from the puppet master before October and we will be on the way to administration once again, it'll just be a matter of time. Go on Cotterill you old squad-fiddler, sign Marlon King just in case there are any supporters out there that don't despise the club yet - he deserves it, everyone should be given a 14th chance.

now the dust is settling on an astonishing judgement I look forward to the detailed version explaining how the cva isn't flawed, there must be some criticism of the business in there, surely? The points penalty was irrelevant, that loophole needs to be closed and I reckon they have written off £40M-50M of debt without any penalty affecting their league position. Here's some more guesswork - No one believes the £138M figure, it's made up, you know it, they know it, everyone but Mr Mann knows it - I would imagine it's nearer £100M? They have to pay £22M (?) to football creditors, that will take the parachute money out of the equation - thank god HMRC didn't win that one because they would have bumped them for 3p in the £ as well. Chanrai who continually slips between owner, debt collector, secured, unsecured, I presume he wants about £25M asap - taken in dribs and drabs when the taxman isn't looking? Wages must still be £25M a year, debt repayments will be a laughable £2M. Tickets and sponsorship income could be £8M, but the vital Sky money is gone for the moment so we will either see Chanrai getting nothing and sticking more debt into the carcass, wages late again, or the cva falling at the first hurdle. Let's not forget that the FL want to see filed accounts as well, that was their little gem they threw in at the last meeting - watch that space as I seem to recall it could affect embargoes and even bring charges if not adhered to, and we still have the ownership issue - so there are more laughs here! AA is right again, they do need to raise £15M in transfers - or his court-approved cva is unworkable and doomed to fail. So in the cold light of day this great escape in court looks like a brief bid for freedom, a run along the hardshoulder before getting dragged back in the van - BUT no one is making any claims about the legal system anymore, we've seen two very odd judgements thus far, perhaps we'll stick to guessing football results.

well you have to give it to AA, he put together a ridculous and flawed cva that he can't fund BUT managed to outwit HMRC's finest! I guess that's what happens when you get a civil servant beancounter to attempt something beyond counting paper clips - they seemed poor in court despite a really good case. That left Mr Mann (can't call him justice) to approve a Crook's Charter, he's opened the door for all clubs to launder money and shaft taxpayers, charities and small businesses alike. When the folk of Portsea want to know where their new school or cancer treatment centre is, well we all know now that the funding was stolen by plucky little pompey. And when the idiots that voted for the cva find that they don't get their 4p a year less expenses on time I will laugh at their stupidity. The cva is clearly unworkable and can't be financed, so those dim creditors deserve to be ripped off for the way that they have supported a corrupt and criminally run business. A black day for taxpayers and honest businesses everywhere, partytime for dodgy football clubs, money launderers and people who live in caravans with their toothless sisters. BUT that aside, the future is still very red and white!

