No stooges were used in the writing of this blog

Have you ever woken up the morning after a fight with a loved one the night before and wish you could take back every single word that you said? All those words that came out in the heat of the moment that you now regret and you sit and wish that it had never happened. Let’s be honest most of us have been there at one stage or another in our lives. It’s that point in time when any sense and logic for whatever reason departs our brains and something else takes over us and takes control. Our emotions get on top of us and before we know it we’ve lost control of the situation and words are spilling out and they keep coming and coming. In that very situation we’ve for want of a better word or choice of phrase become ‘blinkered.’ With the next morning comes the realisation that you wish you hadn’t have said even half as much as what came out of your mouth and emotions got in the way of your thought process. We are all human and whether we like it emotions especially when running high will play a very big part of your thought process. You cannot help but fall under the influence of emotions and the impact of that can be that lateral thinking quickly goes out of the window. So why mention this? What’s the point? Well there’s a very big point and one I hope that people will sit and mull over for a while and try see some sense and reason to it and try work out a sense of logic to certain things.

In the past seven days I have written five blogs in total and they’ve all been connected with Portsmouth FC in one shape or another. One of those blogs was my take on the preview of the game against Yeovil Town during the week. One was a rather randomly worded one entitled ‘Almost… I think that one hit the post and bounced.’ Whilst its content was randomly worded it did carry some instruction as to my intent to reply to two blogs written, one by Pompey’s best well known blogger Mr Mike Hall and one from the Chief Sport’s Writer at The News Mr Neil Allen. This blog followed on from the blog that I wrote entitled ‘Challenging the trust or bust rhetoric,’ which both Mike and Neil through the use of social media brought its contents to a far wider audience than it would have normally had achieved. Mike wrote a reply which he posted on Pompey-fans.com and Neil then wrote a piece that appeared in the Sports Mail and online. In all three blogs the notion of fans treatment towards one another was discussed. I replied in turn to what Mike had written in a piece entitled ‘What would Charles M Schulz have made of it all?’ and ended of the piece by saying that I still had to reply to Neil’s blog. I then wrote a further piece called ‘You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist,’ a direct quote from the Portsmouth Supporters Trust Chairman elect that he used in reference to Balram Chanrai in a statement given during the week. That blog still didn’t give my response to Neil’s article that he had written and was posted online on Monday morning. What it did mention however were a couple of rumours that had been circulating for some time. One of which it appears has caused a great deal of discussion today.

In the blog I wrote that I had heard the alleged suggestion that Neil had been offered the role of Press Officer by the Portsmouth Supporters Trust if they were to take over the running of the football club. As within the first blog that kick started all of this about the rhetoric of Trust or Bust, I deliberately left out a few pieces of information in that blog. In the first one I deliberately left out that actually I no more wanted to see Portpin return to the club anymore than Mike did. I did however state this quite clearly in the reply I sent to his reply. I also stated very clearly within that blog that I would like to see a Trust representation on the board of any future potential owners and if Portsmouth’s Trust was able to mirror the role that’s proved so successful at Swansea City then it was be a great outcome for not only the Trust but the club as a whole. So having left out that quite large omission from the first blog I was curious to see the reaction of leaving out something similar from the last blog published and these are some facts that should be considered alongside what I’d written about the alleged rumour that had been suggested about Neil;

In the past I have worked for newspapers owned by Johnston Press Plc the same company that owns The News. In the eight and a half years in newspapers it’s fair to suggest that I learned an awful lot about the way that newspapers operate and the constraints that sometimes they have to find themselves working to. In the past decade or so the fortunes of Johnston Press have suffered considerably and this has taken its toll on the workforce either through downsizing of operations whereby people have lost their jobs or on the moral of staff that were lucky enough to keep their jobs. When you’ve been through that situation and seen the effect it can have on friends and colleagues it stays with you and it’s quite easy to feel empathy for someone that works in the same field even if you’ve never actually worked with them or even met them. The News relationship with Portsmouth FC and the problems they’ve had over the years have been documented to a degree but never enough to gain a real insight into what a fine balance and tight rope you have to walk as a sports journalist to ensure that forms of communication are kept open between both parties. Neil has in the past come under a lot of criticism from fans about the stories that he has written and I have gone on record in public with my opinion that fans should cut him some slack and recognise the fact that there would be many things he would like to print but the decision of whether he can will fall to an editor and also has to be balanced about the need to keep communication channels open. For a daily newspaper like The News, stories about Portsmouth FC will be one of the things that keeps people buying the newspaper every day. When you work for a weekly title you don’t have that same pressure because the biggest reason for people to buy a newspaper isn’t actually for the news that’s been written it’s for the property section on weekly titles.

