Portsmouth- what on earth (1 Viewer)

More money coming Portsmouths' way.

'Pompey receive crucial Boateng windfall'

Pompey have received a £150,000 Prince Boateng windfall in their battle to remain alive.

However, Trevor Birch has warned there is still no cast-iron guarantee the club will be able to see out the season.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/p...ey-receive-crucial-boateng-windfall-1-3620220

Another player leaving, so that must mean more 'FREE' players going to Portsmouth.

'Mullins poised for Pompey exit within 24 hours'

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/p...sed-for-pompey-exit-within-24-hours-1-3620222

Appleton: FL money keeping my head nice and shiny.

Appleton "At this rate we'll only have a 25 man squad. How will I cope. The academy boys just aren't ready to be subs for the reserve team. Will have to get dispensation to sign another player from the Premier League"

Quote from Portsmouth administrator Trevor Birch.

And Birch reiterated the importance of continuing to slash the annual wage bill – a figure which was at £12.5m.
He added: ‘With such big salaries in the squad, it is important to get the wage bill down to make it more attractive to prospective buyers.
‘That is what buyers look at rather than the squad.
‘The contracts are onerous and would be incredible in League One.
‘I am seeking to bring the wage bill down to £5-6m next season.
‘If the club were in League One that would still be mid-to-high in the table in terms of wage bill. There are clubs there on £3-4m.’

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Has relevance to our situation.

Isn't Kanu still at portsmouth on something like 60k a week.

There is some talk that Pompey are going to take Danny Ings on loan from Burnley.

:thinking about: So they do have an academy then!! Yet they still claim they need more players.

'Academy hotshots up for goal of the month'

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/p...y-hotshots-up-for-goal-of-the-month-1-3624752

Sumo the Micky Quinn said:

:thinking about: So they do have an academy then!! Yet they still claim they need more players.

'Academy hotshots up for goal of the month'

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/p...y-hotshots-up-for-goal-of-the-month-1-3624752

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The FL rules will allow emergency loans to anyone who's squad is so small they may not see out the season. Academy players who have no 1st team experience are not counted in this. It's for this reason that they havn't used any youngsters ,enabling them to get around the embargo.
They still won't be able to afford much for the loans but it still p.sses me off that they get that option.

hutch1972 said:

The FL rules will allow emergency loans to anyone who's squad is so small they may not see out the season. Academy players who have no 1st team experience are not counted in this. It's for this reason that they havn't used any youngsters ,enabling them to get around the embargo.
They still won't be able to afford much for the loans but it still p.sses me off that they get that option.

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Two points on this;

Why are we so critical of their manager. He is trying to better the team and we would expect our management to do the same. The rule may need revision in light of these actions but no one can blame them for using rules to their advantage

More significantly is this not all irrelevant. Portsmouth are on the slide - 2 points in 8 games well below their average. Administration seems to have killed them off.

hutch1972 said:

The FL rules will allow emergency loans to anyone who's squad is so small they may not see out the season. Academy players who have no 1st team experience are not counted in this. It's for this reason that they havn't used any youngsters ,enabling them to get around the embargo.
They still won't be able to afford much for the loans but it still p.sses me off that they get that option.

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I understand they are playing within the rules, but it also pisses me off that we play within the rules of finance, by playing our youth against signing expensive has-beens. It takes posting like these to provoke debate, putting pressure on the football bodies to change the rules. The rules should be changed, making clubs use the resources they already have.

Money is now starting to get tight in football, players need to have a good look at themselves, especially the lower leagues and I include the Championship in that. Players (more so their greedy agents) need to ask themselves can I live on £1,000 a week, I would love to earn as little as that. I can't stand the excuse that their carreers are short, gone are the days when you left school and worked for Jag or Peugeot or down t'pit all of your working life.

I've heard special pleading from some well paid players in various sports when the subject of pay reductions came up, "I live to my means I can't suddenly reduce my income", 'fraid I have no sympathy for these cases.

The one benefit of playing the youngsters early I can see is that they become worth more in the transfer market earlier than they would otherwise. But you really don't want to be in a position of playing them in a side that is losing all the time, bad for morale, creates a make or break situation.

kduffy said:

Two points on this;

Why are we so critical of their manager. He is trying to better the team and we would expect our management to do the same. The rule may need revision in light of these actions but no one can blame them for using rules to their advantage

More significantly is this not all irrelevant. Portsmouth are on the slide - 2 points in 8 games well below their average. Administration seems to have killed them off.

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Because, Duffy, he regularly produces quotes that scream of 'Woe is me, it's so unfair', when authorities have bent over backwards to let them sign players and give them money to maintain the club. He has shown no sympathy for the non-footballing staff made redundant to maintain Ben-Haim's obscene wages, for instance. Players at Rangers have taken up to 75% wage cuts and left the club in order to preserve jobs of day to day staff-few at Pompey have followed suit.

