rallyboy

I have to defend Davis - that was a horrible shot to deal with and he even got up for the rebound but the bloke mi**** it and it and it went under him. Could have done better but I wouldn't class it as a howler. As for the ref, conned by dives very easily, and when he let them have another go after a blatant foul throw?!.....is that a new rule from non-competitive sports days?? For me today was going to decide whether we could overcome the points penalty and make it to the playoffs, I think not, let's get into midtable and win the painty cup.

last suggestion was that Fahim has an agreement with the arms dealer to buy the land for a small sum should he pay him back the amounts agreed at that 1st change of ownership - they are hefty debts (£25-30M?) that are due over the next two years. If Fahim or the club struggle to repay what the former owner is owed, landmine boy will have full control over the adjacent land and any development of the ground, and therefore control of assets that must be securing other loans. This web of confusion further discourages the chances of getting a new owner, the last two have done due diligence and still seemed to have no grasp of the debt situation until they were in. We were a failed business with a good ground, some simple debt and a fanbase - and that didn't sell too easily. If a loan secured against the ground was called in they could become a broke business with no home, no land, and no Prem income (the only assets). The arms dealer would have no qualms about stripping the last useful bits out of a failed business, so he still holds the cards by having money owed to him, and Fahim is vital to the current owners if they want to use the land - he is more shrewd than we thought as he owns 10% of the business but is key to redevelopment and has to be kept happy. All assets must now be vulnerable to failed loan repayments - they must be in a very precarious position. The only answer is huge investment, not loans, cash - and it has to be enough to see off Laurel and Hardy and the gun runner. They need £50M, maybe £75M, and I reckon they need it within three months. Mr Fry, fire up your Bentley, Portsmouth is calling......well, reversing the charges actually.

I've done some research on the temperature between June and November 2009 and it has dropped alarmingly, the hard facts suggest that by 2020 it will be minus 750. If someone could produce figures and trends for the last million years we might be able to make predictions with some accuracy, but all we have are figures covering a tiny passage of time in the earth's development, not enough to work from. I'm still open on this one, I can see how we could do damage by detonating nuclear warheads all over the show but I do think it's a little presumptious and arrogant for man to believe he can influence the universe to such a degree as is being claimed.

that's how I see it, though I think they have got the wage bill down to one and a half-ish. see my lengthy and boring post 3455 for a similar bit of maths. The ground and training ground are the least of their problems, as are the results if we are guessing correctly.

this modest loan will sort the old transfers and the wages until February-ish. The taxman can have the Sky money in Jan, the plan must be to try and make it to the summer when the big payments are due and to pull the plug if relegated. Just another £35-40M to find and they will have turned a corner, as long as no one imposes too much interest on the loans or calls them in. I hope Barclays don't get twitchy when they see the additional repayments going out of an overdrawn account, they have history.

they must be a long way from safe. Many debts are still there and all these new loans will need repayments already (unless they have gone for the DFS interest free credit option) so the crippling overheads have been increased. If they have delayed repayments then come the summer they will have significant amounts to pay back to the arms dealer, his loans have to be cleared in about two years (?) and they will have millions to pay back on these new short term loans. Over the next six months they could need to find maybe £20M lump sum for loans plus £10M wages, £5M general overheads (?), £10M for tax, £3M old transfers, £5M for new players in Jan (?). Other clubs know their predicament and won't want to stagger payments too much. That's over £50M needed by May - while projected income for that period from Sky - £12M?, and through the turnstiles, sponsorship etc - £3to4M? = a little bit of a shortfall.... A new long term owner they would need to pour £100M into the black hole by 10am on day one to start turning the club round - two hopes on that one. On the pitch the team is poor and they have a difficult run coming up, followed by a loss of players in January they could be 6pts from safety by then (a small gap on paper but huge on grass), assuming that there is no further investigation into financial irregularities that spawns a penalty. After Christmas the real state of affairs will be exposed. Teams at the bottom will need to sort problems, if Pompey go and get a couple of cheap additions (Finnan-style) we will know that there is no money there - and what player with ambition will want to go there anyway? They will be looking at Prem and Championship rejects who will want long contracts. 'fancy a six month contract to join the Titanic?'.... If they are in good financial health they will spend in the first few days of Jan - personally I don't think they will be able to unless this elusive miracle billionaire appears. They are just delaying the inevitable hoping that something comes up. If they stay up they could ride the storm by continually delaying repayments until the Sky money comes in. But if they go down they are doomed, it's a big gamble but they are in far too deep and have no choice but to keep on gambling with the club's future, when not in court Storrie is in the last chance saloon with a handful of $hit. And a final note on these generous financial institutions, they aren't lending out of generosity, they are circling like vultures. If I had a spare £5M I would be straight down there to lend it to them. I would secure it on my very demanding terms against anything that wasn't nailed down knowing that they would default and I could then asset strip the business and eventually make a killing on the land. It's a tough world and they are swimming with sharks. IMO if they go on a bad run of five or six consecutive defeats and slip further adrift it's over - it will be time to cut the playing squad and prepare for a survival battle in the Championship, possibly with a ten point penalty. Could be an interesting few months.

they did have good news, you missed it or have chosen to ignore it - they didn't lose at the weekend and stayed in touch at the bottom, no one was arrested for financial irregularities or for taken them to the brink of bankruptcy, and no loans were taken out or called in - that's a good news weekend down there so don't be so nasty to them.

bottom of the table, Storrie bailed for tax evasion, no income, ground blown over at the weekend, dwindling crowds, irate taxman at the door, more loans added to increase the debt, a gobby fantasist chairman, an absent disinterested broke businessmen at the helm, wages due soon and no money down the back of the sofa..... please FF, don't tell me there's something even funnier/more damaging to be revealed?

