Think of those less fortunate

I love this picture. It is a slightly amended picture of Dr Sulieman Al Fahim. A pot to piss in is not pictured because he hasn't got one.

I salute whoever was the photoshop genius who came up with this. I have an interesting relationship with Portsmouth in that I lived in Portsmouth country (Waterlooville to be exact) from ages 8 to 23 so consequently, I have a lot of mates who are from the dark side. Great lads and lasses all of them but for every one of my Pompey mates, there are those who revelled in the nearly going bust experience of the Scummers (that's us). At the time they had a lot to laugh about as they had won the FA Cup, played in Europe and had a squad chock full of internationals. Sure, Fratton Park was still a dump but it was big enough for their fanbase (thinly veiled swipe there). Also, they had been taken over, or so it seemed, by Dr Sulieman Al Fahim and they were going to being 'rolling in Arab Billions' as one email from one of my mates put it.

Three months later and the takeover hasn't happened and times are desperate. The players have gone, the banks who loaned them all the money in the good times all want their money back (whoever saw that one coming!?!) and the current owner seems more content with asset stripping than preparing for a new season.

The prospective new owner doesn't appear to have enough money to make a difference and for the life of me, I can't see why this is still going on. It's so similar to the Pinnacle farce that we went through and all it's doing is wasting time which they don't have. What is very amusing is watching the Pompey fans come up with reasons as to why the takeover is stalling. The latest is that the car park behind the ground is the issue. The current owner wants to keep it and won't sell it to the good Doctor who needs it to turn around the ground and rebuild it. Does this mean that a car park could derail England's bid to host the World Cup where Fratton Shed is scheduled to be one of the venues? What a load of shit. The good (fake) Doctor says that all is going OK and it will go ahead but he has this spokesman chap who just kills any credibility. This bloke said that Diego Maradona was going to quit his post as the Argentina manager because of the irrisistable lure of Fratton Park. Some people actually swallowed it and four world class players were coming with him. You couldn't make it up. Smoke and mirrors and delaying tactics.

Here are some facts... the banks want their money back.... the clock is ticking... the current owner isn't going to pay it... the prospective new owner hasn't go the money... if Dr Who pulls out then there is no time to get anyone else in before the loans have to be repaid.... tick tock tick tock.

My position is that I don't want them to go out of buisiness, I really don't but I would like to see some pain. I would like to see points deductions and relegated horribly and a big slide down the leagues. Does that make me a bad person? I'll live with it. On the other hand, maybe I'd like to see the takeover happen as the farce has the potential to get even funnier with Dr Al and his Director of Misinformation in charge.

There are a couple of things I just don't get. When Leeds went down the pan, they'd gambled on Champions League income and when they didn't qualify, it all unravelled. Pompey never had a prayer of the Champions League so how did they think they'd ever sustain that level of spending on sub-20k gates? Also, I assumed that the Gaydemak family must have been doing well for themselves and were funding all this but it appears that it was just borrowed money. As a fan, I don't suppose you care where the money is coming from when you have a load of good players on £50k plus a week... would the average Pompey fan swap the FA Cup win for financial stability... I guess that depends on how it all plays out.

In many ways, if you look at the short term, they've overspent more wisely than us... they overspent by loads and won the FA Cup, we overspent by comparitively a lot less and got relegated twice. Long term however, we did get a new ground out of it which makes us more viable. Our pain is over however (may be a bit premature saying that as we are 9 points adrift in League 1) and I feel that theirs is just beginning.