So I’ve defended Neil, I respect the constraints he is under as a journalist and I feel a bond with him having both at one stage or another worked for the same company. All of this I deliberately omitted from the piece I wrote. I also omitted the fact that I had heard this rumour some five or six weeks ago and hadn’t felt the need to bring it up other than the time I did and now I shall explain the context of why I did. When presented with the alleged role over I had several choices as to what to do with the rumour when presented to me;

a) I could choose to ignore it and do nothing with it.

b) I could have chosen to make him aware of the fact that the rumour was going around.

c) I could have asked him direct whether the rumours were true.

d) I could randomly bring it up several weeks later in the context of trying to make a point.

So obviously in the outset I chose to do nothing with it. I didn’t feel the need to tell him that there was such a rumour going around and neither did I feel the need to ask him whether the rumour was true on the basis that just because I’d heard it didn’t mean that I had taken it to be the truth. I will go on record however and say that if the club was taken over by the Supporters Trust and were to offer him the position of Press Officer then I think he would do an excellent job and would be a logical choice for the role. Now people who haven’t followed my Twitter account for very long wouldn’t have known that I have in times gone past gone on the defensive on behalf of Neil when he gets criticism from fans. I personally believe that he does a good job and under harder circumstances than the average fan would realise actually, without being allowed to become party to the full details of why I make that statement. I deliberately didn’t go to Neil and ask him whether the rumours were true because I didn’t believe they were true. What I did was use them in a general context alongside other rumours to see what reaction if any they would get and if I did get a reaction whether it would be what I call a blinkered one; the type of reaction that I opened this blog with. If I hadn’t have written the allegation in the past blog and had brought up the subject here after what I had just written about Neil I cannot imagine for one minute that armed with everything I had just said including the fact that I would see Neil as a good choice had the rumour actually been true, that no one would have seen it through blinkered eyes. Neil’s reaction for the record was this ‘I am afraid you have discredited your own blog with the lies contained about me. Trust job? Ridiculous and a lie. It’s not even as if I am too hard to get hold of to ask me if it’s true before repeating such tittle tattle. Very poor.’

If Neil had been presented with the rumour here and in this blog with everything I have just said do you think his reaction would have been the same? I didn’t claim that I believed the rumour to be true and I didn’t feel the need to ask him direct because I didn’t believe it was true. I’d already ignored it for some weeks and I use it now in a context and to make a point and a very strong one which echoes what Neil wrote in his article that the fans are being torn apart and that the one thing that fans need to do is to stay together as a unit. The fans are the clubs best and most consistent asset that it has and although it doesn’t always feel like it, now more than ever we are the clubs most valuable asset. What we have at the moment from far too many is a highly blinkered approach where certain fans have become so blinkered to one side of an argument or another that it’s caused a split in the ranks. People have become so desperate to believe certain things and for certain outcomes to happen that in certain cases logic and reason go out of the window. There is a will and a want for things to be true. There will have been a will and a want on certain peoples part for the rumour I had heard being alleged about Neil to have been true because that would have given more argument to the weight of the claim that the newspaper is firmly in the Supporters Trusts camp. Then on the other side we have people claiming that Express FM is in Portpin’s camp. Its early panto season and people have chosen their heroes and villains of the piece and you can hear the cries of ‘he’s behind you!’ from the audience joining in the participation.

The original point of my first blog was the feeling by many fans that if you didn’t back the notion of the Supporters Trust bid then you were seen in some quarters as backing the Portpin bid. Not only that, but an awful lot of people were afraid to even mention certain things in case they were rounded on and taken to task over their comments. That’s not a healthy environment for which fans should operate and it’s far too easy to forget that at the end of the day we all love the club and we all want what’s best for the club even if we don’t all agree on what we actually think that might be. The funny thing is when fans split it’s sometimes hard to realise how close everyone is yet looking at the situation it can appear that people are miles apart.

