Wes Tender

Got my ticket this afternoon. There are still people buying their STs steadily.

Why? Surely the best adage is that if a player is good enough, he is old enough. When we played mostly the youngsters we were unbalanced. The same with playing the oldies. Why can't we have a blend of older, more experienced players alongside some exciting youngsters with speed and ambition? Leicester got out of this division with precisely such a blend.

I'll put it in a nutshell. We are where we are and virtually everybody is very happy with our future prospects, being debt free, good stadium, wealthy owner and a manager with a record of success in gaining promotions from both this division and the fizzy pop. If you believe that Markus Liebherr bought us for us to scrabble around in the basement of English football, then you are deluded. Where do you disagree with my summary of your position? It looked really good three months ago, but of late it is beginning to look a bit precarious. You have an owner of unquantifiable wealth, your previous owner still on the board, high debt levels, a crappy old stadium and no concrete plans for a new one. Even if we fail to gain promotion this year with the -10, the following year looks realistic. On the other hand, I suspect that there is growing unease along the road as to whether you can stay up this coming season or not. As you say, if you are relegated, you will be in real trouble.

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As you say, too early to draw conclusions, but there are several similarities to scenarios that we have suffered ourselves from prospective investors/owners. We had the Paul Allen - we are super rich dream. Also the numerous tyre kickers and Walter Mittys who gather around these takeovers. Seemingly, you started with the Paul Allen and evolved into the tyre-kicker realm almost with the same person, this so called Dr. Fahim. Conjecture that he had consortium backing of many wealthy individuals has given way to it being only him. Now, it could be that those backers might not have passed the right and proper people criteria set by the FA. Since then and more recently it appears that Fahim is not as wealthy in his own right as some thought and that people who had underwritten some of his wealth and influence in the Middle East are now distancing themselves from him. On the one hand top players are being sold at an alarming rate and on the other hand the stopgap mediocre manager is kept on instead on the top flight big name manager who was touted. Fahim announces that he will bring in Maradona, who will himself be key to getting in some top name players. On the one hand signals are being transmitted that belts need to be tightened to pay of massive debts and on the other hand presumably Maradona and his players will not come cheap either. Barrow boy chancers like Redcrapp can smell a rat a mile away and all of a sudden is making noises that perhaps he isn't interested in Crouch after all, as he is too expensive. This will signal others getting the message too and sensing that if the financial situation at Pompey is becoming critical and that the new owner is not as wealthy as he would like people to believe, then the vultures will begin circling as they did over Southampton. We've had all that heartache and anxiety these past few months and thank God it is all resolved by a solution beyond our wildest dreams. Down the road, I suspect that the euphoria of a couple of months ago has been replaced with a nervous feeling that they are stood over a trapdoor.

It's still a bit early in the day to be making judgments, isn't it? We were only bought out of receivership 5 minutes ago and Pardew only appointed two minutes ago figuratively. A football hasn't even been kicked in anger this season yet.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Agreed. Pardew seems to be doing everything right and saying everything right too. No criticisms from me so far. I particularly like the statement of ambition on the other thread.

Quite right. Professor should realise that once the deal is done by the Administrator with the creditors, that is the end of the matter. We obviously shouldn't have been bought by a billionaire, as some people would want him to make huge cash injections into their businesses too. And I also agree with you that the title of the thread is a bit shrill.

I admire him for his right mental attitude. None of this spending of several millions and hoping to perhaps reach the play-offs that was Burley's trademark. I always believe that unless you set out to win, you will fail.

Learning his trade in a more comfortable environment where expectations are lower, therefore afraid of failure....now what phrase might accommodate that? Lack of ambition?

Furthermore, the absence of a transfer fee frees up the possibility that some of that money saved can be put towards paying higher wages to the player, an inducement for a better player to drop down a division, perhaps.

