Torrent Of Abuse

That'd be tough on poor old Poortvliet. He'd have to pay out his current contract to get the job at Fratton Park and then he'd have to pay himself wages there too. Talk about a double (Dutch) whammy.

But I thought we were the Man City of League One? Aren't we going to simply buy the whole club and only keep the bits we want?

Also doesn't say much for Pompey's finances that they are quibbling over £2m being payable now rather than later. What happened to securing their short term future? I guess that £2m was supposed to be January's pay. Arguing the PLs rules with the PL. Arguing tax rules with the tax man. What next? Challenging gravity to argue that things in freefall don't have to go down?

To be honest, I can see the skates' points. If a bill isn't due, it's not strictly covered by those rules - although the PL could rule that they are including payments due within the window (e.g. Watford). I don't think they should be publicly skapegoating the PL like this though. They will need their support this season. It's also the the PL's rules to apply as they like. With the stakes being so much higher, I wonder if they will get any more leeway with their appeal than we did with our campaign against the 10 point deduction? Maybe. Still I'm partly relieved that we took our penalty rather than hitched about it in the media and raised law suits.

Performance art, forum bot or genuine psychosis. You decide...

"On his own, he'd just be having a w*nk - but if he did it as part of a large group, it would be performance art. But where would he find 20,000 other w*nkers?" "After being rodgered by the PL bosses, Mark Jacobs' r1ngp1ece was THIS big. Then along came the taxman..."

Surely the problem was that none of our previous chairmen had any real money behind them. The only funds available were those coming in from gate receipts and Sky. Living beyond our means meant going into debt, hence the overdraft that took us into admin. If there is no debt and Leibherr is funding this spending, then it is a different matter altogether. In fact a 5 year plan covering 2 promotions probably makes it certain that we will live beyond what is coming in through the normal income streams until we actually get to the Premiership. By then, the club could consider getting us on an even keel - which is exactly what NC has said is the stated aim. So it IS a different situation and so I'm not too worried.

But surely those payments WOULD be football payments and would therefore carry a football penalty if they were found guilty. Surely that could end up being a record penalty.

I wonder what the time is on Pompey's Doomsday Clock? 6 minutes to midnight? 5 maybe? 4?

See? That's what you get for turning clearing the pitch of snow into a way to bag free tickets. Now you have to suffer this. It's karma By the way, surely the picture would make a great caption competiton?

Mouth-watering but I doubt anyone would risk their job to post that if it was true... which is a shame.

Sat on a bullet... He really sat on a bullet... (To "Guantanamera" obviously)

Nurse! Bed pan for bed no.5 please

You've just made my day...

I guess the main problem is that people expect more thoroughness from a newspaper. Rumours fly around here from time to time but they are often taken with a considerable pinch of salt as we don't know who is passing on the rumour. You only have to see the number of people questioning whether the posters are ITK to see that. Whether it's right or wrong, stories in a newspaper always carry a bit more weight. It's as if we believe the journalist actually has gone that bit further than the folks here (who could be just anyone) because they are professionals. It's ok to comment in the story that it's just a rumour but it doesn't stop some extra creedance being given to what is just an internet rumour. Now I don't really care much what the Echo or other papers publish but it does beggar the question of what we actually can believe if they're rehashing information which we've rehashed off 606 which has actually been made up by someone with nothing better to do. It reminds me of the Bangladeshi newspaper which ran a story about how Neil Armstrong had admitted the moon landings were fake. The problem? Their information came from The Onion, the spoof internet newspaper. Oops. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j6KS46abrFjwE7YYu7yASsgfWhKQ

Well, if taking something and not paying for it is stealing then you could say the same for their current team too.

Well good football is an alien concept to both sides.

No need to be so touchy, TDD. Surely as this is a forum for all views, you can put up with me disagreeing with you can't you? I think there are a few people here disagreeing with your OP - but that's not really the issue at hand is it? It would be pointless to pose a question everyone agreed with. Wouldn't it? I'll say again that I am not worried about us spending like a Championship side because that is what is required for a 5 year plan. I would be concerned if that spending involved debt but we are constantly being assured that this is not the case. I am happy that we have enough knowledgeable posters on here who will be able to find the accounts and let us know if the club are in fact reneging on that promise to stay debt-free. If we were spending based on debt I would be worried but to worry based simply on spending itself is (IMO) being scared of shadows.

Your OP does have a lot to do with your expectations because if you want and expect us to be promoted, it has to come with investment in the team. So why get cold feet when that investment comes? Those Pompey fans would have been wise to ask where the money was coming from but more precisely to question the character of the person owning them. Even from day one Saints fans drew attention to Gaydamak's unpleasant associations. He was no simple businessman so it's facetious to draw comparisons between him and Liebherr. Liebherr has actually put value in - and continues to invest not only in players but also in parts of the club that will hold their value. This is not Gaydamak's Laundromat: it is a real business that can see real profits and has enough money to avoid going into debt to get there. I continue to point you to the fact that it was not Pompey's spending which has killed them but how they were funded. For the Arabs to buy a club whose assets are outweighed by their debt is ludicrous. For them to add to that is suicide. If Liebherr spends £30m and sells us for £60m he will have done good business but the important part will be us not going into debt. A relatively small debt killed us before. A far larger one will kill Pompey. For us to be sold debt-free for £60m in a few years should not cause us any more fear than us being here in League 1 worth £15m. In either case it would depend on the new owners. As Pompey have not been selective in any of their recent owners, they are now reaping what they sowed. How can they find so many so-called rich people who can only work by borrowing money?