One of the best conversations I had about the situation came with someone who it’s fair to say isn’t my biggest fan by any stretch of the imagination. Yet he made a point that has really stuck with me since he said it. It was the simple notion that unless you lived in the City of Portsmouth, you couldn’t really see with your own eyes the impact that it has on people’s lives day to day. That must have been two or three months ago now and that sentiment really struck home to me. The notion that when things are really under your nose in terms of what goes on, that it’s hard not to get so emotionally involved in things and after a while it’s become so close that it really becomes this energy by where people take the slightest thing mentioned really personally and direct to heart. Logic just goes out the window and actually unless you do live miles away, it actually becomes quite hard to take a step back from the situation, take your fans hat off as it were and to really analyse everything that goes on and everything that’s being said.

Now I’ve admitted to deliberately missing key parts out of previous blogs to see what sort of reaction it gets on certain subjects. I have also used the fact that I have studied psychology, human behaviours and communication studies to try and manipulate certain things that I have written. They may only be subtle ways of presenting information, but the manner in which they are done can have a great impact on what’s been written. I have quoted the number of pledges that the trust made and deliberately chosen to display this information in a certain way to make a point for one side of the argument. I could have chosen to display the same information in a different way to make a complete opposite argument. Confused? Well let me explain;

In previous blogs I had used the total number of pledges given to the Trust which surrounds the 2,000 mark at present and measured it against certain other reasonable yard sticks which could be seen as a fair indication at the opening of the argument and probably quite unfair at the end. So for example I compared the number of pledges to the number of season ticket holders we have this season which is around the 8,000 mark and the way I gave the answer was to say that 25% wasn’t a very large number. Furthermore from this I used last season’s attendance as a marker and then last season’s top attendance at home to Southampton which was just under 20,000 to really drive home the point of how far away that number of 2,000 was from being a really good effort. The brain automatically looks at figures in different ways and as adults we all have a good comprehension of numbers and percentages. So if I asked you what percentage 50% was as a fraction you could easily tell me that it was ½, 25% to be a ¼ and 75% to be ¾ without having to do much thinking or working out. Now with the admission that I deliberately chose to use a percentage for my point, I will now reverse the point and make it again to make the statement for the opposite side of the argument. The total number of pledges believed to be around the 2,000 mark can see to be a real achievement for the trust as it represents a ¼ of the number of this seasons ticket holders at Fratton Park this season. The information is exactly the same just presented in two different ways and to two different effects for the purpose of who you are trying to aim the message at. To explain the psychology behind it would take me a while but the basic theory is the brain sees 25% and ¼ as two very different figures despite the fact it represents the same thing. It works on the principle that the 4 is closer to the 1 therefore makes the percentage appear quite large in a context where the brain would see that the 75% missing was quite a way off the 25% yet the end result is exactly the same.

I have very deliberately chosen the way I have represented numbers as a percentage instead of a fraction. I have deliberately chosen to withhold certain pieces of information from what I have written to be able to steer the majority that are reading it down a certain direction. This happens every single day of our lives in everything we do and unless we become more open to the fact that it is happening then we will always walk around blinkered to so much that happens to us and we will never be aware that it’s happening to all of us.

How many people have come away from a supermarket believing they’ve purchased some real bargains, especially when the till roll tells us how much we’ve saved but never really taken time to consider that week on week unless money is really tight come the last week of the month that no matter how many bargains we think we’ve picked up, the end bill is actually roughly the same every week. How many people in the UK believe that when purchasing a buy one get one offer at the supermarket means that they’ve come away with the best value that was on offer potentially? I’d love to know the percentage. Every part of a supermarkets layout and the brands on offer each month are designed to help you part with as much money as possible. From the gondola promotion ends that cost companies thousands to place their goods on during promotion periods, to the nice neat row of sweets and chocolates close to the counters to tempt you into impulse buys whilst you wait in the queue. How many times do you walk past a gondola promotion end and pick up an offer deal and then never bother to even walk down that aisle where the goods normally live? Most people probably aren’t even aware that they’ve done it in fairness. It’s also a good indication of just how much mark up is in a product when they’re offered on a buy one get one free basis. What you are lead to believe to be a good deal doesn’t actually mean that it’s such a great deal after all.

