ikri

Dodgy coaching and too much pay. I'd bet that most of the players who have left us in the last few years (Milner & N'Zogbia excepted) are probably earning 1/3rd of what they were on here. We've given players contracts where they can earn a fortune whether they play well, play badly or don't even play at all. Couple that with some abysmal management (funny that under a good manager like Keegan our recent crop of shit players managed to look good) and it's easy to see where the problems have grown from.

Wonder if that means that the club weren't able to get the bank loan they were talking about, there'll be a mass clear-out if they haven't.

For a while Portsmouth did have an owner who was willing to cover their debts, unfortunately for Portsmouth the supply of cash dried up and the owner decided to get out whilst he could. 2 or 3 owners down the line & none of them have really had enough spare cash to keep the club afloat without bankrupting themselves.

If you believe Footie Manager he's on about £80k per week, tough to justify those wages in this league no matter how well he's been playing.

What will we ever do without his pace? £1.5m saved in his wages between now & the end of the season + who knows how much of a "loyalty" bonus he'd have been due too. Good business.

Christ ITV's football coverage is shit. There's no way this game will finish only one-nil! And the way they talked up Owen as he was about to come on like he was the second coming

Didn't they say that the last time too? And the time before that?

Would that be 3 months out of the last 5 that they've been unable to pay their players on time?

They may as well go into administration now, with the debts they have they'll have to sell a load of players just to keep afloat and it'll almost certainly guarantee relegation. If they do manage to somehow cover their debts but end up being relegated anyway they'll be in exactly the same situation next year. Go into administration & get relegated or get relegated & go into administration, I can't see what other options they really have.

I'm pretty sure that Portsmouth would quite happily sacrifice him in the centre circle if it meant that Fratton Park nearly doubled in capacity to 37000 seats.

Nowhere near good enough for the Premiership, not sure if he's better or worse than Shola.

Two or three players simply won't be enough, we need two or three players in every area (except goalkeepers). In defence, S Taylor & Enrique are adequate, possibly Coloccini too. Simpson's a bit of an unknown for us against Premiership opposition. In midfield, Smith's lunatic two-footed challenges will see him sent off in every game he plays, Nolan simply isn't a midfielder. Guthrie & Jonas might be good enough. Up front, Lovenkrands & Ameobi are OK as backups & Ranger is potentially good enough but could probably do with spending a season on loan to a Championship club, starting every game he can to learn his trade. Carroll isn't good enough at the moment, he might develop into a decent player but like Ranger he'll need a season out on loan to a Championship or lower Premiership club to grow into the player he thinks he is. Frankly if we fail to sign at least 6 players we'll be dead certs for relegation.

I've been saying for ages that if you took Gerrard, Torres & a couple of others out of their side they'd be relegation candidates.

No, he lucked out initially with Wales but coasted for a long time on the back of a couple of freak results. At Blackburn he had a team that consisted of a couple of good players whilst filling the rest of the team with players to kick the crap out of the opposition (very much like Hughes the player - skilful but would do anything to get an advantage). At Man €ity he spunked away a colossal amount of cash on players but had no idea how to form them into a team whilst simultaneously turning good defenders into poor imitations of Jean-Alain Boumsong. He is, by all accounts, a woeful man-manager who has managed to fall out with a number of players and he's apparently taken tips from the Graeme Souness school of management when it comes to accepting that it was his own ineptitude that caused his team's defeat, it is always the fault of the pitch/referee/weather/planetary alignment/etc. Good managers learn from their mistakes, Hughes just blames others.

I'm beginning to really believe that after nearly 20 years of professional football, Nicky Butt has taken enough blows to the head through heading the ball (and other players) that he's now suffering from brain damage. He is now under the absolute belief that he didn't just grow up playing the David Beckham, he is David Beckham. Whenever he gets the ball he thinks What would Beckham do? Hang on, I AM David Beckham! and he proceeds to try the spectacular passing that he (as Beckham) is capable of. Unfortunately, he's Nicky Butt (even if he's forgotten that bit) so his amazing 70-yard pass to a forward simply appears to us as him bizarrely hoofing the ball out of play, but in his mind he's just grabbed an amazing assist that the media will be jizzing over for the next 10 years.

The only time that I can remember a forward successfully charging down a kick, picking up the loose ball & scoring was when Beardsley managed it. Got ruled offside as I remember.

He'll dig deep into his pockets and give Hughton a pile of fluff and 3 magic beans to buy some players. We'll probably sign Simpson permanently but we may get a couple more loans in till the end of the season. I'm not sure whether giving Hughton no cash is a good or bad thing, I don't trust his team selections and I don't believe that he'll have enough intelligence to buy young, hungry players instead of ageing cloggers. There'll probably be some interest from Premiership clubs for players like Smith & Nolan who have been performing well enough, teams like Bolton might be tempted to throw a few million £ to try and secure their league status. If the money was well spent and we replaced them with younger players from the reserves of the Sky 4 (like Simpson & Guthrie) it'd probably be a decent trade, but I don't trust Ashley or Hughton to do so.

Good result & great for Ranger to get his first goal

Shola!

Up on iPlayer now

Can't see Hughton going for anything other than --------------------------Harper-------------------------- --Simpson------Taylor------Colocinni------Enrique-- ---Guthrie---------Butt---------Smith---------Jonas--- --------------------------Pancrate------------------------- ---------------------Harewood/Carroll--------------------

Butt did his best to keep them in it with his ability to give the ball away. That spell at the Leazes End near the final whistle when 3 of our players had a go at just keeping the ball, then Butt came over and chipped it out of play summed him up nicely. Yep I thought it was a terrible substitution to make. When under the cosh the last thing you need is someone who gives back possession every single time, regardless of how many times he wins it back (not very often these days). Towards the end of the game, Butt had me convinced that he believed we were playing rugby. I can't think of any other reason that he'd continually kick to touch at every opportunity.

I'd sign him back even if it was just to show Jonas how to cross a ball

One more thing I'd change, in both the FA & League Cups I'd give home advantage to the team placed lower in the league at the time of the draw, so no more cushy home ties for Man Utd vs Hartlepool. I'm pretty sure they use this system in Italy in the early stages of their cup competitions, or they used to, no matter who is drawn out of the bag first, Serie A teams always play away against lower league opposition.

A few things - Scrap the current Champion's League setup, the only qualifiers should be the league champions & the holders only. No more 4th placed teams qualifying unless they won the competition in the previous season. Bring back the Cup Winner's Cup and change the UEFA cup back to a straight knockout system, no more league crap designed purely to extend the number of games that can be shown on TV. Cap wages at a percentage of turnover, pay Ronaldo £1m per week if you want but if you've only got a budget of £1.5m per week for the whole club you'll have to pay everyone else out of the £0.5m that's left. Added to this, add some severe points penalties for clubs trying to mess with the turnover by selling multi-million £ season tickets, etc. Far stricter punishments for cheats, if Gerrard wants to dive to win that last minute penalty then let him, but make sure that he's banned for the next 5 games as a result.