rallyboy

yes Deano you silly sausage, you just misunderstood that for comic effect, Kanu is only 42. How would you describe the side of a ship? Irony.

following on from Oldnick's comment, at the weekend I ran into a senior journalist who had access to every minute of the trial evidence and whose outlet was covering it in great detail, with a very local bias. I asked him what he thought about the case and he too was astonished at the result, and couldn't believe that they 'got away with it' on all counts. It seems that the taxman's QC's performance was regarded by some as slightly lacking in quailty or direction, but I couldn't agree with that, I'm sure he did really well and just got unlucky on the day. Twice. I think the taxman needs to take a long hard look at how they operate when they get to court in future. It's no good putting in all the hard work on the books over several years if you then hand the baton to a vague simpleton. I don't see how the current set up could win a watertight case against Storrie, Redknapp and Manadaric - in light of recent results they must regard themselves as untouchable, no matter what evidence is produced.

Many clubs have tried similar things over the last twenty years and each and every one has been forced into a U-turn - there should have been a clue there. And if there are people on here who think it doesn't matter that Southampton FC is making enemies at an alarming rate for no reason - well it does. It's unwise to go to war with people who buy ink in bulk, they can create any damaging image of the club they want and that has clear commercial implications. I don't want us booed everywhere we go because the Sun says we're a monster that thinks itself too important for the division. It's no longer a local storm-in-a-teacup dispute, it's now the Echo PLUS the entire national print media V Cortese, and his boss may be less happy about that.

.....Hiroshima.....Harrisburg.....Sellafield.....Fratton.....Dubious-activity.....

building a squad from scratch with a big wagebill would be great, but inheriting a bunch of overpaid losers and trying to offload them to bring in fresh isn't such a great scenario - and we have been there. I would regard Pardew's best bits of business as 1. Buying Lambert. 2. Offloading Saga. Pompey now have a whole load of Sagas and Rasiaks on their books, and every week they remain there the wagebill is unsustainable. So AA has set a ridiculous wagecap that insults creditors everywhere - but they don't yet have the freedom to utilise it, nor the funding to honour the court-approved cva.

so how much will Chanrai have to throw at it in all? Let's say £18M for the cva, plus cover a £10M loss this season? If they go down that leaves him with a League One club with no facilities that owes him the best part of £50M - approx £40M more than it would then be worth. That might be why he's thinking about it....as Peter Jones would say, this isn't a business, there's no way it will make a profit, and that's why I'm out.

the cup win was clearly illegal, as was this years cup run - ask the charities and taxpayers that had to pay for them, with the info that has been released in court and the accounts statements that's beyond debate. Even on a day when we have our annual dodgy start there's always a Coventry to cheer us up - unless Injustice Mann decides later tonight that it was in fact a draw. No doubt they were brave and unlucky, I do hope Cotterill's as funny as Grant was. Poor little plucky Pompey, beaten 2-0 by one of their relegation rivals - that's the first six pointer of the season gone awry. Normal service resumed.

sorry pfc123, slight hiccup on the facts front...... you don't have a debt level that can be serviced yet, and you don't have £48M to come. Other than that, spot on! The figures clearly show that the business is still unsustainable without further 28% loans and wage reductions. The court victory was progress, but not a long term solution. You may well say you don't care what anybody thinks about you - Gary Glitter says the same, but he knows what people are thinking when they look at him.

nice work. So apart from AA's figures being adrift by a mere £34M and the cva being completely unworkable, Injustice Mann didn't miss a thing! The parachute payments still seem to be a grey area with several versions of what they have already had, but the real crippler must be the wagebill with a few heavy earners still guzzling with their snouts in the Fratton trough. And I'm not convinced that we've seen the last of Storrie at the scene of the crime, he's still loitering.....

However, any hopes that Chanrai will look to 'invest' in PFC to try to restore the club's Premier League status look doomed. The club management team has been instructed to develop a 'break-even' budget for the coming season. Impossible, hilariously so! You couldn't run a car on their projected income without the Sky money - they will need another 28% loan from the puppet master before October and we will be on the way to administration once again, it'll just be a matter of time. Go on Cotterill you old squad-fiddler, sign Marlon King just in case there are any supporters out there that don't despise the club yet - he deserves it, everyone should be given a 14th chance.