How many fans can say hand on heart that at present they are looking for a balanced argument on the subject of Portsmouth and in particular the ownership issue? If you were sat in the Trust camp or Portpin camp for example would you make an active attempt to see what both sides of an argument were or moreover would you chose to attempt to find an opposing view and then try to change that view to your own? After so many months of off the field problems continuing, how many people are so institutionalised into doing such a thing that they don’t even realise that they are doing it? How many times do you read what you’re told to read without realising it just because of who’s made the request? Before Mike and Neil referenced my first blog in the series it had been read a total of 82 times. Since then it’s been read 1,396 times because of their involvement.

How much of what’s being written do you actually understand and if you don’t understand it how prepared are you to openly admit that fact in public? Last night Mike must have spent nearly three hours trying to explain the logics of one of his blogs to me before I fully grasped what he was trying to put across in it and even then we are only now half way through it. Today it took me just over an hour to then simplify it in turn for someone else for them to then understand what I took the information to mean. Here for me is where the real danger lies in splitting the fans apart. It’s the ability to take a set of data like I did and be able to manipulate it quite easily into the context of how it’s presented to make the point you wish to make. It’s only when you openly admit it that people will potentially (and this is what I’d like to see happen) start to take a step back from the situation and begin to look at the logics of what is being written and not be afraid to ask what it means either. Whether we want to admit it or not articles that are written will even with the best of intentions to try remain neutral, carry a certain element that will sway the reader one way or another.

At present Mike is on a daily basis writing a series of questions to the PR Company involved with the Portpin bid. Now Mike knows that the likelihood of him getting a better answer than no comment from the firm is slim to none let’s face it. That doesn’t stop him doing it and let’s face it he is the best well known blogger of them all and he has the most power. No one else of all the Pompey bloggers could have brought the same level of traffic to the first piece that I wrote without a shadow of a doubt in my mind. What I like about Mike is his refreshing honesty. He makes no bones about what he tries to do and that he wants to see the Trust get over the finishing line. Only Mike could tell you the total number of hours that he has put into helping the Trust achieve their final goal of beating Portpin to the post. Each actual Trust board member in turn could probably only surmise as to the total number of hours that they have each put in but collectively it will have been thousands let’s be fair and that’s a gigantic effort on their parts and if people cannot recognise that and applaud it even if they don’t believe that the Trust bid is the right bid to take over the club then they should at the very least be able to congratulate the effort that was made. I doubt even the Trust would have believed that when they started this whole process that they would come as close as they have done to possibly taking over. It’s an amazing effort and I am big enough to say well done you should all be proud of your efforts.

Back to Mike though and the credit he disserves on the part of the Trust as he seemingly shifts effortlessly through the gears and ups his game every time. There is no point in trying to argue with Mike on the subject of Portpin because he seemingly lives as close a life to them as Balram Chanrai does on a day to day basis. The closer to the finishing line the race becomes the more complex the argument is starting to become. I genuinely have about five pages of notes from the early hours of this morning trying to get my logics around fixed charges, floating charges, apr and various other parts. After three odd hours in the small hours of this morning I think I had genuinely just about grasped half of what had been written in one of his blogs. Mike wrongly credited me with having a better understanding than I do on such matters. Had he not helped me then I’d still be in the dark and I suspect many fans that attempt to read them are left in the dark on the matter. But having come so far into the argument on the Trusts side it doesn’t actually matter that they don’t understand fully what’s being said, if the general sentiment is pro-Trust then that’s good enough for them. You genuinely do have to have a basic concept of law and accountancy to be able to understand their contents. There will be an element of what’s written that is designed to be confusing to many. The general point is that you aren’t really supposed to be able to understand the complexities fully because if you could then you could try to work out the logics of how everything is actually working and on what basis choices are being made. I would reckon that it’s taken me around about four and a half hours to work out the logics of half of one of his recent blogs. What I can recognise are the logics of writing to Portpin's PR company even when he knows the best answer he can reasonably expect to get is no comment and it’s for that exact same reason that I chose not to approach Neil Allen direct because for one I didn’t believe the allegation and for two I knew had I have done then I couldn’t have used the outcome that did happen to demonstrate the context of why I wanted to use it. The reason Mike aims comments to the PR firm is because even if he gets an answer of no comment in can be seen as a moral boost, a triumph of sorts to celebrate. I didn’t ask Neil direct for the opposite reason. Knowing he would say it wasn’t true wouldn’t have demonstrated that there will have been certain people out there that wanted the rumour to be true. That even mentioning that a rumour existed could give weight to views that some have that he is in some way impartial. People will when emotions are running high be too quick to not consider the fact that there might be other information needed on which to make a decision. People will believe what they want to believe at the end of the day. Can we overcome and challenge people to look at the wider picture that is the question?

