rallyboy

The beast is terminally wounded yet they're still looking for little plasters. If they're lobbying for an emergency discounted version of parachute money advanced to creditors via the league, then they are in a worse state that I thought. That would just get them to the summer and their main future revenue stream would be dry, causing immediate decline and chasing off investors. It works for me!

An observer might suggest that it appears that they are 'pretending to be in administration' to limp away from the winding up order and towards the modest sanctuary of another Sky payment, with a masterplan of hopping back out of this suspended state when the points penalty drops on the mat. Why else would the administrator not be slashing costs like an axeman? He is clearly confident of his own position (even though others aren't), he needs to turn the business around, yet all loan players are still happily trousering cash and the club is carrying on regardless, overpaid Storrie is still there (?!!!!) - when will the authorities appreciate that behind all the spin and the 'poor old plucky Pompey' campaign they are still making no effort to address debt. Shameful. It's good to see the rest of football is now waking up to the cheating aspect.

Manager Avram Grant* admitted: “There are some great moments in *history and this was one of them. Yes, I will always remember where I was when that mighty Birmingham City side of 2010went out of the cup. Pompey midfielder Jamie O’Hara said: “The fans are fantastic. “They have a bit of magic about them. What you mean they can tell your fortune? We all can Jamie, and it doesn't have a happy ending this season.

I would be just as interested in the downfall of any club that cheated us out of the cup with unregistered players and loanees that were agreed through false accounts sent to the Premier League. The fact that those of us to the east have had to put up with vitriol and abuse for a while now just adds to the interest as they sink. The mammoth thread in the lounge is a sound analysis of business criminality, a regular reflection on Pompey posters' arrogant boasts of super stadiums and the imminent arrival of Maradona at Fratton, all wrapped up with the occasional bit of abuse thrown in for good measure. A nice mix. Ted's looking east and waving them goodbye, and so am I.

and the Eon man of the match is the blind linesman who gets a free trip to Horton Heath on Avram's expense account - an astonishing mistake to make at that level of the game. Beyond belief that he couldn't see the ball over the line.....you could see it was in on the telly, from the wrong angle, and without a replay. Anyway we're taking 44,000 to a Wembley final, and we have got there fairly. Bring on the taxman, sort out that dirty cheating club that brings the whole game into disrepute.

Do we know if the Few are going to play registered players in the cup tomorrow? Any late loanees added to the wagebill today? Any all-of-a-sudden' free agents mysteriously paid up their own contracts with other clubs this week? Anyway Soooooper, super Kev, super Kevin Phillips. If that little monkey pops up tomorrow with a 96th minute winner it would nail their season good and proper. Mmmm, let's all remember the Nathan Dyer moment............get in there! Sshhhhh! Nice.

mack rill has returned to an interesting point a couple of us highlighted a few dozen pages back. A court order on the back up of a cooked up case could be the only way of freeing up frozen accounts - thus allowing a couple of international criminals to split let's say, just as an example plucked out of the air, £17M? They have the back up of doing a joint property development should their money-laundering vehicle of choice lose a wheel or two. The only thing that might go wrong is if that vehicle didn't deliver the amounts agreed and it all got out of their control. The paper trail would be quite simple to follow I would have thought. The taxman has been quiet this week......maybe he's busy.

Storrie could present Cash in the Attic.

Did I hear someone mention in passing the other night that there was still the distinct possibility that they might be going down with no money in the bank? I don't know if anyone else heard that rumour.

he does come across as a clueless chancer. I know that administrators are double glazing salesmen in smarter suits but he doesn't do their cause any good by spouting rubbish. The penalty is written clearly in black and white. The future income can be included as 'possible future income' but you can't say, 'I'm on £50K a year so I want £1M now', like a six year old with no grasp of how finance works. He needs to sound positive as a salesman, but there is no hint at the reality of the situation, then again it isn't his football club so he doesn't care if it all goes pop. He can just walk away from the wreckage and leave the police to finish the job. Interesting that he agrees with a few of us on here about the club valuation - £30-40M now and the same again to restructure debt. That confirms that there is no get rich quick opportunity for an investor, just a long haul of hassle and poverty.

the media are only getting Pompey's twisted version of events hence the lack of balance. Many on here immediately suggested the admin wasn't legal, their own adminsitrator was happy, yet the taxman and the court are leaning towards this thread's understanding of the situation. Their 'experts' are struggling to satisfy the court, and the taxman is dangerously quiet. He's having a good look around the accounts, and they must be full of little gems.... This latest news that the FA is holding back their cup money could be significant. It suggests the authorities are not comfortable to put money in either, maybe they now suspect money-laundering?...Who'd have thought it?! - other than all of the people involved in posting nearly 20,000 times on here. I don't believe the Fratton hype, they're not out of the woods yet, they're actually heading into the dark bit....where the mad axeman lives....

