Chin Strain

At least our previous Chairman concentrated on infrastructure - it gave someone a reason to buy and, even then, we still only had one step forward. Quite where they're going to pick someone up to pay their wage bill I have no idea.... even if they end up getting the club without ground for £1 from an administrator. It'll cost £10m to get them to the end of June....even then I suspect none of their big earners will be out of contract

He probably had other offers too, but Pompey were offering the most!

I wonder when AA / DL are going to admit that they're under a transfer embargo. They won't sanction player sales because they know they can't replace them. They just haven't told the fans yet. FL rules say that they give 28 days grace after the tax bill is due for the club to pay. If they don't pay, they apply an embargo until they do. The PAYE / NI for the 30 Nov wages was due on 22 December. The 28th day after that was 19 January...or the day they signed Etuhu (unbelievable - they sign a player they can't afford, on the last day of their own, special transfer window). I wonder when this will all come to light....

Blimey, if they couldn't afford to keep him, he must have been on massive, massive wages!

Well, if he wants a daft contract, he;'s gone to the right place...wonder if WHU are in for him too.

That's my bet (add in sell on clauses etc)

My bet is that they've also paid the players rather than HMRC as, in any future CVA, if HMRC have less than 25% of the debt (would the debt to CSI count? Probably), they would only get x pence in the £ - i.e. they get away with paying in full. However, if they'd have paid HMRC and not the players, any potential buyer would still have to honour the players contracts. Not paying HMRC makes them a more attractive purchase....cr ap isn't it?

I think that's the Joseph Cala approach, not the Cortese / Adkins one. What makes you think we would bid without commitment?

I think they can sell assets, with the agreement of HMRC, as the WUP petitioner, and that cash going directly to HMRC. However, I suspect the real problem is that they can't clear £1.6m from player sales and, even if they can, the dent in the wage bill won't be big enough and they'll have the same issue next month. The players won't have asked for a transfer, and it may well be that Pearce, having only joined in the summer, has at least 2.5 years left to run on his contract (which is likely to be a reasonable amount). There will probably be a sell on clause too. Add in that the reported bid is unlikely to be cash up front, then it won't solve their problem. HMRC would make it clear that it's cash now, in full, or the WUP continues. The other issue is that the biggest earners like Lawrence, Kitson, TBH, Halford, Norris etc will be on much more money than anyone else would be willing to pay them. They won't give that up easily and anyone who was willing to pay them that kind of money (takeover their contract) wouldn't be paying a transfer fee. I'd also suspect that a lot of clubs have their 'big' players on deals that ensures them parity with any new signing, so increasing their wage bill massively.

Yup.

Er, I was just pointing out to Dalek that I didn't say he'd sign. That was all.

Agreed.

You really are a dull and tedious individual. If you're able to read, please go back and tell me where I said we would definitely sign Hooper? I said that, in my opinion, we would make another bid. That was it. End of story. Please allow me the courtesy of having an opinion.

Freudian slip, or is something fishy going on.... So, they've paid £15m tax since Oct 2010...or less than half what they wracked up last time, of which the taxman still hasn't seen a penny and, when they do, they'll only see 20p in the £ (if they're lucky). The club have chosen to use monies due to the taxman to hold back and pay the players for another month. Effectively they've used the British public to bank roll the players salaries. That was choice. They could have chosen not to pay the players, and then HMRC wouldn't be winding them up (lets face it, it'll be another £800k on the HMRC bill this month, if they manage to pay the players). Maybe she should ask herself why they paid the players and not HMRC? Maybe because players salaries are non negotiable as far as the FL go - all football debts must be paid if they want to continue in the league. HMRC debts, however, don't affect their status as a FL club. If Pompey go into admin, HMRC debts are likely to be busted down (again) to a fraction of what is owed. There's a pretty good argument to say that the club is more attractive to buy having paid players, rather than HMRC. Of course, their other issues make it unlikely that any normal buyer would be interested anyway. Maybe Penny needs a simple lesson from someone on here to shed some light on why Pompey are so right royally fecked.

They seem to put a lot of importance behind keeping the playing staff. This in itself is daft. Keep them, pay them. The size of the wage bill is a massive barrier to any prospective buyer. You don't want to pick up a club,even for £1 (no ground in that price), when that club is likely to be in League 1 with a £1.5 - £2m wage bill per month....unless you've got very deep pockets and zero intelligence

Agreed, but he's talking about the MM/HR case in the High Court. MM didn't pay tax on the money he bunged (allegedly) HR, so that was additional funds into the club instead. Therefore the club benefitted (if proven, of course)

And if we win tomorrow we'll be top and 4 points + goal difference ahead of 3rd, having had a poor run of form (bar the last two games). That's also a fact. You could have said that our recent away form is excellent, as we've won 2 games on the road on the bounce. That's a fact. If you extrapolated our last 8 games out across the season, then we wouldn't be top, granted. But it's never that straightforward. If we do in the second half of the season what you didn't think we'd do in the first half of the season, we'll probably be promoted automatically (based on past points tally for auto promotion). Your opinion seems to be that we won't get promoted, which is fine by me, as that's your opinion. Personally I have no idea. I hope we do, but there's a lot of twists and turns from here.

OK, so let's deal in facts then. The only fact that there is, is that we're 2nd in the table with a game in hand, over half way through the season. Where we'll be at the end of the season is conjecture and opinion. Your widely known view in the summer (unless I've misunderstood), is that we'd finish 17th. A valid opinion for you to have back then, but not based on any fact. It seems as though that won't be the case now.

But those are part of the last CVA.....unless if the club goes out of business the parachute payments cease.....

Unpaid salaries, not unpaid contracts (i.e. not what's left on the remainder of the contract)?

I'd have thought so. I hadn't heard that anyone was disputing the £10.8m loan and, surely (ahem), AA as Administrator of CSI would be calling that in.....surely...... Thinking aloud now, if CSI call in the loan, PFS won't be able to pay, so points deduction. Could AA force a player fire sale in order to boost the cash that CSIs creditors (Chinny) get? Then they could let them go in front of the beak for the WUP and let HMRC do Chinny's dirty work for him. Result is club gets wound up, remaining players are released, no club left so no need to cough up for players contracts as FL Golden Share is not required. Chinny gets the ground. I'm struggling to see how there would be a better outcome for Chinny.