The reason goods are sold at 99p, the reason supermarkets are designed the way they are, the reason I omit certain facts and opinions from blogs, the reason Mike targets PR companies knowing that his best answer will be a no comment are all the same. They are all targeted at an audience in a specific way and for a specific purpose. You are that audience and in this context I want you to all start to step back and start to look at the bigger picture. It is easy to manipulate people especially when they’re blinkered. What this club needs from the fans at this moment is for us all to stay together. More now than at any time in recent past the club needs the fans whoever is in charge and come match day for fans to get behind the team for 90 minutes. Fans minds aren’t likely to be dissuaded after so many months of off the field troubles so whilst I’ve had to make a point using extreme circumstances to get people to listen, my hope is that fans will actually do so and realise that unity is just as important as who eventually takes over at the club. Remember the most important factors; that we all love the same club and most importantly the thing that is hardest to realise is that we all genuinely do want what is best for the club. Neil if you’re reading this I apologise for using you in the context that I did to make a point and as I stated earlier I do believe you do a good job for The News and if you were to be considered for the role then I couldn’t think of a better candidate to do so whoever owned the club. The fans have been divided but can they be brought back together now for the benefit of the club? We will wait and see.

What would Charles M Schultz have made of it all?

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."

I’m sure many of you will have heard the quote about avoiding discussions on religion and politics but the chances are that unless you’re a big fan of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts cartoons that you automatically steer clear of discussing the great pumpkin without having to be forewarned by others on the subject. Politics let’s face it is a real political minefield to get into and covers so many sub genres of topic it’s untrue and let’s face it even Members of Parliament tend to avoid the subject when posed questions in the Commons although technically they really shouldn’t be doing such things as it’s their job as they were elected to do on behalf of the constituents in their area. So what about religion then? That tiny little subject that has a history of starting the odd war or two since the age that time began. Anyone want to get into the finer details of religion with me right now? Well if you do then book an appointment; I think I’m free for a few hours on the 19^th of August 2053. Why do I mention this want for avoidance on the subject of religion, well the answer to that is simple. Quite frankly I genuinely have better things to do with my time than discuss something born from a God that I don’t believe in. If I don’t believe God exists then it’s going to be a very boring discussion to have with me. I’m not going to force my opinion on the wheres and ways of why I don’t think God exists. The best quote you’re likely to get out of me is that God is the best insurance policy of all time. If you’re not sure what that means then don’t ask me because I have no more to say on the subject. What I will use the subject of religion for is a basis on the subject of football; The Modern Man’s Religion (Not forgetting the ladies to).

I wasn’t trying to be sexist in the above label, it was a modern twist on what used to be called ‘The Working Man’s Game,’ but given times have changed I feel indebted to have obviously include female fans into the connotation because times have certainly changed in regards to the DNA make up of the average football fan. What hasn’t changed is the very nature of the game of football to become tribal from the grass roots upwards. Frankie goes to Hollywood may have sung ‘When two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score,’ but that was a song about the American and Russian cold war. When it comes to football the notion of points scoring against another tribe means that the chances are unless your first point is scored with such a killer blow that the opponent can’t hit back with any sort of comeback, what will ensue is a tit for tat running battle between two sides of a coin. In modern warfare anything is game and the days of a knight throwing down the gauntlet as a challenge are long gone. Today if you threw a glove down to challenge them and someone was stupid enough to bend over and pick it up in front of you then you’d be getting that first blow in quick and fast and make sure they stayed down. It’s not ethical but then again in the context of a war the real aim is to survive first and answer questions later.