Ray Crawford's a nice bloke, and he was playing local league football way after he retired from the pro game. As for Al Fahim, good to see they are allowing him to make press statements again, I was worried that they had got him under control and his special brand of humour was going to be a thing of the past. Go on, tell us the one about the big Hydra bonus, or another loan....Maradona as coach? New stadium? Great to have him back.

I see Cuducini was knocked down by a bloke in a blue Reliant Robin today.

They can't afford to go into administration yet - they're now gambling on the price of scrap rising so they can weigh in the ground and have enough to cover Mr Fry's fees. All those owed for loans, tax and transfers can then fight over the minibus and Hart's company Metro.

if ML considers there is a realistic chance of his plan being a year ahead of schedule I would expect him to invest in January, and the key word is invest, not just buy. A couple of decent players for the future, not short term support that turns into deadwood as in previous years. But that's up to AP and ML, and in them I trust. May's promotion hero is often November's sacked manager without the correct investment (not in this case obviously) so it wouldn't just be a promotion push it would be galvanising the whole five year plan a year early. So in January the question may be - does the club quietly launch the Championship promotion plan?

I have to confess to being with John Boy on this one - Lorimer, Reaney, Jones, Clarke, Giles, Bremner, Cooper, etc etc, until I shook that off 30 years ago. And the bizarre thing is having followed Leeds as a wee nipper I had no interest post-conversion when they won the league nor when they went down so I got that one out of my system long long ago. No feelings for them at all, apart from the obvious! But I know of one person who was with us in the 80s, cup games at Sheff Wed, the semi at Highbury, red and white through and through - and last sighted as a Fratton season ticket holder 'cos it was cheaper' at the time. The only case I know of someone crossing the uncrossable divide, though he should be back any minute now.

we need to define 'dive' first - for me it has to be a player going to ground when there is no contact, or for no obvious reason. The Liverpool one the other night was a classic case, no contact, no need to go down, a clear dive. Had Carlsey gone in at waist height and caused Ngog to take evasive action that would have been intent and would have been a penalty even without contact. Eduardo was very different, though just as sly. He fooled the keeper not the ref, took the ball past him and invited the minimal contact that was enough for him to fall over - no dive, penalty. Ruthless professional 1-0 Slow keeper. Let's not confuse a player who invites the late challenge and does the professional thing - it isn't the striker's job to keep on his feet at all costs, if a clumsy defender misses the ball and sticks a leg out in the box I would happily fall over it, that's not cheating. As for writhing about theatrically, anyone who is badly hurt doesn't move much, so rolling about on the pitch should be a red card, or hanging for repeat offenders. Finally, the annoying habits of pundits - 'it shouldn't be a penalty, he'd lost control of the ball' - irrelevant where the ball is or where it's going, it's the offence that matters. That would mean you could punch people off the ball all day without fear of giving away a foul. 'The linesman was really late with the flag' - yeah, that will be because he wasn't offside until he got involved. Keep up Motty, the law has changed since 1968, unlike your wardrobe.

that could be another record to add to that hilarious start to the season - the only team to get a 9pt penalty and still be on negative points in January. If they stumble along at this pace and then get a penalty for the financial irregularities or administration I reckon they will be mathematically relegated around February. If they got hit for both I think they were relegated four weeks ago and we all missed it! IF relegation does happen and let's remind ourselves that it is only a possibility at the moment....the penalty points scenario wouldn't be as much fun - I want to sit there and savour their demise, in my best suit, eating Twiglets, with a can of Tizer to hand - I don't want them to go down as a result of off the field stupidity, I want to see the final coffin-nail-goals hit the net on Sky. Though at a push I would begrudgingly accept watching it on any channel.

talked to a Pompey fan last night and they still don't get it - 'we have the TV money to come' seems to be the answer to everything, ignoring all the loans secured against TV money until the end of time. Also, if you buy a cheap house next to the airport don't be surprised if you hear some planes, and if you buy cheap players from Africa don't be surprised if they go the the Africa Nations Cup, and they tend not to return on time. So from now until the end of the year they might get points off Sunderland, Stoke, Burnley, West Ham, then their reserve side is pitched into battle in January.....I do hope they don't draw their rivals away in the cup, that could be the final straw for their season. But if another wage bill causes problems or Storrie gets found guilty, then the financial side will look bleaker than the playing side, and that would be an achievement. I will miss this golden era but it has gone on far longer than I hoped.

