stevegrant

The operating loss for the year is around £17m, offset by a £12m profit on player trading, resulting in an overall loss of about £5m. Quite how we managed to spend £31m (revenue of circa £14m) in the 12 months from July 07 to June 08 is beyond me. Absolutely staggering figures.

If the same people didn't all turn up wearing the same colours, we might get a bit of variation.

If you're a shareholder, I believe you are entitled to inspect the company directors' contracts at the registered office, i.e. St Mary's.

Sorry, what?!?!

Totally agree. Some of the abuse he received from his own supporters was absolutely shocking and I don't blame him for a second for being more than happy to move to Stoke where the fans might at least give him a chance. It wasn't his fault Redknapp wanted to sign him from Pompey, and it wasn't his fault that Redknapp insisted on playing him for 90 minutes every game despite very very clearly not being anywhere near match fit.

Given Hone's brash style, it makes it all the more surprising that he didn't attempt to exercise some sort of control over what was being spent. I do think that we probably paid over the odds for *most* of Burley's buys, but I guess some of that comes from us still being perceived as a big fish in the Championship at the time. However, I've just looked down the list of players we signed under Burley, and there aren't many who haven't contributed: 05/06: Bartosz Bialkowski (nominal) Jim Brennan (free) Alexander Ostlund (free) Grzegorz Rasiak (£2m) Darren Potter (loan) Peter Madsen (loan) Jermaine Wright (loan) Richard Chaplow (loan) Marcelo Sarmiento (loan) Of those, only Sarmiento didn't contribute. 06/07: Bradley Wright-Phillips (£750k) Jermaine Wright (free) Pele (£850k) Kelvin Davis (£1m) Rudi Skacel (£1.6m) Jhon Viafara (£800k) Chris Makin (free) Inigo Idiakez (£250k) Marek Saganowski (loan) Danny Guthrie (loan) Of those, Idiakez didn't contribute much that season (but was very influential after Burley had gone, perversely), and Skacel hasn't come close to living up to his reputation and price tag. Other than that, no real issues, particularly considering we somehow made a profit on Pele. 07/08: Marek Saganowski (£650k) Youssef Safri (£200k) Wayne Thomas (£1m) Jason Euell (free) Stern John (free) Andrew Davies (£1m) Adam Hammill (loan) Gregory Vignal (loan) Alan Bennett (loan) Christian Dailly (loan) Phil Ifil (loan) Stephen O'Halloran (loan) Since signing permanently, Saganowski hasn't done much, and Thomas was at least £500k too expensive. Other than that, the only gripe is with Euell's wages and his early performances. He was another, like Idiakez, who pulled his finger out under Pearson and finally showed that he was worth a place in the team. Yeah, we got robbed there, but in the club's defence we were at the point of desperation in our search for a centre back as it was a week before the season started. I guess we'll never know whether that position was made a priority at the end of the previous season (when Baird was sold), but it certainly looked from the outside as though we weren't really looking very hard during that summer. That'll be the only goal he scores this season, I suspect. He scored on his home debut for Pompey in the Premier League and then failed to score in 20-odd games after that. I'm not too sure what the reasons for letting Fuller go were, he'd finally found his feet for us at the end of the previous season and it seemed as though the fans were finally off his back, so to get rid of him then seemed very odd.

SoccerBase are saying he's on loan at Brentford again.

I didn't think the teams were *that* unbalanced. The main difference was that we had a slight bit of organisation and were happy to pass to everyone on our team, yet the opposition would only pass to their mates most of the time.

I personally think it actually reflects more on the complete lack of intelligence of supporters that someone with a win ratio of 21% can be hailed a "fantastic manager" and yet someone with a win ratio of 41% is "utterly clueless" and a "complete disaster"... In my opinion, the main "crime" of the Burley era wasn't the "legacy" he's left us with - after all, Burley wouldn't have been the one who negotiated fees and wages with the selling clubs and the players - it was those above him who didn't think to ask "yes, these players may contribute, but are they REALLY worth £Xm and £Yk per week?". It was all "very good, sir". How many boards of directors at multi-million pound turnover companies would allow such massive expenditure without it being discussed and approved at board level?

I think in the context of the overall situation, i.e. Derby without a league win in 34 games, us looking for a bit of revenge for the play-off defeat, etc, it's a "must not lose" game rather than a "must win" one. Given the strength of the respective squads, I think a draw would be a creditable result and one we can build on.