Let's remember that if they do win today they are still a long way adrift, someone will have just given them a toothpick to hang onto - I see no money and that's the only thing that can save them. But as they helped themselves to interest free loans from the taxpayer and local businesses and used them to win the cup I see little hope. They stole from charities and traded insolvently. We now find out that having misled the Prem with false accounts to open the transfer window and begged for advanced payments to help them manage debt they instead took this cash and brought in new players in an attempt to shaft the very chairmen who had just helped them, and to try and win the cup, while the debt just laid there and gathered interest - but they didn't care because they were going to offer them 4p in the £ a year, less expenses. Calculated and disgraceful behaviour. I'm pretty much with Sid on this, I have no great desire to see them liquidated but how long can a criminal and corrupt business be allowed to continue, especially when I see no apologies or humble pie, just gobby arrogance and V flicking. They have at every turn gambled everything for gain, it worked to an extent, FA Cup, Europe - well now it's time to pay for those gambles and sympathy will be in short supply. The other Prem clubs must be livid at the manner in which their assistance was abused, had one of them gone down instead of Pompey there would have been a riot. And just when you think there are new people at the helm and maybe they are due a fresh start we have Steve Cotterill trying to fiddle his way around the transfer embargo, he has been allowed to bring in three players as a result of deliberately massaging the squad figures, now he is demanding more. They are still pushing the regulations at every turn - they still don't get it - stop cheating! So I hope that we see some justice today or over the next few years, I'm pleased that we can now support the theory that the 4-1 win was illegal, Scudamore says he was lied to, they brought in those extra players illegally, I'm just surprised to find out that it isn't just us bitter locals who feel like this but there must be the likes of Birmingham and Sunderland fans who are livid to discover that the FA Cup was not an even playing field last year. It seems that Pompey have not been operating legally for several seasons, clearly gaining an on pitch advantage through financial misdemeanours - I was astonished when they won the cup, I couldn't work out how they did it, well we all know now that it was a con. I don't recognise it, there was no cup winner in 2008. So I just hope that today we start to see a few fans admitting that their club has acted disgracefully and that maybe they get the chance to make a fresh start lower down. If a new pompey appeared back up the league in ten years time through hard work and good football practice I would be quietly impressed and maybe pleased to do battle with them again, as long as we win, but this club is forever tainted and looks beyond help. And that's why I would shed no tears if Sir George put the sick animal down.

what a great opening defence! - Surely by confirming that they are living off advanced parachute payments already their counsel has declared the CVA inaccurate, fatally flawed and unworkable? He might as well have chucked a rope around a beam and climbed on a chair.

it seems there are more 'chaps' out there with bells than we ever realised.... Along with the News editing the facts to satisfy their audience, the hijacking of the comments by various comedy characters has been the highlight thus far, most amusing.

that's significant, very late but significant. The Premier League now accepts that Pompey misled them to gain a competitive advantage - I think they also now realise that one of their members was also trading insolvently in breach of regulations. Either way someone in authority has finally confirmed what Platini and Wenger have already said, that Pompey cheated. Welcome to our world. Now we just need to see a sweating AA in a witness box trying to confirm all the debt and bumbling through an explanation as to why he threw out a tax claim instead of accepting it and challenging it as is the correct procedure - and we have a good day!

like many on here I need to go out and do some work now, I'm not expecting any serious activity today though I guess we might be treated to Sir George going mental at 10.30 when AA doesn't appear, I'll catch up later. Last time this happened I had to plough through about seven pages - which for those simpletons who need a polite reminder, is what we do before posting links to 'breaking' stories that have been discussed at length for three days. Here's to a good day for football and the ordinary taxpayer.

patience my pretty ones, it's not going to be sorted in a hurry! Another slant is that it's a test case for the football authorities who will be determined to protect football creditors, if Pompey think they can ignore that internal ruling and shaft UK clubs by coming out of admin without serious funding they are very wrong. Is AA looking to challenge that 100% rule himself to save a few quid and wave goodbye to league status? Letting Pompey get away with scrubbing all debt would allow dozens of clubs to save millions and bring the whole league structure into chaos. The 100% to football creditors is set in stone, so any clever plan B around the potential of a refused cva will still have to be backed by millions. They've been running from justice for several years but today they've finally been cornered, the more dramatic threadsters could even see it as their 'lying by the riverbank' moment.

spoke with a Pompey fan tonight - he has no concept of what is happening tomorrow and was excited because they beat Fulham and he thinks their team is looking okay. The majority of their fanbase have been protected from the facts by local media coverage or their reluctance to engage with the detail, so some might get a shock in the next couple of days. I'm out and about until tomorrow afternoon but I don't expect to see much progress, if the taxman has got it right it should take a while to get the result they need and Pompey will no doubt ask for an adjournement while their boss gets his ar$e off the beach. Go to it Mr Mann, write your name into Southampton folklore!