this thread has generated so much laughter it deserves to be back up the top. At least things are going better on the pitch, safety is still in sight, the free-scoring team is playing well and defending tightly, and once Maradona and Grant get those Galacticos in during January with Fahim's £50M gift, the likes of Wolves and Hull won't know what's hit them. But I do wonder if any of those people who have loaned even more money into the black hole have asked for a first repayment yet, did Storrie actually twig that these people did want it back, and that annoyingly, the whole repaying malarky starts quite soon? January's TV money is spoken for, the loans have been used to clear debt, the season ticket money has long gone, the business must now be running mainly on the money through the turnstiles from about 6,000 additional people a home game - roughly £90K a week, approx a quarter of the wage bill. If they draw us in the cup they will have to forego home advantage and come to St Marys to use it as a money spinner.

I don't have 'the hate', and I have several mates from the wrong side of the river and it's great at the moment. They said they didn't want us to go out of business when we had our little issues and I feel the same now. That said.... I would love to see them in admin, relegated, convicted of financial irregularities, shamed, humiliated, and plummeting through the leagues like a bag of unwanted kittens down a well. But let's remember, the caravan-loving, inbred, multi-convicted, sister-worrying, self-tattooed, wonky-eyed, lunatic element only make up 80% of their support, the remaining 1,500 are just misguided and need our help and understanding. In fact they could be just like you and me, living in the same towns, working at the same places, just the same - apart from the fact that they support a team going down the shi+ter, and we very much don't. They don't need our hate, they need our sympathy.

yes that will be it Mr Loophole, the only place they are allowed to interview him is in court with a magistrate presiding in front of a public gallery. It's only on The Bill and the Sweeney that they tape interviews under caution in police stations and the like before presenting the evidence to the CPS, then await a decision on whether a prosecution is likely to be successful and then name a court date - which is where we appear to have rushed to in this case. It seems a bit unfair on him, I'm sure the agent earned the £500K on a £1.5M deal and that no one else would benefit from that HUGE fee, let alone the fee paid to the player illegally, I can't see any issues, what is wrong with the CPS, and the Premier League who must be hovering like vultures? - a guilty verdict would open the whole drum of worms and they would be squirming about all over Fratton goods yard inviting the attention of everyone from the fraud squad to Fifa. I'm sure it will be fine and no further charges will follow against the other members of the gang. Not that there was a gang. Or even a crime.

could be a good opportunity to thrash out a deal with Marlon King if Storrie gets to share a cell with him, though knowing Pompey's luck, Harry on the next landing will call in another favour, hijack the deal last minute and take him to Spurs... Anyway, hero Storrie must be innocent because for a week of that tax year he was away and he didn't know what was occurring at any point during the whole deal right up until the later annual tax return, and beyond. The blue house of cards is wobbling like an MFI wardrobe in a stiff breeze.

Dune is correct, if you wish to vote for holocaust-denial, racism and ill-thought out immigration policies based on selective history, they are indeed the boys for you. On this section of the forum, football meets politics, so it is relevant to say that I am happy to support Saints players of any colour or creed if they wear the shirt proudly, I have no wish to campaign against 'people who are different' as the BNP very clearly do. Surely a vote for the BNP is a vote against that foreigner Le Tissier, and of course we would rather go out of business than accept foreign money to save the club.... The lines are very clear. IMO you can't support both the BNP and Saints (or any club) as there are far too many conflicts to sit comfortably, unless you ignore the facts and just go for the convenient policies.

excellent effort, something to be proud of - the money raised and the finish! And as the months pass by you will just remember the good bits which will make it even better.

sorry! I opened the door and the little mischief-maker ran in. NC you are a naughty rascal and you know that there are people on here who will leap upon this now, I won't make that mistake again, which funnily enough I was only saying to another great hero LM the other day.

everyone deserves a second chance - Rose West, Peter Sutcliffe, Gary Glitter etc....or maybe not. King's record of transgressions puts the whole 'throw-in betting debacle' in context, and he has already done the 'I've changed, learned my lesson' bit a couple of times. Hopefully any potential managers will have daughters or wives and will think again about employing a man of this ilk. Gordon Taylor may find the King defending camp a lonely place.

no, it just means an agent is putting his player in the shop window. I would be surprised if the ban isn't lifted within a week or two as they MUST clear the transfers debt to avoid a points penalty, and if someone has chucked £15M into the black hole then they will be able to do that - unless of course it has gone toward restocking the landmine and grenades shop, with the rest of the income of the last year. So what sort of interest rates do you have to pay on a short term loan of this size? Presumably the guy will want the January TV money plus another £10M, or is that promised to another couple of people already? It's all so confusing - so much debt, so little income, add some expensive borrowing, that'll help. Monthly outgoings must be climbing rapidly with the repayments on the last month's £20M loans, lucky they had a big crowd at the weekend. With the new repayments they must have got the outgoings back to where they were before the great wage-bill cull. Nothing that five consecutive years of Champions League advanced stages income won't sort, no need to worry. Had they drawn Man Utd at home in the Carling Cup, would they have asked to play it at Old Trafford?