But what happens when a war between two sides leads to infighting between tribe members? Whilst I’m no expert in military history I will lay a bet to the fact that no one in the course of history has ever managed to win a war when they spent more time concentrating on the infighting than they did actually fighting against the other side. To win a war you need everyone pulling in the same direction. Debating is fine and should be encouraged because if you cannot iron out your differences or at least gain a mutual direction of where you want to be heading then come the charge at the front line you may well find yourself running out on your lonesome and discover that your balls have been blown to pieces and everyone else is sat down in the trenches crouched down with no intention of budging an inch whilst you charge on none the wiser.

Since the 1970s football has picked up a reputation of making even the sanest of men do the most peculiar of things come 3pm on a Saturday afternoon (or 4pm on a Sunday, 7.45pm on a Tuesday etc.) We’ve seen the impact of hooliganism over the decades involving men with well paid jobs. Suited and booted Monday to Friday making an honest living but come the weekend there’s a switch in their head that flicks and rationale goes out of the window. They become part of the tribe if even for just a few hours before going back to normal life. Take Pompey’s most famous fan Mr John Westwood; from Monday to Friday he sells books and wears a suit. Come Saturday something inside him makes him put on a wig, a big hat and ring a bell and play a bugle badly following the side we all love home and away. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea but the most important part of that statement was mentioning that we all love the club. There might be times we fall a little out of love with the old girl from time to time but the one thing we all have in common and lots of fans may have forgotten this at present is that we do all love the same thing. Coming off the back of that we all want what’s best for the club at the same time. We all want an owner who we can trust who we hope will have the necessary levels of investment to take the club forward to put it back on a firm footing. If they can then take the club forward long term as well then that’s an added bonus but for now a stable footing will be enough. It was trying to chase and live the dream that got us into trouble in the first place let us not forget.

Something I would like to clarify is the fact that I wrote my last blog at the request of Pompey’s best known blogger Mr Mike Hall. OK so he might not have requested the blog itself but he asked me a question which I couldn’t answer in 140 characters on Twitter and we agreed that I would write it in blog form. I only posted the blog once and I did it at 3am in the morning. I didn’t repost it at any other time and I certainly didn’t write it with any agenda in mind as I have since been accused of doing. Believe me had I had any sort of agenda off the back of writing it then I would have posted it a lot many more times than the once that I did and it would have been at more of a prime time than 3am. It was written with honesty and tried to answer the question that had been put to me. If someone was to have asked me how many people I thought would end up reading it my answer would have been genuinely no more than 50 in total. Whilst as part of the admin team of The PBA we managed to pull in some really big numbers every month on what we wrote, since leaving I’ve tried to avoid anything too contentious an issue with Pompey. Occasionally I slip and feel the need to have a little rant or point fans towards looking at a bigger picture, but in the main I try to stick to writing previews of games that no one actually reads. I don’t mind that and unlike the days on The PBA I’m no longer chasing the numbers. There genuinely is no hidden agenda. I didn’t ask Mike to write a reply to it and I certainly didn’t expect him to do it on his site which would bring the blog far more attention than had he chose not to do so. That was his choice and in doing so it brought the contents to a far bigger audience than it had ever been intended to do. On Saturday morning it was then pointed out to The News Neil Allen that perhaps he should have also retweeted the blog so both sides of a debate were being fairly represented which he duly did. Again that request didn’t come from me for the record. Obviously this then brought the blog to an even bigger audience and accusations from some sides that I have my own agenda. Whilst I do indeed have my own agenda in life believe me when I say it’s nothing to do with Pompey and I only write this blog in politeness because that’s how I’ve been brought up and I feel I should acknowledge what Mike had written in response to what I’d written. I will be totally honest to say that had he not put his response with a link to my blog online and had left it in the comments section of my own blog then I’d have probably tried to answer it with a few sentences and the whole thing would have been forgotten in minutes. Rightly or wrongly now I feel as if some sort of response is expected of me. In case you’re interested in what sort of level of interest having either Mike Hall or Neil Allen retweeting or mentioning your blog can do for readership then I can tell you that this blog was read by just over 36 times as many people as the previous blog that I’d published on Pompey before then. Sadly my blog didn’t remain under the radar so here’s my reply to what he wrote and damn Mike for finishing his with the words ‘This is a good debate and should be continued.’

