rallyboy

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.

could proving these misdemeanours be a problem? It looks quite simple when analysed, but is this a normal situation for an administrator or is his style of operating quite 'unique'? I would hope that he looks completely out of step with usual practice as it does seem to border on criminal/inept. I recall having concerns about Mr Fry's abilities (apologies to him, he delivered BigTime, whether by luck or whatever) but looking at AA, Fry now looks like a financial genius and Storrie has made Rupert look like a perfect gentleman who had a little hiccup and dealt with it honourably (ish).

Cotterill is the tinker man, he just can't decide which is his best line up - have they run out of squad numbers yet? And just before they claim a glorious high court victory over the taxman and lift the tranfser embargo, they have filed accounts haven't they?....That is the next requirement from the FL if you want your embargo lifted. Whoops. In technical terms they have gotten themselves into a right pickle.

nice one Hutch. I don't mind analysing the basic maths HUGE outgoings - tiny income + insolvent trading x relegation = (BIG TROUBLE x prison) but I get bored with the legal small print and leave that to the experts! Which is perhaps a lesson for AA to consider - know your limitations puppet boy, just hang on the string and dance when Chanrai slips fivers down your thong.

are they still pretending it's a tour? It's a holiday, a badly planned and ill-timed one, but it's a paid holiday for all involved. They will learn nothing from being there unless it's part of the whole image rights business, shifting Hayden Mullins shirts stateside. Soon you won't be able to go anywhere in the US without seeing a Nugent shirt.... Cotterill's time would be much better spent in the UK finding out what Chanrai's little puppet is up to behind his back. What's that Sooty? You're confident that the cva will be approved, you'll overturn the whole UK VAT system, the taxman will have to pay compensation and you can build a title-challenging squad for a new owner? I think AA can stick those ideas where Mr Corbett puts his hand.

good point that from Sid - Rocha was indeed one of the illegal signings down to the false info presented to the Prem, yet AA admits he was secured on HUGE wages? Proof that they continued to spend big money that they knew they didn't have, even though all the creditors and charities were being shafted. Insolvent trading, without a doubt - from AA's mouth. And AA is now at the poker table with James and has told the best player in their squad and England's best player in the world cup that he has 24 hours to sign or feck off - AA will then go crawling back to the released Ashdown and beg him to return. Can I play poker against AA please? For cash.

poor Steve Cotterill - took a job at a club in crisis and is now surprised to discover that he appears to be at a club in crisis. Says he's having trouble juggling the squad for games - isn't that called 'selection', one of the major tasks of a manager? He'd better get to grips with that pretty sharpish, they'll be other stuff like tactics he might be needed for as well. He can't be as funny as Grant but he's going to give us some laughs - before the inevitable departure, moaning that he was misled, and that the nasty FL and HMRC made his life misery for no reason etc. I do hope they don't break his spirit, we'd like to hear another of those Churchillian comedy routines as a farewell.

I get that principle ESB, but at the moment if clubs want to continue playing they must pay the football creditors in full. Any overturning of the FC rule would mean they have to pay everyone in equal measure - so all creditors in full. If that rule is overturned the football authorities might have to change rules and start allowing clubs to shaft each other and carry on regardless, owning players they haven't paid for, playing them against their former clubs who have been ripped off - and I can't see that happening. So a change in the football creditor rule could set the entire debt in stone. They can always pay 20p in the pound to all, they just won't be allowed to play professional football in the uk.