now the dust is settling on an astonishing judgement I look forward to the detailed version explaining how the cva isn't flawed, there must be some criticism of the business in there, surely? The points penalty was irrelevant, that loophole needs to be closed and I reckon they have written off £40M-50M of debt without any penalty affecting their league position. Here's some more guesswork - No one believes the £138M figure, it's made up, you know it, they know it, everyone but Mr Mann knows it - I would imagine it's nearer £100M? They have to pay £22M (?) to football creditors, that will take the parachute money out of the equation - thank god HMRC didn't win that one because they would have bumped them for 3p in the £ as well. Chanrai who continually slips between owner, debt collector, secured, unsecured, I presume he wants about £25M asap - taken in dribs and drabs when the taxman isn't looking? Wages must still be £25M a year, debt repayments will be a laughable £2M. Tickets and sponsorship income could be £8M, but the vital Sky money is gone for the moment so we will either see Chanrai getting nothing and sticking more debt into the carcass, wages late again, or the cva falling at the first hurdle. Let's not forget that the FL want to see filed accounts as well, that was their little gem they threw in at the last meeting - watch that space as I seem to recall it could affect embargoes and even bring charges if not adhered to, and we still have the ownership issue - so there are more laughs here! AA is right again, they do need to raise £15M in transfers - or his court-approved cva is unworkable and doomed to fail. So in the cold light of day this great escape in court looks like a brief bid for freedom, a run along the hardshoulder before getting dragged back in the van - BUT no one is making any claims about the legal system anymore, we've seen two very odd judgements thus far, perhaps we'll stick to guessing football results.

well you have to give it to AA, he put together a ridculous and flawed cva that he can't fund BUT managed to outwit HMRC's finest! I guess that's what happens when you get a civil servant beancounter to attempt something beyond counting paper clips - they seemed poor in court despite a really good case. That left Mr Mann (can't call him justice) to approve a Crook's Charter, he's opened the door for all clubs to launder money and shaft taxpayers, charities and small businesses alike. When the folk of Portsea want to know where their new school or cancer treatment centre is, well we all know now that the funding was stolen by plucky little pompey. And when the idiots that voted for the cva find that they don't get their 4p a year less expenses on time I will laugh at their stupidity. The cva is clearly unworkable and can't be financed, so those dim creditors deserve to be ripped off for the way that they have supported a corrupt and criminally run business. A black day for taxpayers and honest businesses everywhere, partytime for dodgy football clubs, money launderers and people who live in caravans with their toothless sisters. BUT that aside, the future is still very red and white!

Let's remember that if they do win today they are still a long way adrift, someone will have just given them a toothpick to hang onto - I see no money and that's the only thing that can save them. But as they helped themselves to interest free loans from the taxpayer and local businesses and used them to win the cup I see little hope. They stole from charities and traded insolvently. We now find out that having misled the Prem with false accounts to open the transfer window and begged for advanced payments to help them manage debt they instead took this cash and brought in new players in an attempt to shaft the very chairmen who had just helped them, and to try and win the cup, while the debt just laid there and gathered interest - but they didn't care because they were going to offer them 4p in the £ a year, less expenses. Calculated and disgraceful behaviour. I'm pretty much with Sid on this, I have no great desire to see them liquidated but how long can a criminal and corrupt business be allowed to continue, especially when I see no apologies or humble pie, just gobby arrogance and V flicking. They have at every turn gambled everything for gain, it worked to an extent, FA Cup, Europe - well now it's time to pay for those gambles and sympathy will be in short supply. The other Prem clubs must be livid at the manner in which their assistance was abused, had one of them gone down instead of Pompey there would have been a riot. And just when you think there are new people at the helm and maybe they are due a fresh start we have Steve Cotterill trying to fiddle his way around the transfer embargo, he has been allowed to bring in three players as a result of deliberately massaging the squad figures, now he is demanding more. They are still pushing the regulations at every turn - they still don't get it - stop cheating! So I hope that we see some justice today or over the next few years, I'm pleased that we can now support the theory that the 4-1 win was illegal, Scudamore says he was lied to, they brought in those extra players illegally, I'm just surprised to find out that it isn't just us bitter locals who feel like this but there must be the likes of Birmingham and Sunderland fans who are livid to discover that the FA Cup was not an even playing field last year. It seems that Pompey have not been operating legally for several seasons, clearly gaining an on pitch advantage through financial misdemeanours - I was astonished when they won the cup, I couldn't work out how they did it, well we all know now that it was a con. I don't recognise it, there was no cup winner in 2008. So I just hope that today we start to see a few fans admitting that their club has acted disgracefully and that maybe they get the chance to make a fresh start lower down. If a new pompey appeared back up the league in ten years time through hard work and good football practice I would be quietly impressed and maybe pleased to do battle with them again, as long as we win, but this club is forever tainted and looks beyond help. And that's why I would shed no tears if Sir George put the sick animal down.

what a great opening defence! - Surely by confirming that they are living off advanced parachute payments already their counsel has declared the CVA inaccurate, fatally flawed and unworkable? He might as well have chucked a rope around a beam and climbed on a chair.

it seems there are more 'chaps' out there with bells than we ever realised.... Along with the News editing the facts to satisfy their audience, the hijacking of the comments by various comedy characters has been the highlight thus far, most amusing.

