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Pompeys' pre season tour debarcle

Macey_J2

By Macey_J2,
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Macey_J2

Macey_J2

Posted
Posted

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/25/portsmouth-pre-season-football

 

 

To whet your appitite: "A disastrous pre-season tour of North America concluded yesterday with a 4-0 thrashing inflicted by DC United in which the English side had to borrow kit to clad their patchwork team of youth players and senior pros after losing their luggage during a lightning-storm affected, 27-hour journey, in which they spent much of that time in transit at an hotel near Chicago airport."

 

:D

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EastleighSoulBoy

EastleighSoulBoy

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/25/portsmouth-pre-season-football

 

 

To whet your appitite: "A disastrous pre-season tour of North America concluded yesterday with a 4-0 thrashing inflicted by DC United in which the English side had to borrow kit to clad their patchwork team of youth players and senior pros after losing their luggage during a lightning-storm affected, 27-hour journey, in which they spent much of that time in transit at an hotel near Chicago airport."

 

:D

 

Indeed it is a debacle which is worthy of the blue phew.

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Arizona

Arizona

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Sorry everyone, we can only afford to pay you a quater of what we actually owe, not much we can do about that.

 

Now I must dash, we're all off on a 15,000 mile round trip of the US and Canada... :rolleyes:

 

Serves the f**kers right.

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Pugwash

Pugwash

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Sorry everyone, we can only afford to pay you a fifth of what we actually owe, not much we can do about that. But I tell you what, we'll give you another 5% if we get back on the £80m/year gravy train.

 

Now I must dash, we're all off on a 15,000 mile round trip of the US and Canada... :rolleyes:

 

Serves the f**kers right.

 

I've corrected it for you.

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ericofarabia

ericofarabia

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The word Karma springs to mind.

 

Feel sorry for the keeper who broke his leg. Hope hegets the treatment he should get, but what are the chances Skatesmuff have paid up their medical insurance policies. America isn't a place you'd want to be without it.

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Wes Tender

Wes Tender

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Cotterill said: "I can't believe the ref's been allowed to officiate a game. I've never seen anything like it in my life."

 

Just wait until you get to see the refereeing in League 1 the following season, Steve.

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Doctoroncall

Doctoroncall

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They apparently had 80 hours worth of traveling and missed a lot of days of training. They must all be knackered.

 

What idiot thought it was a good idea to play games on the East coast, West Coast and in Canada?

 

That wasn't so much of a problem, it was the way they did it especially this time of year with the weather patterns in the US.

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saint1977

saint1977

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They have effectively missed out on a pre-season and you saw what it did for us last season in a weaker league and their squad is in an ever bigger mess and state of uncertainty than ours was. Points deduction or no points deduction, they are going down again. Teams in the NPC won't be the most gifted but they will all be fit and raring to go. The likes of Boro, Bristol City, Norwich and Forest with fit players driven by motivated managers will make mincemeat of under-prepared teams. Hoofroyd will have Pompey bombarded at the Ricoh opening day and judging by their last defensive display, I can see them shipping loads.

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EastleighSoulBoy

EastleighSoulBoy

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They have effectively missed out on a pre-season and you saw what it did for us last season in a weaker league and their squad is in an ever bigger mess and state of uncertainty than ours was. Points deduction or no points deduction, they are going down again. Teams in the NPC won't be the most gifted but they will all be fit and raring to go. The likes of Boro, Bristol City, Norwich and Forest with fit players driven by motivated managers will make mincemeat of under-prepared teams. Hoofroyd will have Pompey bombarded at the Ricoh opening day and judging by their last defensive display, I can see them shipping loads.

 

Sounds good to me.

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mack rill

mack rill

Posted
Posted
Sorry everyone, we can only afford to pay you a quater of what we actually owe, not much we can do about that.

 

Now I must dash, we're all off on a 15,000 mile round trip of the US and Canada... :rolleyes:

 

Serves the f**kers right.

Doh! it was a freebie now who's gonna turn down a two week jolly swanning around the U S of fekin A when uncle Sam's footin the bill.

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pedg

pedg

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/26/the-fiver-manchester-city-portsmouth

 

THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE UNSCHEDULED 42-HOUR STOPOVER

 

BP might be suffering from bad PR at the moment, but if news of Portsmouth's pre-season tour of North America is anything to go by, woes prompted by photos of disconsolate and dead-looking sludge-soaked brown pelicans could soon be eclipsed by those of another well-known oil retailer.

Pompey's website proudly informs visitors that their away travel is "fuelled by Texaco", who everyone who is anyone in the petroleum industry is aware, are the official motor fuel partner of the npower Championship. Whether Texaco's remit stretches to fuelling Portsmouth's travels beyond the Championship's boundaries remains unknown. If it doesn't, their public relations wing could do worse than rattle off a short press release completely disassociating themselves from an expedition so beset by misfortune it makes Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition seem like a fun-filled weekend jolly for the lads.

Relegated, potless and still very much in administration, the very fact that Portsmouth's budget stretched to a pre-season tour of anywhere more exotic than the Winchester bypass is surprising. But led by new manager Steve Cotterill, the club's two-week trip to USA! USA!! USA!!! and Canada concluded yesterday when a team comprised of trialists, youth-team players and a clatter of their few remaining registered first-team players were whipped 4-0 by DC United. It was the high point of the kind of bad trip that gives LSD a bad name, if only because it marked its end.

Luckless Pompey's problems began a fortnight ago when a cancelled connecting flight meant a journey to San Diego ended up taking 42 hours. Travelling on to Canada, two players had to be sent home with knack, including suspected leg-snap for goalkeeper Jon Stewart, who as it turned out, was one of the lucky ones. The remaining players and backroom staff found themselves stranded in Chicago when a storm grounded their flight from Edmonton to Washington, which meant the players arrived for Saturday's match with DC United having had just four hours' sleep and lost 14 items of luggage, including their kit. The final indignity? Having to wear the away strip of their hosts as they had their backsides handed to them by Major League Soccerball opponents in a bad-tempered 'friendly' played in temperatures so sweltering the referee very considerately sent three players, including Hayden Mullins, off to cool down.

"The one thing about this result is that it's shown the position we're in. It's painful," said Cotterill who, to be fair, probably hadn't envisaged a future in which glitter and candyfloss featured prominently when he agreed to take the job. "We've got some good honest senior lads here and some youngsters who are trying their hardest. The kids have got to be at full tilt to be anywhere near the team and we're going to be playing in a man's league in a couple of weeks' time."

In poker, a player on 'full tilt' plays with wreckless and ill-advised abandon after suffering bad setbacks. While this may well be the reaction Cotterill gets from his younger players, the Fiver suspects it's not quite the definition of the term he had in mind.

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