dvaughanwilliams

http://fansonline.net/portsmouth/mb/view.php?id=476516 The Trust has revealed that as a result it now intends to try to buy Fratton Park on Day One of taking control. Robinson pulled out? Where are they getting the money from?

Great news! The club remains in limbo for a further 2 weeks.

And this is just the hearing to confirm that the trust case is no longer fundamentally flawed and to set another date for the proper hearing. Toaster on standby.

Thinking about the court case to set a date for the real court case has raised some questions in my mind: 1. Are all of the subsequent parachute payments earmarked to pay the compromise agreements or do they have one left that isn't? 2. What circumstances would be required for the admin to be extended or for the court to order liquidation? I suspect that if a deal was in place for Fortress Fatpipes, this would contribute towards getting an extension. What would happen if the court set a date after 17th Feb? Would that be enough to get them liquidated? Does the court have a bias in favour of keeping things going or closing the doors? 3. Would the fact that the club is running at a loss act against them in court (even though those losses are being made good by the HNWs) when arguing to extend the admin? This would explain the sudden financial prudence on display. 4. In one of the last sets of figures, the money from the previous parachute payment was earmarked to pay for PKF. Have they kept this money to one side or is this yet another hole in the PDT's business plan?

This mangled sentence seems to get things totally wrong. It implies that the administrators value Nottarf at £2.75, but the valuations were undertaken by the trust. Are they using the term donation as a joke? Surely these are investments in their community club!

Clyne made the MotD team of the week, so he must have done something right.

I agree with the OP that the current kit was an attempt to differentiate our kit from Sunderland and Stoke, I don't think that it will be a permanent change. I think that next season they will move away from the pinstripes to another form of red and white, but with the stripes at an angle or with different widths like the '76 kit.

Is he talking about the £2m debenture here? How could a new deal be better? Does he mean a lower price now or a lower price if the PDT can scrape together some money in the future and buy the ground back? The judge isn't weighing the merit of the bid. The Trust have nothing to do with the court case. This is a transparent attempt at a sales pitch to get people to convert their pledges. Why can't they just be honest and open about the reasons they give for people to donate their money, rather than inventing these idiotic lies. Regarding the creditors meeting, I wonder why this has been mentioned now? Has it been planned for long or has Chinny rung up Trev recently and insisted on it to question the money he's flushing down the toilet on the court case and try and get a change of administrator before they get a date for the hearing? Since it's pretty obvious that the deal won't get done before the end of the transfer window, I can't see them signing anyone other than loans (if they don't already have the maximum allowed in their squad) or free agents like Connolly. The only reason they're talking about playing the youth is because they might not have any other option. No player is going to move on a free transfer, moving from a secure contract to a monthly deal.

I think that he's learnt from the mistakes he's made and in the game today, he cleared long when we were under pressure, but played short passes when they were on. Wins a lot in the air and seems to be very strong. I do think that we need more cover at CB though, if Yoshi or Fonte get injured, I don't have confidence in Hooiveld and we have no-one else.

Totally agree. Would much rather see a specialist full back, rather than a makeshift. Hope Boruc is playing for a contract and puts in a decent performance.

Saints team: Boruc, Cork, Fonte ©, Yoshida, Shaw, Puncheon, Schneiderlin, S. Davis, Guly, Ramírez, Lambert Saints substitutes: K. Davis (GK), Hooiveld, Rodriguez, Ward-Prowse, Richardson, Mayuka, De Ridder

Both Davis and Gazzaniga have their good and bad points. I think that Gazza is better at coming of his line for crosses, is better at distributing the ball and helps break up spells of opposition pressure with his brilliant time wasting antics, how he hasn't had more yellow cards is beyond me. However, I think that Kelvin is the better shot stopper. It's a difficult decision to choose between the two, if Gazza's confidence has been hit, then keeping him out of the team might be the appropriate thing to do. Boruc's lack of a pre-season and match fitness may be counting against him, I haven't seen enough of him play to make any judgement. Given that Boruc hasn't played, I expect that his contract will be allowed to expire and another keeper will be brought in, possibly on loan. My preference at the moment is for Gazzaniga, I think that he is the less bad option and learnt from his mistake (he stopped playing the ball short after the Swansea game).

It must be a mistake. Sometimes it sounds like booing when people cheer Luuuuke, so it must have been cheering for, er, McLoooooooooood or something like that.

To give Mayuka some credit, he did make a few excellent runs into space, beating the offside trap. The problem was that he put passes into spce he thought someone would run into, but no-one did. The kind of understanding required to make those passes takes game time.