One of the administrator’s prime objectives is to ensure the survival of the company, until such time as the concerns of the business can be handed back to its directors, who can then address the unsecured creditors pre-administration claims.

On one hand, I guess the administrator would be thinking that the business will be best served by preserving its status in the division, and therefore the signing of better quality of players than drafting in youth and academy players won’t serve that purpose. On the other hand, not using the assets already on the payroll and recruiting further playing staff will have the effect of reducing the cash assets of the business, and therefore mean that there’ll be less to go to the unsecured creditors at such time as the business comes out of administration.

The balance, and judgement thereof, does seem harsh to non-playing members of their staff though who have been deemed expendable; and clubs such as us who have used the youngsters so prevalently to bring some financial prudence to the table.

And when they’re trodden this path three times in less than a decade; one’s patience wears a touch thin. Especially when Appleton trots out such mindless fare as: "The money means we can have small things like getting food at the training ground”. Come on, son; these are professional footballers. I think they can – in the face of adversity – afford to bring in their own sausage rolls

It isnt league rules that dictate how many players they can have it is a league policy, there is a difference. The League do not have to accept what they are doing

The policy is that the club must have 11 players plus 3 usable substitutes. How does him only having 25 players to chose from get near to the League policy ?

Pompey are using the rules to their advantage - who wouldnt - its the rules that need changing. However what really really grates especially looking at what the finances are like here, is Appleton's continued insensitive whining. People have lost their jobs, traders will have lost money if not their business, he still has one with a reasonable expectation of it continueing in fully paid employment - show some damn understanding, compassion and humility.

That's my main gripe OSB-it's the constant complaining coming from Appleton (Trevor Birch seems a bit more sensible about it) that does my head in with Pompey. The club itself is doing no different to what we would do in the same situation-though hold on, no other club has got itself in such a complete mess up until now :thinking about:

oldskyblue58 said:

Pompey are using the rules to their advantage - who wouldnt - its the rules that need changing.

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I think the only thing I'd add here is that as some point, Pompey need to start to think about navigating a path toward morality. If the rules are there to be broken, they break them. Repeatedly. If there's latitude in interpretation, they circumnavigate the difficult and pursue an erroneous option upon each and every occasion.

Despite priding myself on an ability to articulate displeasure, without recourse to the vulgar; each and every sinew in my body wishes to publically label them 'cheating wankers'. And so I shall. Cheating wankers!!!

There. That's better

Good call MMM,
The game is skewed and the bastards are winning, .
What are the authorities doing?
Why are they not saying: "This is your own doing. Doesn't the concept of living within your means register?"

Mary_Mungo_Midge said:

I think the only thing I'd add here is that as some point, Pompey need to start to think about navigating a path toward morality. If the rules are there to be broken, they break them.

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I assume you're comment on rule breaking is an actual acknoweldgement that no rules are being broken. I said on here 4 weeks ago they would be permitted emergency loans which is exactly why what is being said is being said.

Morality in football? I assume that is meant to be ironic.

kduffy said:

I assume you're comment on rule breaking is an actual acknoweldgement that no rules are being broken. I said on here 4 weeks ago they would be permitted emergency loans which is exactly why what is being said is being said.

Morality in football? I assume that is meant to be ironic.

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There are Football League rule pertaining to clubs staving off administration that they appear to have transgressed three times over. Doesn't that count as ''rule breaking'. I can't help but think that all of the options available to football clubs shouldn't become available immediately post-administration, and that trust would need to be built back up over time.

A bit like if you're registered bankrupt or have a CCJ lodged against you, this inhibits your ability to borrow freely for a period of time after. It would perhaps lead to better financial planning.

And there's clearly no morality in football; but that's no reason not to yearn for such, and to start to hope that some of the new legislation will force clubs to operate within the some financial models the rest of us have to adhere to on a daily basis

what annoys me about them is that their academy team is better than ours (in the League above!) yet they haven't put any of them in because they "aren't good enough".

Gael, Conor and Cyrus aren't the finished article either, but we had to put them in!

Appleton: 'We're down to 3 buffets a week in the club canteen-it's reaching crisis point and the Football League don't seem willing to listen'

Appleton= delusional
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/p...eton_no_club_has_ever_had_it_so_bad_1_3580679

Brighton Sky Blue said:

Appleton: 'We're down to 3 buffets a week in the club canteen-it's reaching crisis point and the Football League don't seem willing to listen'

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I really don't see the issue. He is not a politician but a rather new manager so his comments are going to look clumsy but all he is doing is trying it on to the clubs advantage. Imagine if it was Warnock.

