rallyboy

putting aside any mischievous rumours it does seem that a few local companies have had enough and withdrawn their 'support', as well as their stuff! And if a company with a turnover in excess of £75Million can't find a couple of hundred quid for a local business then the end must be nigh. Correct me if I'm wrong but historically EVERY other club with serious money issues has gone into admin before reaching this sort of level. Palace, Notts County and Bournemouth haven't slumped this low yet. They are trying to take on additional wages with loanees - £10K,£20K a week? Yet they can't pay their local suppliers a few quid? Criminal, despicable, unethical = bringing the game and the league into disrepute. Surely the Prem are sat poised for another missed wages day and then they will act?! They accepted promises this week about the ability of the club to fund the future, if that proves incorrect immediately, they must sort it out.

be afraid of the 757 crew - they are just as hard but they don't like missing breakfast. That aside, anyone coughed up the £10M they need yet? I hear lots of spin but I haven't seen any actual.....how can I put it....cash....

That's them all sorted then, time to close this thread, it's been fun, we must all meet up again in ten years and relive the hilarity. But just before the mods lock it all down and put the cat out, there was another little niggling query....now what was it?....oh yes, do they have the £15M required to continue trading beyond this weekend yet?....

Gaddafi may struggle to raise the cash since his main investor was executed yesterday for genocide, he'll have to go back to the bucket collector's on the Falls Rd. Arms dealers that supplied Angola, a family who funded the IRA and Lockerbie - where is Storrie looking for investors - at war crimes tribunals? They bring shame on football.

if a company is wound up, any sale of the company's property, any transfer of shares, or any alteration in the status of the company's shareholders, made after the commencement of the winding-up is void, unless otherwise ordered by the court. Assuming that legally the winding up process was started when the order was issued, forget any league embargo, surely they can't legally sell players? This means that it is very difficult for a company to continue to trade after a winding up petition is issued. Not arf! I still chuckle at their great response when it was first issued - 'we havent had it, it's illegal, we want to completely restructure the way VAT is calculated, etc'. Clowns and liars.

rant alert! - the idiot who introduces on ITV - He can't say more than.....three words....at a time....without pausing....for no....reason. Mark 'that wasn't handball, it was his chest' Bright - he thought Pompey were robbed in the cup - idiot. Shearer - great goalscorer, sorry mate, bit boring on the box, and do I care what striking legend Robbie Earle thinks about anything? Commentators everywhere - 'that wasn't malicious, he's not that type of player' - sorry guys you are in for a shock here - he IS that type of player as he just stamped on/elbowed another player and anyone who has played the game at any level knows that he DID mean it. Example yesterday - Stoke player was fouled but left his trailing foot in to catch the sliding defender with his studs, we've all done it - accident? Yeah right. When will commentators get some basic understanding of the game and the laws? 'That was a late offside flag' - yes, that'll be because he wasn't offside until he went to the ball. 'But he got the ball' - mmm, he tackled from behind, caught both legs, scissored him to the ground and at some point near the end of the assault the ball happened to clip his knee-high studs. Idiots - most of them, but I let Stuart Hall off because he's entertaining and just a bit mad. Where is football's answer to Bill McLaren? - a proper legend. Rant over.

Q. What's funnier than drawing your local rivals after five years and it being your last chance to smash up their stadium and finally redress the balance of a bitter generation? A. Going out of business that very week and handing them a bye into the next round.

soon we might have to revisit the question about who wants them to survive and who wants them to disappear - the draw will certainly crank up the hate in the next few weeks. Not a good day for the old bill. And if their new investment doesn't appear and the court case forces them into a serious hole as we book our Wembley final, I can see one or two of their supporters using it as a last opportunity to smash someone else's town up. That has the potential to be an interesting week for both clubs. (slight understatement)

it's most likely to be either well-meaning fan-based consortiums who will expect the current owners to pay off the debt, step aside, and hand the club over to them, or corporate sharks looking for a post-admin bargain. In both scenarios any new owners won't want to touch the debt so I see no change to their situation. IF there is a consortium ready to go -they need to open talks/hunt down and agree individual terms with Faraj, Fahim, Gaydamak, Chinrai, creditors, the Prem, AND complete due diligence and all the paperwork in the next three days. That will give them time to strengthen the squad, pay the wages to prevent a player exodus and pave the way for a rosy future. If any deal was that advanced, Storrie would have told the inbreds where to stick their bells and he would be all over the press talking himself up - and he ain't. If we are playing Call My Bluff I'll go for Frank Muir's suggestion that there is in fact no sign of real investment and it is more lies to deflect attention away from the elephant sat in the corner....

someone mentioned a 40% cut for the away club, but that was on Meridian. And having watched the tv game, has Redknapp sold Spurs our songs or did he get them as a payoff? 'get your father's gun, and shoot the Chelsea scum....' - 'oh when the Spurs, go marching in'...??? Are we owed royalties?

I think the Prem may have cleared Chelsea but we can stick a couple of agent fees in their instead so it won't be far out - it is difficult to keep up with this comic saga. Let's also remember that if Chanrai has lent about £18.75M he will be wanting £20M plus now, or maybe £25M over a couple of years, or the ground when the payments halt. The arms dealer/child maimer's amount must be stacking up interest as well. The cost of servicing the loans must be equivalent to the wage bill at the moment because the borrowing will have been at ludicrous rates from people who will bleed them dry. I see no tunnel let alone light at the end of it.

offloading Williamson is like turning up in Haiti with a dustpan and brush. Serious action is required to avoid implosion, and I don't know why the media bother to tell us the wages might be in doubt. If they actually paid the wages - now that would be a news story.

as finance director I'm sure she had no knowledge of unusual practice or the state of the business. There must have been some furtive meetings between her and Storrie in recent months....and much shredding of documents. I wonder which one of them will take the offer of a few weeks in Ford and become the prosecution's main witness when it eventually falls apart?

