AyeDubbleYoo

Totally agree with that.

I'd be interested, I could arrange to be back in toon.

Mike Ashley signed the contracts of EVERY player at the club so it's totally his fault. Would be interesting to find out how he would have been treated if he'd shipped out four or five more of our best players to reduce the losses to £10m a season. I suspect the headlines would be 'NUFC losing £250k a week!!!' and also 'Mike Ashley asset stripping cunt'. Something along those lines.

It was widely acknowledged his wages are considerably reduced and heavily incentive based tbh Sorry, I'd better acknowledge it too then!

Fair enough, I agree it should be up to the ref to decide. But it's a mistake to think that this will lead to a reduction in the amount of stoppages. If anything there might be more stoppages as the refs are terrified of (a) being criticised when a goal is scored with a player down 'injured' and (b) not stopping the game and a player's head injury turning out to be really bad.

Quite a big error by Fergie to sign Owen, a lot of the wage bill probably going on this little waster. I forget how young he is, he still should be at the top of his game. Not sure whether to put it down to injuries, lack of desire, or both. If he was really hungry he would have gone to Wigan or somewhere like that and played every week. Then he might have had a chance of playing himself back into the England squad. Going to Man Utd was effectively international retirement.

We usually don't do well away from home anyway, may as well not rush players back.

Seconded Liam me old son.

This is why the issue of Terry being captain was a non-discussion. The question should have been whether Terry should be in the squad at all. TBH they should both be able to be professionals and play together, but it does sound like Bridge is devastated so I'm not going to judge that too harshly. Fair play to Bridge for putting England's success above personal interest, he's avoiding any issues around the squad that the press would no-doubt feast on come the WC. If I was him I would be gutted.

I wonder if Newcastle and Ipswich being in different divisions made a difference? I can't see teams at the bottom of the league being happy if the concede goals to teams featuring ex-Pompey players and get relegated because of it. There'd be court cases going on everywhere.

The high wage bill is partly due to having a number of players who we couldn't shift, and a lot of players without relegation wage reduction clauses in their contracts. Neither of these is really Ashley's fault, all the fact of relegation probably was. We just need to get promoted... how much we'll have to keep us in the premiership remains to be seen. Sounds like we might need to get rid of some big earners even if we go up, could mean Colo, Jonas etc going out to be replaced by lower earners. I hope not, obviously.

The question shouldn't be about whether or not a country gets a certain number of Champions League places, it should be about how we've allowed participation in that competition to become so pivotal to a club's success. Participation in the early rounds of a competition you've got no chance of winning surely shouldn't be that much more lucrative than an ordinary league game? Not for a top-flight side anyway.

Are you not contradicting yourself here? Players stop play without the whistle being blown all the time, I thought the problem was that it stops play too often? If the players never stopped play without a whistle, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Is that how adminstration works? I thought it was a third party taking control of the business in order to get as much money for the creditors as possible? The current owners won't necessarily benefit very much, will they? Don't know, just asking.

He deserves it more than Shearer anyway. I wouldn't be against giving him a go next season, it'll probably be a long hard season with a lot of defeats, but he might just have enough to keep us up. The summer will be a big test, if he thinks Smith, Nolan et al can suddenly cut it in the top flight he's in for a shock.

I think allowing the physio on while play continues is probably the only better option than what we have now. And how often is a player who goes down actually injured? One in fifty maybe? TBH I don't think it's an issue at all, people go on about play getting stopped but it happens very rarely in reality, no?

Play should have to continue until the ref stops the game. Only drawback is that some terrified refs would stop the game at every sign of an injury in case they got lynched by Fergie for allowing a goal to be scored while one of his men was down.

Going to this with my brother, should be a good trip. Hoping Routledge will be back to allow Guthrie to play central. Not confident of a good performance, but we'll probably win.

I really can't see any way Pomp can avoid administration... the option is there for situations like this where they can't service their debts and the cash-flow is zero.

Can't see Moyes going for the little Welsh twat.

Their fan base isn't that large. Like you say though, it's more complex than just saving Pompey. There would likely be a backlash from other clubs affected by teams playing against them with ex-Pompey players who have been registered outside the window. I wouldn't be surprised if the Premier League say no to this.

Guess that question about what a manager should do comes up again and again with players like Bellamy. Should the manager get rid of the bad apples to keep general dressing room harmony, or should he manage and put up with the big characters because they're good players? Souness obviously had the first view, be interesting to see what Mancini thinks.

I really like Bellamy for some reason, I don't really mind about his occasional ego attacks. It's just the price you pay for his aggressive character.

I basically agree, common sense seems to say they should be allowed. Just quite a new situation - it's one thing saying Pompey are allowed to sell, but what about other clubs suddenly being allowed to buy? That's a whole new set of exceptions to the window. And what about the rivals of clubs who snap up Pompey players mid-season at bargain prices? Can't see a club being happy if they go down because a close rival buys two or three Pompey players who end up keeping them up.

it has to, because the most important aspect in everything is that the football club square's their debt's so they can exist You might well be right. But the clubs know that the transfer window is in place, and they should sell players during it if they need to sell them. Pompey have probably known it might come to this for at least 2 or 3 windows, plenty of time to sell players if they needed to.