The Football Thread

[IngramJohn]

Nottingham Forest have signed HENRI LANSBURY on loan from Arsenal.

Derby County have signed his sister ANGELA because they get murdered most weeks!!!

[victor meldrew]

Originally Posted by IngramJohn

Nottingham Forest have signed HENRI LANSBURY on loan from Arsenal.

An excellent move for Forest. Last year for us he was excellent early on, player of the month for Sept, then picked up an injury. Sam hardly picked after that, but when he did get on, was outstanding.

[m100]

would it be better for liverpool to get relegated and 'get it over with' - it's starting to look a lot like leeds when they went down.

[Jeff Vader]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/d...-club-collapse

After one of the most calamitous collapses ever witnessed in football, the fate of Portsmouth's battered husk has fallen to be determined between two quite opposed forms of ownership thrown up by the modern game. In one corner is the Pompey Supporters Trust, lifelong fans, united around the concept of mutual and democratic ownership of the club, whose crumpling has been felt as a trauma to something they hold dear. In the other corner is Balram Chainrai, the Honk Kong-based businessman who had no previous connection to Portsmouth, who lent money to the club at substantial rates of interest and does not want to lose it.

Trevor Birch, the former footballer turned insolvency accountant whose firm, PKF, was appointed to handle this – Portsmouth's second administration in two years – has given the trust and Chainrai two weeks, until 5pm next Friday, to finalise their bids for the club. Both are expected to do so, although Chainrai withdrew his bid last month, complaining about Birch's fees and failure to find anybody else willing to take Pompey over, and "the negative criticism and lack of support for our takeover by fans".

Chainrai lent around £18.6m to Portsmouth in 2009 while, still a Premier League club and the FA Cup winners in 2008, they teetered on the brink of their first fall into insolvency. Chainrai has never seen that money again, but has always since held a grip on the club's ownership. Unlike others owed many millions in the long, sorry list of Portsmouth's other creditors, Chainrai had secured his loans with a mortgage over Fratton Park and the club itself. These mortgages were held by his company, Portpin, registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands.

Those mortgages meant that when Portsmouth fell into administration in February 2010, while a battalion of local businesses, HM Revenue and Customs, St John Ambulance and others lost all their money, Chainrai took possession of the club with his £18.6m still secured and owed to him in full.

The club and all its assets were transferred to a new company, owned by Chainrai, with a commitment to pay creditors 20p for every pound they were owed – £16.5m for the £83m outstanding from the collapsed club. Then came the next dismal chapter: Chainrai sold the club in June last year to a Russian banker, Vladimir Antonov, who took on the new company's commitments and began to spend money on players and their wages. Just six months later Antonov was arrested in London on a European warrant for alleged massive bank fraud issued by the prosecutor general of Lithuania, a charge Antonov is contesting.

Antonov's company, Convers Sports Initiatives, rapidly went into administration as, in February, did Portsmouth, again. Of the £16.5m committed to the creditors from the club's first administration, not a penny had been paid, and it all sits as just a claim on this new company's administration with which Birch is wrestling.

Chainrai, via Portpin, still had a mortgage registered on Fratton Park to secure his £18.6m, so he has always held a controlling position in what can happen to the club now. Although he has consistently said he does not want to own a football club, he says he saved Portsmouth by taking them out of administration last time. This time, in a brief conversation with the Guardian, Chainrai said from Hong Kong that he is no longer personally involved, that he is leaving the negotiations to Portpin, but he does not want to lose too much of the money he loaned to the club.

His proposal to take the club back again will involve him paying in a relatively small amount to settle the £40m of creditors this time round, and for him, via Portpin, to retain his mortgage over Fratton Park. The proposal would lead to the creditors of the first Portsmouth administration receiving less than a penny in the pound, rather than the 20p pledged, and not having voted to approve that, because the liquidator of the old Portsmouth company did so on their behalf. The Football League has said it is unhappy with that and, if those original creditors do not get the opportunity to vote themselves, then Portsmouth – their depleted team already in League One's relegation places – will be deducted 10 points.

The league has also insisted that Chainrai must cut the £18.6m debt he has secured against Fratton Park, if Portsmouth are to be accepted back into the league. That has opened up the opportunity for the supporters trust, which believes it can mount a convincing bid.

The trust is working with a property developer, Stuart Robinson, who is expected to offer for Fratton Park a price assessed as its market value, around £2.6m. Ashley Brown, the chair of the trust, says it has amassed sufficient money from its 2,000 members and some wealthy individual supporters to offer Birch around £850,000 to settle the club's debts. The creditors would still lose almost all their money, but Brown insists the trust would be determined never to allow their club to fall back into the wretched position to which it has sunk since 2009. Then, Alexandre "Sacha" Gaydamak, the owner who supported Harry Redknapp's spending on an all-star, Cup-winning team with more than £30m of loans, said he could not continue, and the club plummeted, from the Premier League to peril.