I blame the press as well, they keep printing the league table and the facts from court cases, it's disgraceful, they're scaring off all the potential buyers. Nasty press, vindictive taxman, unsupportive Premier League, unhelpful FA - it's a vendetta against the superb owners and management of a great club. It's the fans I feel sorry for etc.... Denial ain't the place where Mido opened his swimschool. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

general opinion here last week from those that know was that Chanerai was caught between deciding whether he's an owner or a creditor and as such he couldn't put the club into admin. Administrator saw it differently, taxman agrees with us. The fact that it's returning to court suggests the taxman fancies his chances, especially as the paperwork must be all over the place. Admin boy says he's not unduly worried, but then again he wouldn't be, it's not his football club - and he does come across as clueless. If it wasn't for the chaotic last six months I would see this as a minor blip - but with their track record for employing idiots and suicidal strategies I don't see him dismissing this challenge too easily, and certainly not in one go tomorrow.

so the master plan of business recovery is revealed at last! - wait for the ruthless Hong Kong money lender 'to fall in love with the club'. That sounds like a great plan! I'd certainly concentrate on that instead of addressing the debt, those long summers that little android boy spent at administration camp were'n't wasted. Is it just me or is the Paul Hart story another bit of journalism from someone with no grasp of the facts? Surely Hart is right up the front of the queue now as a football debt? Last week he had little hope, now like Sol he's guaranteed payment, unless they never kick a ball again...

that'll be a long debate - all those in favour of the penalty?.....yep, that's everyone, next case. So how long do we give Storrie, and how long before the administrator announces that he has called the old bill? I give Storrie until Wednesday, and even then he will spin his sacking into a glorious exit. Admin. 'Peter, I ought to advise you that I've spoken to the police and they are very keen to have a look' Storrie. 'Fantastic news, I didn't even know Sting was a football fan, can I sit next to him in the director's box?'

until they're properly punished for the criminality and deceit that has occured I don't even recognise them as a football club. If they want to play to their own rules outside the structure of the Prem and the FA that's fine but no football fan should think they are hard done by or deserving of sympathy. Dear Pompey Take the penalty points, return the loan players, offload players you can't afford, get rid of ones you haven't registered, get the crooks to step down, prove you haven't broken Prem rules by trading insolvently, stop driving your manager to brothels, stop ripping off small businesses and charities, show us your books are legal, clear your debts, pay your tax - and then you can be (reluctantly) welcomed back as a valid part of the british game. As far as I am concerned Burnley are bottom of the table in 19th place, the one below them isn't playing to the same rules and shouldn't be included in the competition.

Lineker doesn't understand the situation, he's a bit dim. 'the poor club has just got it's finances wrong, it's not fair to penalise them...' No crispboy, they have been recruiting players illegally, trading insolvently and gaining a playing advantge by outbidding other teams with money they owed to local businesses and the taxman, they also misled the Prem league into allowing them to bring in O'Hara and the bloke with the stupid name who beat us at St Marys. They've been cheating, they still are, and the points penalties should stack up when the books are examined. And as for the fantastic support - was that 15-20 faithful travellers I saw celebrating on motd? Storrie's nephew filling his boots? Their kitman on more than our manager was last season? Plenty more laughs to come!

Expert opinion is that the sign of a club in big trouble is when they borrow against future revenue. Pompey administrator's no.1 survival plan? - spend all future revenue on past debt....this comedy is far from over. The only good news for Storrie is that the offshore taxhaven of Hayling doesn't have an extradition treaty with the UK should the authorities find anything unusual in the books. Once he crosses Langstone Bridge he'll be like Ronnie Biggs, the yard will have to go and kidnap him on a daytrip.

some people have been saying how they have sympathy with the few and on reflection I feel quite bad about what's happened to them today. Oh, I've got over it! Can we try for a top ten of Skate myths to see us through until the administrator calls the police? Rumours regularly paraded as facts - 1. The imaginary dock strike, that no one can quite put a date on. 2. The shirt under the St Marys pitch - urban myth spread at every new ground. 3. Best fans in the world - mmm. 4. A Southampton owner being part of a war before he was born. 5. 'We laid down at West Brom and relegated the scummers' - er no, your players were awful or took backhanders as is the way at Fratton and relegated Palace. Ironically many of those same players bled your club dry and led to where you are today. Anymore anti-Saints dodgy 'facts' out there? And on a boring note I see that the administrator accepts arms dealer's debt as valid and genuine, thus dispelling the theory that they could ignore their major problem.