The usual fluidity of passing and movement were totally missing today. Too many passes to nobody or players getting caught in possession with Mayuka and Ramirez the worst offenders. Missed Lallana a lot, hope he gets back from injury soon. On Mayuka's penalty shout, I thought he went down too easily. Credit to Sunderland though, they closed down well and their midfield were the first to every second ball. Overall a very similar game to the Wigan game. Disciplined in defence and looked dangerous on the break.

It'll be interesting to see who plays on the wing: Mayuka or Ramirez.

Some Americans seem to define themselves by their right to own guns. Growing up with this culture makes it totally ingrained. Having scanned the threads about this subject on Reddit, there are a lot of people who seem to genuinely believe that if more people had concealed firearms, then fewer people would have been shot. The arguments that they give to justify weapon ownership is that if guns were illegal then criminals would be the only ones who were armed and they would have a permanent advantage over the law-abiding citizenry. By letting everyone own guns it evens things up. Gun advocates are quick to point out gun ownership stats from other countries and the fact that these are not correlated to the murder rate: popular examples are Mexico (guns are illegal, but widely imported from Texas) and Switzerland (high levels of gun ownership, low levels of murder). They say that this proves that Americans are generally just more inclined to murder people and legal gun ownership is merely coincidental. Even talk of a register of guns or licensing incenses some. The level of ownership is so high, with no records of who owns what, makes any kind of restriction on firearms practically impossible to implement, especially in rural areas. There's no obvious, simple solution that could be implemented quickly. The cultural attachment to guns, combined with an increasingly unequal society, demonising the poor as 'takers' and limited access to mental health care have all combined to produce situations like this.

There's a tricky balance to be struck. There are probably a number of fans that would buy one share to make a point. They want to price the share so that it is just about affordable. Is a fan who can just about afford £1k really going to buy 10 shares or just 1? I'm not entirely convinced that they've got the pricing right or marketed and explained it correctly, but they aren't likely to be dealing with sophisticated of experienced investors. I think that there are people who have pledged who think that they will be able to get their £1k back if they need the money, due to the ability to get a refund on the £100 deposit, when this isn't the case. It seems that the original plan was based on a huge number of fans all buying a share, but as this hasn't come to fruition they've had to re-write on the fly, which is why all of their plans that enter the public domain look so amateurish. After the result that was "just what they wanted" in court, I fully expect the plans to have been completely re-written again. From: http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/portpin-told-leave-with-your-heads-held-high-1-4591936 Since this just comes from the comments section of the snooze, I don't know it it really is Micah Hall or just someone using a similar name, however, if this is true, it's a change in the arrangement that was publicised at the time that the prospectus was issued. Then, they were saying that it was a sale of the whole package, not piecemeal, now it seems it's actually a sale of individual assets separately. This was the argument against Chainrai taking ownership of the ground, but not the club. This is the single best reason for the trust not to announce anything, the things they plan fall apart within a couple of weeks. Better for people to think you a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it.

The other major difference is that the PDT aren't a charity and aren't (theoretically) looking for donations. Realistically, although the idea of lots of fans owning a small share is good for PR, to raise the most money they need people to put up large amounts of money. It's more realistic to search for one fan to put in £100k than 100 to put in £1k. They could be doing better with other fund-raising routes though. If they sold badges or stickers at a huge mark-up, then they could raise some money from the kind of grass roots support that Sarah thinks that they should be generating. The problem is that administering these things takes time, money, staff and the inclination to do it. Why isn't Sarah doing something rather than highlighting what isn't being done? The divisions and finger-pointing gives the trust a whiff of doom about it and I honestly cannot see their takeover succeeding unless something changes drastically soon. My money's on liquidation or a Chainrai stooge, trust is toast.

Blimey, sounds like things have gone toxic... Chinny really has them by the balls now. They maintain the line, "trust or liquidation". Surely letting Chainrai take over is a third option?

It's only the last 7 weeks. It's more like £135,000 a week.

I don't think so. All of the assets are covered by Chainrai's charge. A sale of anything has to be done with his approval or with the authorisation of the court. Which components would the trust buy and why would Chainrai authorise the sale?

The reference to the floating charge is interesting. Chainrai's fixed and floating charge covers all assets of the club, including the cash in the bank account. If Trev is to sell assets from under Chainrai's charge, that is not just Fratton, it is all of the assets. Not much doubt about the value of a bank account. All these references to £2m, suggests that this is how much is left from the last tranche of parachute payments. Oops. Looks like they realised this on Wednesday night.

So first the trust said that the players had to accept £2m, then when they got promised the full £8m of parachute payments, the business plan could survive without that. Now a further £2m has been withdrawn, they can survive without that. As I remember, the original plan was held together with cobwebs and magic, yet has proved to be remarkably robust. Those trust bods must be business geniuses.

That is my understanding of the situation. The court can't make a decision in the abstract, only to confirm a deal that is ready to be implemented.