I think the term is 'f***ed'.
Is there any prospect that they could actually be kicked out of the league mid season?
If this happened I guess all points gained against them would be wiped out, how would this affect the table?
What is your point wrt the Administrators then - Kitson and Lawrence were the makeweights in a deal involving a Pompey player going to Stoke?
Nothing but nothing gives more pleasure (unless it is telling the same truths on their own forums )
Having shifted Husselkep's wages to Birmingham (and I suspect Futaks may follow him out of the loan door) the signs are clear - this administrator will do the job impartially that the last one failed to do because he was in the owner's pocket.
The result will be that they will limp to the end of the season and relegation which frankly is exactly the punishment that serial mismanagement deserves. Hopefully at that point they will find a buyer - as one of their supporters said - "it will be just as they put the padlocks on the doors if at all". For the real fans I would like to think they can start in League 1 next season. As Saints and Leeds and Huddersfield and Leicester and Norwich and Luton, and Charlton and Sheffield (Utd and Wednesday) can all attest, getting out of league 1 is no gimme no matter how "big" a club you may once have been.
I have, as some may have noted, conducted something of a personal jihad against Portsmouth, mainly becaue the denial on the part of their management and fans that the way they had so cynically manipulated their own finances and the obvious inadequecies of the football authorities to both line their own pockets (if the likes of Mandaric and Redknapp and Storrie are regarded as "innocent" in the wider sense then there is something very wrong with our society, let alone our chosen sport) and to gain unfair and unacceptable advantage over their rivals.
The malaise at Portsmouth has - with some success - been presented to the public as being solely the result of mismanagement by the two most recent owners, Gaydamark and Chanrai, but the stark reality is that it goes back much further than that.
I do agree with the current administrator, that there is a fine line between the advantage gained by clubs operating a deficit financing model sustained by owners with seemingly bottomless pockets and those operating the same model with less resource available. The fact is simply that the latter should not seek to compete where they cannot afford to go. Does that mean a two or even a three or four tier structure to football? Of course it does! The likes of Norwich and Swansea and West Brom - even the established older clubs like Blackburn or Villa - are only guests on the fringe of the top table. Some will stay longer than others but for all bar the very few it is a moveable feast. Lower down, clubs such as ourselves may aspire to occassionally supping at the top table but we will never be permanently resident there. To continue the analogy - if you are invited to the Palace do you splash all your spare cash and then borrow more to spend on some super posh threads, or do you go out and hire just what you need for the occassion? Portsmouth bought the crown jewels with money they never had!
I am sure as the season progresses I will have moments of anxiety when it appears that Portsmouth might escape the relegation but hopefully come mid-May I will be cheering them to the drop. If by July they have a buyer and a club that can be sustained at its new level, then fair enough. A word of warning though. Reportedly Tal Ben Haim earns £36K a week and his contract has two years to run. If he wants to sit it out there is little that can be done as it is hard to imagine any other club being prepared to go near that level of remuneration. Lawrence, Kitson and Norris each earn £20K a week and have a year to run on their contracts after this season. Kanu is on around £15K as is recent re-signing Benjani who, even when they have been desperate for numbers hasn't been rated good enough to play. Pearce is one of the lower paid on £7.5K - double what other championship clubs felt he was worth - and has two years to run. It is a list to match the club's catastrophic mismanagement and, unless they can somehow move some of those liabilities, getting anyone to invest in the club's long term future is going to be a massive challenge.
But it's not just on the playing side that they've been failing to deal with reality. Since they were relegated, their weekly press conferences have been attended mostly by the local paper, the brown-nosing Meridian and occasionally BBC South. Oh, and a local radio station that they used to own. Yet this season took on an extra full-time press officer. She has now been made redundant - tough on her, but who on earth sanctioned this further waste of money? The useless Lampitt, one supposes.
Personally, knowing where the money came from to fund it, I think they should have their FA Cup win removed from the record books.
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Ha ha. You don't think Neil Allen is going to win independent investigative reporter of the year award then
You have to be a proud Albion fan, that despite no ground for all those years, we never ended up in administration like so many others.
Indeed - for all his detractors we owe an enormous debt of thanks to Dick Knight. Perhaps there is some benefit after all to being "potless" if the alternative was a Mandaric or a Gaydamark
You have to be a proud Albion fan, that despite no ground for all those years, we never ended up in administration like so many others.
I think you actually hate Pompey even more than me, or Edna. This is quite some achievement.
I am proud of the people at the club who managed to keep us going as a football club, deliver a couple of league titles, a playoff win, fight LDC and a host of others to get the stadium built but never let the club go into administration. Then TB took over, delivered another title and built our new stadium. We survived under much tougher circumstances than Portsmouth or Palace yet both of those shitty clubs needed two administrations to try and correct their mismanagement of money.
When I see the cretins from Palace on here gloating about how long they've been in a higher position than us, Portsmouth fans gloating about a Cup win and European nights and generally taking the piss out of our struggles I'm reminded by the above that we are so much better than both shitty, dishonourable, debt avoiding, tax dodging clubs.
I hope Portsmouth get wound up-they deserve nothing less. The added bonus to that would be Fred Dinneage would be distraught.
Indeed - for all his detractors we owe an enormous debt of thanks to Dick Knight. Perhaps there is some benefit after all to being "potless" if the alternative was a Mandaric or a Gaydamark