that's significant, very late but significant. The Premier League now accepts that Pompey misled them to gain a competitive advantage - I think they also now realise that one of their members was also trading insolvently in breach of regulations. Either way someone in authority has finally confirmed what Platini and Wenger have already said, that Pompey cheated. Welcome to our world. Now we just need to see a sweating AA in a witness box trying to confirm all the debt and bumbling through an explanation as to why he threw out a tax claim instead of accepting it and challenging it as is the correct procedure - and we have a good day!

like many on here I need to go out and do some work now, I'm not expecting any serious activity today though I guess we might be treated to Sir George going mental at 10.30 when AA doesn't appear, I'll catch up later. Last time this happened I had to plough through about seven pages - which for those simpletons who need a polite reminder, is what we do before posting links to 'breaking' stories that have been discussed at length for three days. Here's to a good day for football and the ordinary taxpayer.

patience my pretty ones, it's not going to be sorted in a hurry! Another slant is that it's a test case for the football authorities who will be determined to protect football creditors, if Pompey think they can ignore that internal ruling and shaft UK clubs by coming out of admin without serious funding they are very wrong. Is AA looking to challenge that 100% rule himself to save a few quid and wave goodbye to league status? Letting Pompey get away with scrubbing all debt would allow dozens of clubs to save millions and bring the whole league structure into chaos. The 100% to football creditors is set in stone, so any clever plan B around the potential of a refused cva will still have to be backed by millions. They've been running from justice for several years but today they've finally been cornered, the more dramatic threadsters could even see it as their 'lying by the riverbank' moment.

spoke with a Pompey fan tonight - he has no concept of what is happening tomorrow and was excited because they beat Fulham and he thinks their team is looking okay. The majority of their fanbase have been protected from the facts by local media coverage or their reluctance to engage with the detail, so some might get a shock in the next couple of days. I'm out and about until tomorrow afternoon but I don't expect to see much progress, if the taxman has got it right it should take a while to get the result they need and Pompey will no doubt ask for an adjournement while their boss gets his ar$e off the beach. Go to it Mr Mann, write your name into Southampton folklore!

so the few that made the effort yesterday either saw the last ever Pompey game, or the last ever superstar* lineup playing together. An historic occasion either way, though in years to come I bet there will be about 8,000 people claiming they were all there! The game at Coventry using a real side rather than the partially-borrowed one out against mighty Fulham will be a real test of what the future holds, if they survive Tuesday. Unlikely they will go pop by midweek so I reckon they might be looking at an opening day plucky noble defeat accompanied by hilarious propaganda from Cotterill in which he will defend his brave players, bemoan lack of preparation, talk of new faces, a long season, being up for the battle, be confused by the financial state, and generally make himself look a predictable version of Grant, Hart, Redknapp and Adams, who like all previous 'owners' failed to do due diligence on the club before taking the cash. He took the job, it hasn't changed, no reason to complain. *artistic licence used for dramatic effect

whatever occurs in court they could be heading for a small squad, not as small as they are making out because we all know they have more players registered than the little website con, and they have bent the rules to bring in fresh blood and new wages - but their relatively small squad could also include several overpaid Storrie Specials that they cant shift. One or two of these are likely to be pretty miffed not to have escaped and will be as useful as AA at a maths test. Botaeng could be in jail, Utaka never tries anyway and all they will be left with is their own Rasiak and Saga scenario - no use to the team and on HUGE wages. In years to come Pompey could be held up as an example of the worst run football club in history.

that sounds like a good plan to buy the club for the community, presumably they now just need to raise the £200M to clear debt and move forward. That's a lot of sponsored walks and jumble sales - though it's good to have a dream. And when they say AA is staying on holiday and leaving his lawyers to it, that must have been at the lawyers' request - the last thing they need is AA in front of a court making the type of statements he offers in the press. A shrewd move, as long as Storrie and Azougy don't turn up to 'help'. Though I'm not sure what the court will make of his non-appearance, wouldn't they like to question him personally on some points?

I believe the site is designated for 'open air leisure' unless the planning dept agree to an alternative - such as a supermarket, some flats, a new playing field elsewhere and some social housing donated to the city, not as a sweetener but as a generous act as part of the development.... I suspect there is little to prevent the change of use and loss of the football ground.

the ground may not be locked but it sounds like it has a serious access issue. Someone might want to check out the maps from a millions pages back and see what the arms dealer owns, it is loads. He won't be able to stop the use of public footpaths but he is already making it difficult. Then again that might all be academic by midweek.

If you look at the small print they are allowed to buy players under the embargo as long as they don't own cars. And their latest medical involves being able to climb over glass-topped walls and outrun security dogs across open land - Kanu is missing the first game with rabies. It's official now, AA is thick. Running a business - question 142 You take over a business that has a serious dispute with someone who owns land vital to the day to day running of the business. Do you a. Come to an immediate arrangement. b. Negotiate even though you don't want to. c. Hide in the back office and pretend the problem doesn't exist. d. Arrogantly flick the V's in their face until they inevitably close you down and then bleat about how you couldn't see this coming and it's everyone else's fault. e. A combination of C and D.