Now, on one side, stand the supporters, organised into a trust, according to the progressive thinking English football has developed while so many of its great clubs have been bought by businessmen from overseas. A fans' takeover of Portsmouth will be a major landmark for supporter ownership in the game.

On the other side is Chainrai, a businessman, determined not to lose too much of the money he lent to the club in a previous crisis. In the middle is Birch, who must decide which offer is ultimately best for Portsmouth's creditors, who will have to write off all but a fraction of their money, whichever side wins.

[pierrelm]

...Loosely translated, "Mod£rn Football has now succeeded in totally utterly losing the plot"

Good luck to the Pompey fans.

Where they go now, others will follow, as long as Avarice and Arrogance are the first names on the team sheet...dear lord, what a mess our game is in.

Coming soon in the (fanfare) CL final: Money Laundring Dynamo Vs. Global Branding Marketeers. Pay, view, watch and thrill.

[victor meldrew]

What happens to Portsmouth if Chainrai gets control, as his only interest appears, on the surface anyway, is to recoup as much of the funds he has invested as possible.

Will he reinvest in the club or bleed it dry, recovering the 18 million he loaned out and then let Portsmouth sink without trace?

What happens if Birch believes the Chainrai deal is the better option, but he renege on the deal, while attempting to re line his pockets, any come back for Birch or Portsmouth?

Hopefully it will go to the supporters trust, but with Portsmouth's luck with owners, you just fear the worst.

Perhaps it might have been better, to bite the bullet and start again?

But fingers crossed, Birch will place the club in the hands of the loyal and Chainrai will have to take the loss, the same as everyone else.

[pierrelm]

Originally Posted by victor meldrew

What happens to Portsmouth if Chainrai gets control, as his only interest appears, on the surface anyway, is to recoup as much of the funds he has invested as possible.

Will he reinvest in the club or bleed it dry, recovering the 18 million he loaned out and then let Portsmouth sink without trace?...

I suspect he'd be interested in seeing if he can follow Bates' example at Leeds - fiddle, diddle and fib (sounds like a cross between dodgy solicitors and a breakfast cereal!). That would entail running the club at minimal fixed costs and taking out at every opportunity but keeping the club as a going concern to sell off once it looks more stable - if he's still interested it's because he thinks there's still some life left.

Speaking of the hideous Pap Smurf, it appears that the takeover at Leeds is now at breaking point as Bates will not agree to a standard indemnity clause being included which would protect the new owners from being liable should anything dodgy become evident after the sale. Now why would that be?

Oh and for someone who professed not to own the club, it appears that he actually owns 73%.

The asking price for Leeds United, (average attendance under Bates 24,000, and add another 5000+ after he goes) is apparently a paltry (in footballing terms) £50m. It's really not a lot is it? In fact it sounds like the cupboard is not only bare but has been sold off and leased back.

Politeness prevents me from using the word to describe him but he really is a big fat stinking hairy one.

[pariser80]

Originally Posted by Roger Allott

Spurs News:

It looks like we're losing the services of Rafael van der Vaart, who is on his way to Hamburg as I write this. That's disappointing, particularly because he's not trading up into a Champions League outfit, where someone of his talent deserves to be.

On the inward side of the ledger though is news (aka rumour, gossip, etc.) that a 'big signing' is coming from Spain, and will wear the number 9 shirt.

So that'll still leave VdV's number 10 shirt up for grabs, I suppose, as Adebayor seems happy enough with his number 25.

As HSV Hamburg suporter I was so happy.
Vd Vaart was in Hamburg some years and he was very popular. Also his wife, Sylvie van der Vaart, is very popular in German TV.
But realy a surprise, that he comes back. HSV is actually a poor team, last season we were frightened to relegate.
The transfer was possible cause German multimillionaire Klaus-Michael Kühne spend the money. Kühne want to give so much money only for Van der Vaar, not for an other player.
My opinion: I love, that he comes back, but I'm not sure if it's good for his sportly career.

[Markus R]

I really hope HSV can avoid relegation Pariser. A great club with a big following (the only club to have been in the Bundesliga from day one in 1963 and never been relegated). One of my favourite moments was HSV defeating Juve in Athens in '83. That Hamburg team was awesome. I was fortunate enough to visit the AOL arena in 2003 for the Germany v Iceland game. Great stadium

[victor meldrew]

I was going to post this article on here, but decided to post under general discussion.

http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...40#post2202840