I do hope they lift this ridiculous embargo and pull through, their 6,000 fans deserve better, but more importantly, where do I get a Udinese shirt with HMRC on the back?

I will miss this thread, hopefully someone can edit the 'best of' and launch a website so we can revisit it when feeling low. If someone could add the timeline of each comic development it would be excellent. It will be a real shock if they go pop, imagine not googling 'Portsmouth on the brink' or meeting here to compare financial notes, I'd have to find a new hobby. Oh well, it's been a golden autumn/winter, all good things come to an end, and it has been the longest running comedy of all time so we shouldn't complain. Fraud, prostitutes, own goals, tax evasion, last minute penalties and of course the stadium plans, hilarious, if only they had shot it in 3D. So for laughs per minute I feel far from shortchanged - if they don't get sued again or convicted of anything else it has still been VERY funny.

so another little gem emerges, they paid half of Sol's wages as 'image rights' to avoid tax and NI. There is no way you could justify matching a players wages with an equal amount as a rights payment, I believe this may be called fraud. Hopefully the rest of football is now realising that Pompey have been cheating for years, since they bought their way out of the championship with money they didn't have. Please put this poor animal out of it's misery, it's suffered long enough, it no longer has dignity nor a quality of life. I'll go dig a hole in the garden.

cold facts - On the pitch - they have proved to be the worst team over half a season, they are likely to weaken as others like West Ham strengthen. Likely scenario - relegation. Off the pitch - big money needed now, the type of money that hasn't been found in a year, so unlikely to appear. Likely scenario - stumble into Championship with very weak squad - drop again? In court - they are likely to lose the tax case and should the other three be found guilty the resulatant forensic examination of their accounts could lead to penalties. Likely scenario - further charges against the club itself. Potential results, give or take a few charges and penalties.... 1. The club ceases to exist. 2. They are demoted to non-league. 3. They drop two divisions very quickly. 4. They are relegated and struggle. 5. They are relegated but rebuild. 6. They survive in the Prem. 7. They build a new 60,000 seater harbourside stadium complex for World Cup games and Maradona leads their squad of Galacticos to Champion's League glory. the thought of them folding completely seems far-fetched but with every passing day it becomes a realistic possibility, if I was a betting man I think I will go for a penalty-assisted version of 3. And for those with blue-tinted specs - you only need two wins and all your troubles are over, you've been unlucky, you're playing really well, sign a good striker this week and you'll be mid-table, the press is nasty, so are the judges and the taxman, it's not fair etc.

Solent just announced that they have lost the appeal!!!!!!

Interesting that they still seem to regard themselves as the pluckly little victim putting the nasty authorities in their place. In reality all the power must be with the taxman and the league - behind all the bravado it sounds like a big day for them - the countdown to implosion could be triggered today.

That can't be right - it makes the club sound like a corrupt company that has been run by criminals for their own personal gain, and that wouldn't be tolerated by the Premier League. I'm sure these fit and proper people will be cleared of all charges and continue to be heroes to the blue few. And if these three were running around with filthy cash hanging out of their holes from signing overpaid players via dodgy agents for no reason, I can't see how that could lead to an unsustainable wage bill and financial collapse... It's not like they closed their youth team to concentrate on 'unusual' transfer activity a few years ago, that would make it sound like they planned huge personal gain and deliberately prevented young players coming through to halt their little scheme. It must be the nasty press picking on the plucky underdog again. I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding, as are the land issues, ownership, unpaid debts, wagebill, etc, etc. Is it correct that Redknapp signed Nugent and Utaka on the same day? To sign one liability is unfortunate, to do it twice on the same day could be considered criminal.

'Pompey could get TV money!' - great headline, no substance though. This is Scudamore drawing a clear line in the sand and making sure the fans know that the ball is in Pompey's court so when they don't get the money he can refer them to his statement about proof. And he wants to see legally-binding re-written contracts? Good luck with that, they shredded the originals when the door was being kicked in. He'd better look on Storrie's computer, it's in the bath and the hard drive was flushed. Is it time yet for the predictable mysterious blaze that starts in the accounts dept and spreads through the offices that deal with all relevant paperwork?...

I've been away for a week so just been catching up - other than threatening the league and then withdrawing it, having a show of strength attending by 75 people, watering the pitch all night to postpone certain defeat attempting to rewrite the UK VAT rules. Have they done anything else that would make me chuckle?

let's remember how clubs queued up to buy our squad that must have been valued at £25M. They are dreaming. I do agree with the post about them hanging on for a bit, I would rather they stumbled to relegation on merit, which I think is within their capability, and then start next season with a 35pt penalty for all the offences that are stacking up.

if they now want the league to guarantee loans have they run out of things to secure against? Is this the last loan they can get? This has been a VERY funny thread but nothing made me laugh out loud as much as when they claimed their squad is worth £50M!!

I seem to recall fans and senior figures from other clubs shouting that we were in admin when Southampton Football Club was clearly not. If the authorities were happy to decide that our club was in admin when it wasn't, with no right of appeal, I see no reason for suggesting now that Portsmouth are anything but totally bankrupt.