Any club will exploit things to gain an advantage. We have in the past been saved from relegation at least twice due to some very strange "rules" and circumstance and we never complained.

Sorry Duffy, but a read through MMM/OSB's posts on this thread as well as my own should make it pretty clear why some of us take a disliking to the man. Warnock's just as bad, sure-but people haven't lost jobs through his clubs' recklessness; and if they had, he wouldn't be blissfully ignoring it in the press. The mess they find themselves in is completely their own doing-the club deserves sympathy and extra cash from nobody whilst local business and schools find themselves shafted.

Brighton Sky Blue said:

Appleton: 'We're down to 3 buffets a week in the club canteen-it's reaching crisis point and the Football League don't seem willing to listen'

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Thats a funny quote, I just wish appleton was fatter to make it really funny

Brighton Sky Blue said:

Sorry Duffy, but a read through MMM/OSB's posts on this thread as well as my own should make it pretty clear why some of us take a disliking to the man. Warnock's just as bad, sure-but people haven't lost jobs through his clubs' recklessness; and if they had, he wouldn't be blissfully ignoring it in the press. The mess they find themselves in is completely their own doing-the club deserves sympathy and extra cash from nobody whilst local business and schools find themselves shafted.

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I'm not disagreeing but I doubt if we were supporting a certain team on the south coast we but be taking the moral high ground. We benefited from a slightly dubious ruling in 1997 and the League had to change their stance on fixture timings after the 1985 survival. At the time we just laughed at Norwich and did not spare them a thought.

Brighton Sky Blue said:

Appleton: 'We're down to 3 buffets a week in the club canteen-it's reaching crisis point and the Football League don't seem willing to listen'

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At least we know one club Eastwood will not be going to.

Fred has a 7 buffet minimum requirement of any potential club he joins-you know what they say, a buffet a day keeps the manager away.

kduffy said:

I'm not disagreeing but I doubt if we were supporting a certain team on the south coast we but be taking the moral high ground. We benefited from a slightly dubious ruling in 1997 and the League had to change their stance on fixture timings after the 1985 survival. At the time we just laughed at Norwich and did not spare them a thought.

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Not disagreeing Duffy but we haven't entered administration twice in 3 years either-the club is solely to blame for its predicament but all they ask for is sympathy and cash.

Soon we'll be short on players not through suspension or injury, but because of GCSEs.

Appleton complained the other day that he had only 25 players to choose from - the academy lads are not ready yet he asserts

We have 32 players to choose from as first team players (now inc Billy Daniels).

Of those, using his criteria that academy not ready

Willis (2 subs app)
Phillips
Ruffels (2 sub apps)
Burge (keeper)
Daniels
Wilson (2 sub apps)

Are all academy so exclude them that leaves 26 players to choose from

There are 2 out on loan
McPake
ROD

that leaves 24 players to pick from

there are 3 keepers
Murphy
Dunn
Ireland (injured I think)

you would expect to have 2 so call it 23 to choose from

of the rest the following have very limited first team experience and ideally to get the best development for the youngsters wouldnt play as much (as Appleton says we should protect the youngsters but we cant because of our finances). We have had to use them, it wasnt necessarily out of choice that they have played the games they have, there were no other alternatives available

Bigirimana 14 apps 7 sub (18yo)
Thomas 22 apps 5 sub (18yo)
Christie 29 apps 6 sub (19yo)
Jeffers 5 apps 31 sub (including loan spells) (19yo)
Cameron 31 apps 8 sub (20yo)

Using Appletons reasoning these lads would not have played in the first team at his club. So to compare similar with similar that leaves 18 senior players to choose from if fit ...... oh i forgot Eastwood, Wood, Bell, Hreidarrsson, Baker and possibly McSheffery & McDonald arent fit are they

There is I believe one 17yo in the pompey squad all the rest are 21 plus. Yes it is down to 17 players on their website but they expect to bring in players on loan, and if someone gets injured they will be allowed to bring in a loan or academy player. We on the other hand wont be able to cover injuries with loans...... in fact we could be down to 11 fit senior players including 2 keepers by the look of it but because we have used academy players our squad is deemed to be ok

Way it seems is that Pompey are now at a senior playing staff level that we started the season with, but have an ability to bring in from outside whereas we do not. I know it isnt their fans fault they deserve much better, the club hasnt broken the league rules by not using academy players - but I would like someone to explain clearly to me how this situation is fair. No we havent got the threat of administration but in a very real sense welcome to our world on the pitch pompey, i dont have much sympathy for you.

Having got that off my chest..... we get on with it, the youngsters have pretty much done us proud this season and are the future of our club ...... the future without gambling huge amounts of money on players we cant afford. Long term it might be to our advantage.