You might as well ask "what if he asks for our 1st born child in order to secure a season ticket when we qualify for Europe". I guess he could but then why fear that now when he has done nothing to even raise the slightest alarm? Remember we have had board members who have taken very nice salaries for years without giving us a anything other than mediocrity in return. How was that any better than now?

The thing I take issue with about this thread TDD is that you and GlasgowSaint in particular seem to have revelled in the idea that you have said from the start of the season that we should be at least pushing for the playoffs this year and yet once we do, once we start seriously splashing the cash to get real quality in, you seem to get squeamish. What exactly had happened? What alarm bells have gone off? Our costs are looking more like a Championship side but that is exactly what is being built here and it's exactly what you and I and others here have asked for. What is the problem here? We have not gone onto debt as so many other clubs have. We have not simply bought players at the expense of the facilities as so many other clubs have. I understand the wariness of being a billionaire's plaything but that was true when we were bought and yet no-one complained. So why now? If the spending of money scars some people, remember a lot of damage was done to it in the name of NOT spending money. Simply spending the money is not a problem for a club. Going into debt is - and that seems to not be the way for Liebherr. We have what seems to be a great owner. I'm just lost for a reason why people are getting edgy now (rather than earlier) when he has done nothing actually wrong yet. Are we getting scared of our own shadows?

Surely the issue here is debt rather than spending. We all assume that our spending will be the end of us - which I doubt. By all accounts (and I would urge us all to keep checking this with the club) our growth is being driven by purchases made through Liebherr's own funds - NOT DEBT. if Liebherr was to sell tomorrow, he could conceivably want £20m for the club but it would be a debt free club. The danger would be in if the buyers raised the money to buy the club through a loan (a leveraged buyout). It would have NOTHING to do with how much or how little Liebherr had spent. In fact, if we are talking about sober lessons learned from our time in the admin wilderness, do not forget that we almost were bought out by Pinnacle whilst our club was virtually worthless - and they gave every impression of being run on debt, very much as our blue-nosed friends are now. Having low wages and cheap players was no guarantee of being bought out by reliable owners then. I feel as long as Liebherr owns us, we will be ok - but we will have to be careful who our next owners will be and that has NOTHING to do with the size of our club. Remember that even Liverpool and Manchester United are paying the price of being owned by people who do not actually have the money to own them outright but who rely on loans. Apparently Man Utd have loans in the realm of £600m, a sizeable portion of which are paying 10% interest. Selling Ronaldo merely offset the interest payments and gave them a profit this year. It's not how many players they have or what they are earning that is really killing them but how they are owned. For that I give thanks for Markus -but let's face it, he can take us to the Premiership and leave us in strife with a new owner but it's no different or worse than being left with a bunch of tyre kickers in charge in League 1.

I disagree. Pompey's fall from grace is very different from our own. Our great sin was the mortgage for St. Marys. Those payments proved a millstone around our neck which we could not afford simply because Liebherr is the first owner in our entire history to have any significant amount of money to invest. If, as with Saints, your mortgage consumes a large part of your income every month then you have to hope that you can keep your other spending down and still keep the money coming in. Football, however, is a business where your income depends very heavily on that other spending. You ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO keep investing money just to keep up with every other team. We didn't have enough money to cover those necessary player signings and one bad season did us in. We'd had bad seasons before but the three managers in a season was the fatal blow. And it was all the board's fault. Then we had the double whammy of having lost our chief income. As anyone swept away by debt knows, that was game over. At that point we were doomed to be a poor Championship side until the mortgage was paid up. The arrival of Wilde et al, and Lowe's second tenure took that slender hope and further squashed it. Pompey's demise by contrast is one of immense debt drawn up with no conceivable plan to add real value to the club. All money was spent on wages and signing on fees. NOTHING real on tangible remains after £60m of spending. And they are STILL borrowing. To compare the two situations is like comparing one man who took a mortgage which was slightly too big, struggled, made some bad decisions, lost his job, then his home, ending up on the streets to someone who won millions on the lottery, bought fast cars and a mansion, lost them all within a few years and who now goes back to the casino because he can't accept that the ride is over. They are similar only in that they are both broke. Behind that you have the subtle difference of those who actually tried to pay their debts and failed against those who seemingly refuse to pay because that's something other people do.

I suppose now is a bad time to launch my "we are the Man City of League 1" theory? Yes?

But surely you were even calling us "The Man City of League 1" when we were signing loan players or players like Murty and Antonio, TDD. Now we are actually flashing the cash shouldn't we be the Real Madrid of League 1?