so the few that made the effort yesterday either saw the last ever Pompey game, or the last ever superstar* lineup playing together. An historic occasion either way, though in years to come I bet there will be about 8,000 people claiming they were all there! The game at Coventry using a real side rather than the partially-borrowed one out against mighty Fulham will be a real test of what the future holds, if they survive Tuesday. Unlikely they will go pop by midweek so I reckon they might be looking at an opening day plucky noble defeat accompanied by hilarious propaganda from Cotterill in which he will defend his brave players, bemoan lack of preparation, talk of new faces, a long season, being up for the battle, be confused by the financial state, and generally make himself look a predictable version of Grant, Hart, Redknapp and Adams, who like all previous 'owners' failed to do due diligence on the club before taking the cash. He took the job, it hasn't changed, no reason to complain. *artistic licence used for dramatic effect

whatever occurs in court they could be heading for a small squad, not as small as they are making out because we all know they have more players registered than the little website con, and they have bent the rules to bring in fresh blood and new wages - but their relatively small squad could also include several overpaid Storrie Specials that they cant shift. One or two of these are likely to be pretty miffed not to have escaped and will be as useful as AA at a maths test. Botaeng could be in jail, Utaka never tries anyway and all they will be left with is their own Rasiak and Saga scenario - no use to the team and on HUGE wages. In years to come Pompey could be held up as an example of the worst run football club in history.

that sounds like a good plan to buy the club for the community, presumably they now just need to raise the £200M to clear debt and move forward. That's a lot of sponsored walks and jumble sales - though it's good to have a dream. And when they say AA is staying on holiday and leaving his lawyers to it, that must have been at the lawyers' request - the last thing they need is AA in front of a court making the type of statements he offers in the press. A shrewd move, as long as Storrie and Azougy don't turn up to 'help'. Though I'm not sure what the court will make of his non-appearance, wouldn't they like to question him personally on some points?

I believe the site is designated for 'open air leisure' unless the planning dept agree to an alternative - such as a supermarket, some flats, a new playing field elsewhere and some social housing donated to the city, not as a sweetener but as a generous act as part of the development.... I suspect there is little to prevent the change of use and loss of the football ground.

the ground may not be locked but it sounds like it has a serious access issue. Someone might want to check out the maps from a millions pages back and see what the arms dealer owns, it is loads. He won't be able to stop the use of public footpaths but he is already making it difficult. Then again that might all be academic by midweek.

If you look at the small print they are allowed to buy players under the embargo as long as they don't own cars. And their latest medical involves being able to climb over glass-topped walls and outrun security dogs across open land - Kanu is missing the first game with rabies. It's official now, AA is thick. Running a business - question 142 You take over a business that has a serious dispute with someone who owns land vital to the day to day running of the business. Do you a. Come to an immediate arrangement. b. Negotiate even though you don't want to. c. Hide in the back office and pretend the problem doesn't exist. d. Arrogantly flick the V's in their face until they inevitably close you down and then bleat about how you couldn't see this coming and it's everyone else's fault. e. A combination of C and D.

Is the arms dealer going to build a multi-Storrie?.... In defence of child-maiming, money-laundering crooks everywhere, if you owned land vital to another business, had cut them some slack yet they were so arrogant they wouldn't even reply to your letters to have a meeting, wouldn't you be a bit miffed? Back to this case! - AA's arrogance has made Portsmouth FC look like a bunch of dirty travellers who have set up their uninsured caravans on someone else's land and think they are above the law. If AA legs it soon and leaves a right old mess behind, the image will be complete. Fratton Park is still the only ground with a towbar.

Fifa can't be be happy with their members getting shafted by someone other than themselves - a loophole to be closed perhaps? Future business with British clubs will have to be paid upfront. If the child-maimer has taken over the car park it's going to be a while before those fivers get him his father's £30M back, it's a start though - and on matchdays the place will be buzzing, you won't be able to move, he should get at least six caravans in there accounting for the 75 people who will be in the Fratton End.

