Verbal

If you end it in the river, it could be the exit for away fans.

I'm going to pretend that this post does not exist.

Agreed. I lived in Norwich for a few years, and never understood how such a small city managed to produce that many fans. The stadium is nothing much, and the football is usually so-so at best - yet they have a better attendance this season than seven premiership clubs.

I think you will find that this place is called The Lounge for a reason.

Secret - but I see most films before release. The movie to watch out for is Invictus, though, and Morgan Freeman will compete for the lead actor Oscar with Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, in which he is simply brilliant. You heard it here first!

It strongly underlines the sense that the PL is hoping that Pompey muddle through to inevitable relegation, when it ceases to be their problem. Hopefully, Lens and the Inland Revenue will help bring things to a head before then.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article6972692.ece This bit's good: The club are attempting to refinance, but Dr John Beech, of Coventry University, a football finance expert and Portsmouth fan, expressed his doubts yesterday. “It all seems to depend on ‘the new investors’, but if I was a multimillionaire, I wouldn’t invest in them,” he said. “I would want to keep being a multimillionaire.

Osama bin Laden would be a good choice - although he is (was) an Arsenal fan apparently.

I think the notable point in that Guardian article is in this quote from PFC: The club has been assured of receipt of funds by Tuesday and the owner and Board have been working hard on resolving the short term delay. So the club is completely dependent on some unnamed third party to provide the funds necessary to pay the players (which gives the lie, incidentally, to the claim that they weren't paid because of a problem loading a file at the bank) Is this money coming from a transfer, for which the club have had permission to take early receipt? And if so, was the 'late' payment the result of last-minute haggling by another club aware that Pompey's position was hopeless? The only other alternative is that the club has found other short-term 'investment' to tide them over - but I find that so unlikely given that at this stage it would be like throwing large bundles of £10 notes into a pit.

You, little dish-fitter. You bring us ... Pets Do the Funniest Things. In HD!

I wasn't being entirely serious. Thought that was obvious. Oh well.

The A stands for Amateur. So obviously it'll be necessary - although I suppose they could add that now, since everyone there is working for free.

I'm not sure about your avatar. It makes me jump every time I see the damned thing. And your question? I wouldn't expect anything but face-saving, paper-over-the-cracks, do-nothing-to-make-it-look-like-something empty words.

Separated at birth?

What's even more likely to discourage Arab investment is the Pompey logo that they've emblazoned across the article. The badge is the Star of Richard the Lionheart in ascendancy over the Islamic Crescent - a celebration of a victory over the Saracens. It always amuses me to see the rather bizarre Fahim grinning oafishly underneath a Pompey baseball cap with that logo.

For a sponsor looking for exposure, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Whoever made that decision is now probably over-burdened with bubbly, given that you can find a shot of their logo in most newspapers and online sites most days of the week. If I were Jobsite, I'd want the agony to continue as long and as publicly as possible.

You do realise that when PFC goes pop - as it will - a new club will rise from the primordial slime quite quickly. And the same blue few will be baying for blood. I'd have thought you'd have gone for C 'out of existence'. I only mention it because I'm a bit uncomfortable to discover I voted the same way.

Serkis's imitation of Dury isn't bad - although Dury had a sweeter, more poetic voice than the rasp we often get in the movie. The film's a touch pedestrian, although quite enjoyable here and there. As someone who sees the A1 sign for 'Hatfield and the North' too often these days, it brought back some distant happy memories.

Are you St Will?

They've already been destroyed by their succession of appalling owners whom the Premier League has signally failed to disqualify or control in any way. There is no way out for the club now, so the poll is irrelevant really, but I wouldn't want them to cease to exist.

There's much more yet to come out on this. PFC is seemingly owned by a Saudi and chaired by an Emirati, yet powerful positions in the club are occupied by Israelis, including Grant and that convicted fraudster overseeing their finances. In Middle Eastern business, Israelis and wealthy Arab nations have all kinds of contacts and dealings. But they are NEVER made public. In Saudi Arabia in particular, 'unacceptable' doesn't even begin to describe it. My own guess is that Gaydamak knows perfectly well who the beneficial owner is. And it isn't Faraj. More likely - and it IS just a guess - the people in charge of the club are fronting for Gaydamak or his fugitive father. I'm sure there are other possible explanations, but the Israeli/Arab happy families game going on at the club just don't make any kind of sense otherwise. At least that's consistent with what's happening: good, old-fashioned, cloak-and-dagger asset stripping, being conducted by a family enterprise with whom criminal law and the recession has caught up.

31 Jan (as I've said ad nauseum - I'm right though) EDIT: Okay, that's a Sunday. How about 1 Feb.

Don't know. Give it a go.

"To date the new owner has injected a total of £9.7m of new funds to HMRC - £5.7m paid and security to the value of £4M." Who writes this stuff? It's as though they're making out that PFC is investing in HMRC! And what on earth does 'security' mean? My understanding is that HMRC isn't in the habit of accepting bogus business opportunities in lieu of a big fat cheque.

The movie's pretty good. Not a great deal happens, but the evocation of a desperate, post-apocalyptic world is stunningly well done. Viggo Mortensen is terrific, as is the boy who plays his son.