Some managers are obviously better at it than others. They tend to be the better paid, more in demand ones as a result. Wotte largely inherited the situation from Poorvliet, granted. JP spoiled a lot of the youngsters by playing too many of them together, too early, when a better manager would have introduced them into the team more gradually, blended them together with some more experienced players. Personally, I don't accept that it was entirely inevitable that relegation was the only result at the start of the last season, even allowing for the shortage of cash available.

It seemingly does not occur to you that Wotte could have made the squad sh*te. He might have achieved this in a number of ways. Perhaps he was not capable of motivating them. Perhaps his tactics were poor. Perhaps his team selections were poor. Perhaps his man management skills were poor. The end result of any of these would be losing matches. With lost matches comes loss of confidence. Loss of confidence results in more lost matches, thus a downward spiral. Now, I'm not saying that Wotte was at fault for any of the above failings; merely that it could be the case that the same players might have achieved better results under a manager capable of doing the exact reverse, good motivator, tactician, team selextion and man management.

Yes, I'd say he lacked ambition if he was offered the job after Markus Leibherr took over. If it was the Pinnacle people, then perhaps not. Anyway, it's not clear whether he was actually offered it, or by whom. So you believe that there is some parallel between a player in the Premiership not wishing to move elsewhere because he was comfortable here and a manager in charge of a lower division team not wishing to avail himself of the opportunity to take over a club with a great stadium, good training facilities, available cash to build a new team in his image, etc? OK. Perhaps Tisdale's wife couldn't countenance moving too far from Exeter, like MLT's didn't want to move any further from Guernsey.

That was when the fans suspected that money was wasted on PR that could have been spent on players. Now that the club's finances are not an issue, ML can spend his dosh on whatever he wants and I for one couldn't care less if a PR company is involved or not. Under the circumstances we now find ourselves, it is probably a plus.

Has nobody else noted the distinct lack of cats and dogs around the stadium on match days?

Reading both articles, it seems to indicate that Fahim might be deemed fit to be chairman in his own right, but that the FA are not satisfied that he is OK to be the owner of the club until they have investigated whether any of his finance comes from others who might not be deemed to be fit and proper persons. Fair comment?

Miss it like a hole in the head.

That is perhaps a team that might develop given a chance, but it is extremely weak in several areas. For a start, we have an ancient defence where you sweat on the continued fitness of three of them. James did OK as RB, but is more naturally a midfielder. In the midfield, scrap Holmes as being injury prone, Wotton as being useless, Gobbern not having shown much so far, ditto Thomson. Mills seems OK for potential, Schneiderlin and Gillett might be OK, but Lallana blows hot and cold. Up front, It's possible that John/Paterson could develop a decent partnership, but not proven. In short, it's a weak team in many areas and the cover for these players is not encouraging should any suffer injuries.

He obviously lacks ambition. Anyway, we only have his word for that. He might be using it to score brownie points with his bosses there. We might have been disappointed a few weeks back, but after ML, I'm afraid our own ambitions had put him further down the pecking order.

Pompey have nothing to worry about if it goes through. The hand of God will ensure their survival.

HaHa! Latest rumour is that Pompey are after appointing Diego Maradona as DOF. Telegraph says that Fahim is an admirer of his and knows his cousin. Maradona to leave managing the Argentina national side to do it and is poised to bring 4 top players with him.

What has that got to do with anything? We are out of administration and the creditors have agreed to what they have been offered by Fry. The wealth of the person who takes over the club (or more correctly the holding company) has nothing to do with events afterwards. It's a bit like somebody buying a house at auction because the previous owner did not keep up their mortgage payments and feeling hard done by because the new owner puts a fancy extension on it.

Fair enough. Perhaps I hold strong opinions on some things, but seldom deliberately set out to provoke just for the sport of it. There are few on here that I despise just because they hold a different viewpoint to mine; that is their prerogative and what the forum is all about. But there are some trolls on here who do deliberately set out to antagonise others to gain a reaction and I hope that this activity will slowly die out now that the main subjects for their stirring have now left the club. At the moment, we are still in a transitory state and when the season begins in earnest, we will have other things to distract us. Like you, for me that time cannot come soon enough.