An ongoing problem here is that this has been one of those rare stories where there's little media understanding of what is occuring yet they don't bother to seek specialist advice. As a result we've been treated to Storrie's, Grant's, AA's, and various chancers' views of what will happen next, often printed as fact to fill the vacuum created by lack of balanced info. So when AA tells the paper that he's confident of something they print it without question and the dimmer fans just lap it up - hence the ridiculous inaccurate transfer and contract stories we keep seeing. There are still people in Pompey who think AA is going to re-write the way that the UK calculates VAT, have them out of admin two months ago and get them into Europe. And as the other party is HMRC who are reluctant to spin, most of football is just getting plucky little Pompey's and their bestest fans' version of life. Methinks there may be an alternative version of events still to be aired - and that the taxman must have bitten right through his lip trying to maintain a dignified silence - a silence only broken by the noise of tax officials erecting gallows in the car park.

bearing in mind there seems to be a unanimous opinion on here that AA is about to be found out bigtime, how do we think he's going to try to get away with it? He must have a plan, there must be more to him than a comb-overed simpleton who can't add up. From everything I've seen he has made mistakes and SHOULD have the cva thrown out - but I have this nagging thought that having survived the initial day in court when it was clear that any normal business would have been wound up, well I don't like to quote the regular words of a serial poster but, will he produce something to help them 'get away with it'? Was it the protective arm of the Prem that saved them before so they are now on their own, or did AA use up all his good luck in one hit? Or is he a financial genius and he's about to make Houdini look like a pub act? The taxman had better deliver this time.

AA needs to explain a lot of discrepancies in his figures. The court must be wondering if anyone has really got to the bottom of the extent of the debt yet. Thankfully the accounts that AA will file following his extensive forensic investigation will explain everything in precise detail, and we can then establish who was telling porkies. My bet would be all of them.

AA's now confusing me, I had to listen to his comments twice to make sure. I thought the image rights issue was quite simple - that Pompey paid a proportion of wages as a tax-free bonus under the guise of image rights, yet he is banging on about players claiming these amounts because a certain proportion of their income is earned abroad as they are so famous (?) and can thus be paid into offshore accounts bypassing UK taxation - he is saying that their work for Portsmouth is partly international. When did it become an international issue? Employed by a UK company to work in the UK - but with wages paid into offshore accounts tax free? And that's before you start looking at those accounts and seeing where it goes after that. Imagine the situation - 'you want £40K a week, tell you what, we'll give you £70K a week and you move £20K into this other account....' But that's another issue still to be dealt with...... I also think his figures are up the spout, a back of the envelope guess at three seasons of image rights payments at 10-15% of the wages comes out much closer to HMRC's estimate of £13M than his of £5M. He's a muddled boy, if he were my witness I wouldn't let him near a courtroom.

They may have just turned a corner! - offloading Utaka cheaply would be the first sensible thing AA has done since he arrived, perhaps he has just realised that the wagebill has to be slashed and if it means giving players away it has to be done. It's desperate - but these are desperate times, has AA just woken up? Though it's best not to gob off about how you won't be taken for a ride by buying clubs shortly before you do it - you could look an idiot. If he does embark on a mass bargain bin clearout he will get the overheads to a more sustainable level and make the accounts of the business more attractive to a buyer. Unfortunately they will be heading for relegation and his laughable CVA will have nothing to fund it. A year on there is still only one answer - big cash, now.

before we get too ****y, looks like they have some cover lined up to keep the Nugent Smith goal machine on track - Former Spain striker Raul has announced his departure from Real Madrid after 18 years and claimed he could now make a move to England. "I have had very deep discussions with Schalke but there are other teams that are also interested. My future lies in Germany or England," he said. Presumably he'll play in the hole behind Messi.

In life there are leaders and followers, some people get educated and make up their own minds, others blindly believe any old rubbish they are fed. Poisonous lunatics preying on the dim, I hope they scrubbed that pavement in Fareham after that sad gaggle of friendless nazis had set up their little table. Nutters - but dangerous nutters with a screw loose. Thankfully after the good people of Barking and Dagenham wiped them off the political map, they are like the holocaust, part of history.