One good thing about Portsmouth FC....



micky said:
Fair enough, i just wonder if sensible and Portsmouth can go together that's all...

From a brief look a while ago, the message board is full of people who would write their 'E's back to front and have clearly been dropped on their heads as youngsters as normal people just dont act like unless they are wanting to star in a remake of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest....
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Was about to argue my case then realised I made a typo in my post...
PompeyFan657 said:
This is the thing, we enjoy having someone to wind up, but we can't wind up a small club like say Fleetwood, because that's like beating up the weird kid at school, it doesn't prove anything and nobody cares, so Sunderland is the only forum it's acceptable for us to wind up.
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I'm mainly here to talk about Sunderland, tbh. I've been arguing the case about Stewart Donald being a chancer for months, and I think that story's still got a long way to go.

On the plus side I've got a soft spot for Sunderland, or at least I will once we're in different divisions.
 
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chave said:
Was about to argue my case then realised I made a typo in my post...

I'm mainly here to talk about Sunderland, tbh. I've been arguing the case about Stewart Donald being a chancer for months, and I think that story's still got a long way to go.

On the plus side I've got a soft spot for Sunderland, or at least I will once we're in different divisions.
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I don't think Donald is any more of a chancer than Eisner is tbh. They both brought a club for the same reasons, they could get it at way below market value, and expected to make minimal investments to accrue big profits on the sale of the club in a higher division, and that's fair enough.
 
PompeyFan657 said:
I don't think Donald is any more of a chancer than Eisner is tbh. They both brought a club for the same reasons, they could get it at way below market value, and expected to make minimal investments to accrue big profits on the sale of the club in a higher division, and that's fair enough.
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Ones a billionaire, the other is worth under ten million. The Eisners plan, based on all evidence, is to keep owning the club long term and make money from viewing rights on the Premier League, whereas Donald is repeatedly asking for outside investment and looking to sell after a year. Massive differences.
 
chave said:
Ones a billionaire, the other is worth under ten million. The Eisners plan, based on all evidence, is to keep owning the club long term and make money from viewing rights on the Premier League, whereas Donald is repeatedly asking for outside investment and looking to sell after a year. Massive differences.
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The principle of what he's doing is the same though, Donald is trying to make Sunderland financially sustainable by cutting budgets, not spending big on management wages etc, and operating as much as possible (other than in terms of the academy which is hard to cut/increase quickly, as Pompey fans well know) like a normal lower league club.

Running short on cash doesn't make him a crook, he's always looking to sell because he'd make an instant profit because of the deal Short gave him. He needs investment because the wage bill Sunderland have isn't sustainable at this level, especially once parachute payments stop even with the cutbacks, and things like the academy eat money. The reason Sunderland are selling their prospects out of their academy is that they are running a Category 1 academy, which costs about £2m a year to run (I don't think that even includes the u23 team costs either!), while we are running a Category 3 with no u23 team, so don't have to.

Having only £10m doesn't make him a crook, it just means he needs a profit from the club and relative sustainability, and means he's a bit of a madman, although frankly only a madman would have taken this task on, because hacking away parts of SAFC to cut costs is going to make him hated over time anyway.
 
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PompeyFan657 said:
The principle of what he's doing is the same though, Donald is trying to make Sunderland financially sustainable by cutting budgets, not spending big on management wages etc, and operating as much as possible (other than in terms of the academy which is hard to cut/increase quickly, as Pompey fans well know) like a normal lower league club.

Running short on cash doesn't make him a crook, he's always looking to sell because he'd make an instant profit because of the deal Short gave him. He needs investment because the wage bill Sunderland have isn't sustainable at this level, especially once parachute payments stop even with the cutbacks, and things like the academy eat money. The reason Sunderland are selling their prospects out of their academy is that they are running a Category 1 academy, which costs about £2m a year to run (I don't think that even includes the u23 team costs either!), while we are running a Category 3 with no u23 team, so don't have to.

Having only £10m doesn't make him a crook, it just means he needs a profit from the club and relative sustainability, and means he's a bit of a madman, although frankly only a madman would have taken this task on, because hacking away parts of SAFC to cut costs is going to make him hated over time anyway.
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Never said he was a crook, however I do think he's a chancer while Eisner isn't. Eisner can happily run this club for the rest of his life out of his own pocket, while Donald could barely run it for 12 months. Yes Sunderland are in a worse financial position than Portsmouth, but he'd have known that when taking over, and he's made poor decisions that have decreased the clubs value because he needed promotion. I think the two owners actions, despite criticism at sticking with Jackett for too long, have been night and day.
 
chave said:
Never said he was a crook, however I do think he's a chancer while Eisner isn't. Eisner can happily run this club for the rest of his life out of his own pocket, while Donald could barely run it for 12 months. Yes Sunderland are in a worse financial position than Portsmouth, but he'd have known that when taking over, and he's made poor decisions that have decreased the clubs value because he needed promotion. I think the two owners actions, despite criticism at sticking with Jackett for too long, have been night and day.
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That's kind of the point though, they were in the kind of position where the only person willing to take them on would have to be someone who wanted to take a big risk, which in a way is always going to be a chancer, and they've done well to avoid someone who is deluded like Al-Fahim or a Russian crook.

I mean you say he needed promotion, and that's true, and he did make poor decisions, but the club needed the promotion too. Not only for the fans, but to maintain infrastructure, Pompey are trying to build ours up to get it to where it needs to be for the Championship, Sunderland are trying to maintain a Premier League level setup in League One, the club just isn't sustainable at this level in that respect. To be fair I don't think his poor decisions are because he's a chancer, they are because he is poor at making decisions, look at Eastleigh.
 

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