I just lost 75mins of my life catching up on today's posts, and that was skipping through the more odd ones, or people posting links to news we had discussed 24 hours earlier! Overturn the 9pts? Non-starter, it's there in black and white. Checking potential owners for funds? Wow, what a great idea, this man is obviously a sharp operator..... Storrie to resign?...look again, he said he would tender it, 'according to his contract'... is that with a 12month notice or payoff perhaps? He stays put for the mo with his wage guaranteed as a football debt and then has a huge payoff while ironically taxpayers have to fund his prison time. I don't see that much has changed today other than a few office staff are going to get shat on and the administrator now has the chance to dig through all the dirt. They are still in a very big hole, depending on what he finds, the hole could yet get cavernous. Where is the buyer with £30M to burn?

I think they're a bit miffed that we have been telling them for at least six months that the house of cards was going to fall down and they wouldn't accept it. I'll leave it to Phil to add, 'I don't like to say I told you so but....' I love the - 'local club for local people'! Anyway, I've got to go out and do work so I look forward to an hour and a half of thread catch up later....as I guess that this is the day that Pompey are relegated from the top tier. Sometime soon we shall pass like ships in the night - one executive liner and a holed pedalo.

what do you call a good season? Any one in which your local rivals get relegated in February! A few of us has guessed at March but it's earlier than most expected. And after six months waiting I have finally seen the precisely-worded headline I've been hoping for, and fittingly it's the News that has delivered - 'Pompey on the brink'......mmmm, nice. This is a golden era.

'open air leisure' is the precise term - so that petting zoo could be a goer. I also see no reason to retain Storrie unless he pops straight back into the office as a potential buyer. If staff cuts are being made to save money a non-playing big earner must be first. Though he can leave a list of files and cabinets that the administrator mustn't look at. Whatever happens he will still be wandering down there every day with a briefcase and sandwiches, refusing to accept that he's been sacked and that he doesn't actually work there anymore. He lives in the magical Storrie World, a bit like the real one but you can change facts by saying the opposite, and no one ever wants their money back.

Storrie believes that if he says something enough times it becomes the truth. They told us they had not been served a winding up order, there would be no firesale, he told us there was new investment, that talk of financial problems was media lies, he said that the Prem had offered Pompey their own transfer window, he said there were several consortiums in a bidding war, he told us they had agreed a deal, he announced that it would solve the club's problems, he's now telling us they will go into administration on Friday... Does he actually mean that they will ask the court to swap the winding-up for adminstration? Does he mean that Chainrai is going to prove that he now doesn't claim to be the owner as he did last week but is now classing himself as a secured creditor? And will they actually do this or just talk about it? There's a pattern of Storrie appointing himself the boss of everyone and telling people what's going to happen in Storrie World - but the taxman and the court are deafeningly silent, keeping their powder dry perhaps? I would like to hear information from someone involved other than Portsmouth as I don't believe what they say. Though the taxman may still be too busy - digging the graves.

it's going to take the administrator ages to make sense of the chaos, especially if Storrie stays on to 'help''. What will they have left to sell and for how much? So the one attraction at the moment is the Sky money, if the Prem plunders future tv revenue to clear the debts there's nothing else to buy. The problems of tax and football debts are still there, as others have said this move, if accepted by the court, just shafts the locals. We have only had the club version of events thus far so let's see what the court and taxman make of it....that aside..... Football debts - Sol will be fine, even things like Avram's back pay now need to be sorted before they can play next season, and though the Muntari money is outside of the regs, uefa will go ape if they don't sort it. I assume the administrator will consider money more use than points so I see them taking points penalties and clearing the minimum tax debt they can get away with. 2010/11 - guess-timates! New running costs per month for a much reduced squad etc - £1M? Monthly income - £500K? TV money - used to clear old football debt - £0 so we have for sale A lightweight-squad championship club with no assets, and likely to lose £6M a year, for £35M (tax and football)? A lightweight-squad championship club with a huge points penalty, no assets, losing £6M a year - yours for £20M (football debt and a dash of tax)? A lightweight-squad championship club with a huge points penalty, no assets, losing £10M a year - yours for £15M (football debt and a dash of tax re-structured)? The third scenario pricing makes it look more attractive to keen local investors. But for £25M, in a year you will have a league one side with no assets. By the time you have gone through £35M you may have stabilised the club in the third tier and if you find the investor that has thus far eluded them, you could be ready to pay another £30M for the surrounding land and buy the ground back. You can then build the new stadium and increase revenues. By this point you will have paid out £175M for a league one team that can challenge for promotion to the championship. If it makes it to the Prem and you can stay up with your youth team squad it should only take about ten years to get into profit, then it'll be a little goldmine! That's without considering financial irregularities, tax evasion, trading insolvently etc. What a bargain.