Valery Bojinov did his cruciate ligaments 8 minutes into the 3rd game of last season and missed the rest of the season. This season, he's lasted even less time, snapping his achilles tendon in the warm-up before today's game against Villa, and is likely to be out for 6 months. Can anyone think of any other footballer who's had such ridiculous bad luck with major injuries?

JP stated why he didn't have another striker on the bench in his post-match interview. In hindsight, he may have kept John on the pitch and gone with him and McGoldrick up front, rather than keeping the same formation. I was surprised Wright-Phillips or Dyer weren't at least on the bench, but JP also stated that he wasn't happy with their effort/performances in the last week or so. Hopefully they'll take those comments and put the effort in to prove they're worth a place in their team.

Pretty much exactly what I was about to write. The high-tempo game we're trying to play requires a supreme level of fitness and stamina, which yesterday showed we clearly haven't got yet, and we haven't really had it since the beginning of the end of Strachan's term as manager. It's going to take time to get that fitness level up to play this sort of tempo for 90 minutes, and you could clearly see we were knackered after about an hour and were looking to just hold on for the rest of the game. Given Birmingham's ridiculous array of strikers, that was always going to be unlikely. A summary of my feelings after the game: disappointed but encouraged.

I really don't get that attitude, in all honesty. What about those who have season tickets in block 42 and half of block 41, who get forced to move when we get a cup draw against a team who want to take the full 15% allocation? I don't remember many people saying that was the final straw when they had to move for the ManYoo cup game in 2005...

The atmosphere in blocks 4 and 5 was generally excellent today (up until about the 70th minute, just like Saints' performance on the pitch), I was expecting it to be a bit rubbish but was pleasantly surprised.

Oh, and given the £60m you've spent in transfer fees in the last two years, don't you think that only just achieving 40 points would be an absolute disaster? You're matching ManYoo and Chelsea for spending, and yet seemingly still aiming for safety? You're not "little old Pompey" anymore considering you're spending money to rival the title contenders, and yet you'll still probably be lucky to finish in the top 8. You can't really call yourselves underdogs anymore, and with that (rightly) comes added pressure to continue the momentum. Without the matchday revenue, and the clear signs that Gaydamak isn't going to spend any more of his (dad's) own money, the only option (as Redknapp has said today) is to sell players. And we know where that leads... eventually you run out of players to sell.

Given that your matchday revenue is severely limited by the capacity of Fratton Park (matchday revenue of about £9m the season before last - even with the price hikes, I can't see that going above £11m any time soon), I don't see how you can possibly balance the books unless there is another new TV deal that dwarves the current one. Your matchday revenue is only just covering the wages of Campbell (£5m per year) and Crouch (£3.75m per year) with very little left over for the rest of the squad, which means the TV deal is being relied on totally.

As usual, please keep all match discussion to this thread.

I'd imagine it's mostly full of people banned from Goals, to be honest!

I know you're not stupid. How many forums with the levels of traffic this site has (120-150gb per month, conservative estimate) do you think are NOT either: a) backed by a large company/network, e.g. Rivals, Club Fanzine, Vital Football, etc with corporate advertising deals, or b) personally funded by a generous benefactor? The answer is "not many at all". This is one of those "not many". Donations have been used in the past, and I'm sure you noticed yourself that the server we could afford with that money just wasn't up to it in the end. We considered asking for donations again, but even if we got the same amount of money in as the first time (incredibly unlikely given the "law" of diminishing returns - once people have donated once, they would feel a bit put out if we were to come back 6 months later with cap in hand again), it would last less than half the time given the required technical infrastructure. We'd then be on a downward spiral until eventually the donations run out completely and nobody's willing to put anymore in. If I felt it was worthwhile, yes. It was mentioned right from the very beginning. Nobody should be under any illusions as to the situation. We have also stated (both on here and also on your forum, in fact) that a) us admins are also paying the £5 - we don't get a freebie off the back of everyone else paying nor would we seek to, and b) we have budgeted for a small profit in the region of about £100 which (while it's actually none of your business, given it's our company) will be reinvested into the business. I really don't get what the big deal is.

What the hell is Football Superstars?

Not much point in me trying to sell my Leon Cupra R (03) then, given that it's done nearly 80k and it's yellow

That's just La Liga.

Samuel Eto'o. http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/football/la-liga/2007-2008/league-tables/top-goalscorers.html

It's a loan as well, so he's got to be good... Jerome Thomas from Charlton. Wow. I wonder if the money's dried up (or been tracked down to Daddy Gaydamak)?