Now this might sound really harsh but I’m going to skip over the first 717 words of Mike’s reply. This I do because I stated in my first blog that when it comes to the finer details about Portpin and their bid that it’s best left for people far more qualified than me to do it. I deliberately left out one point from my first blog because I was intrigued to see how what I’d written had been perceived and how people would respond in kind. Now I cannot see the comments that were written to what Mike had said on his reply because I am banned from the site and have been for a good few years. I have made no effort to deliberately look for comments further than those that we given to me via Twitter or on the blog itself. I have however been sent comments that others have said including the one by someone who shall remain nameless but claims that I have my own agenda. That person knows who they are and were stupid enough to use my @ in a tweet they posted which they hastily deleted again which once again attacked me. This wasn’t the first time they have chosen to attack me and they continue to do so in a very public manner but away from my eyes thus denying me a fair right of reply. If they are reading this now they will know who they are because of the quickness of which they deleted their tweet earlier on having realised their error. If Joe from Express FM is reading this you got a special mention to by the way; one less member out of both our tiny fan clubs. Because I don’t have access to the comments if any on Mike’s blog I will say hand on heart that roughly 98% took the blog for what it was meant to be; A response to a question that I’d been asked. I repeat the fact that I posted the blog only once and did so at 3am in the morning. I didn’t attempt to draw any attention to the blog at any point after its first point of entry into the worldwide web.

The part that I deliberately missed out by the way? I don’t support the Portpin bid for the club and I’m no different to Mike in the fact that given the choice I wouldn’t let him anywhere near the club either. If you need the finer details of the argument why he shouldn’t be let in charge then go ask Mike, there’s no point in asking me when people are far better qualified. All I’m doing is replying to why I don’t think The Trust are in a position to take over at present and what I didn’t like in the statement they put out last week and the way that it was worded. One of the main points I wanted to try put across was how a lot of fans feel that if you don’t back The Trust then you automatically support the Portpin bid. I stand by the fact that I personally feel the largest majority of fans are actually indifferent to who actually takes over the running of the football club and are in the main more grateful to actually be left with a club to support. As of earlier there were I believe 2,600 signatures on a petition signed by people stating that they don’t want Portpin to be able to take over the club. I believe I’m right in saying we have around 8,000 season ticket holders this season which if we used the number of signatures and measured it against season ticket holders then 32.5% of fans are prepared to sign the relevant petition. If you took last season’s average home attendance of 14,865 in comparison then that figure is reduced to 17.49% (obviously that figure will include the average away attendance which it’s fair to mention in the context of the final figure shown). If you were to take last season’s highest attendance as a reference point for comparison (which will also include the away attendance) of 19,879 then the percentage is as low as 13.08% as things stand. Well many of you will be sat saying that’s just a load of numbers based on certain factors that you just picked out to prove a point. Well as always there’s always a point.

The point about paying the players £8.6m is further cited.

The trust had no intention of making such generous settlements to players. They set aside a £2m pot to pay them. The remaining £6.6m would have been used to pay creditors and rebuild the club. However, Portpin had an outline deal and contract of sale back in July. They set the figure of £8.6m that Trevor Birch worked with. The trust clearly communicated to Birch in July that it would be prepared to pay only £2m. Birch negotiated compromises using the Portpin figure, not the trust one, because the trust had not provided proof of funds at that point.

Now some might say I’m just being somewhat pedantic at this juncture when I consider Mike’s reply on the matter of the compromise deal but as he fully stated the trust hadn’t provided proof of fund when the negotiations took place. So whatever the Trust would have offered the players is kind of made irrelevant almost because whatever they said they would have offered, the one figure that they won’t say is any number higher than that of £8.6 million. Anything lower and they’re ahead in the ratings war and drop that figure to as low as £2 million and well you’d be hard pressed to have wished that The PST hadn’t been allowed to the table to do the negotiations instead of Mr Trevor Birch. It’s all very well stating that your offer to the players would have been £2 million in total but actually reaching compromise deals with players using the same pot I’m pretty safe to say would have been a much harder task that stating it as an objective is to do.

Are we really to believe that a pot of £2million would have been enough to reach compromise with all of the remaining members of the first team squad who needed to be removed from the wage bill so that the club would be able to have avoided the very genuine threat of liquidation. The very fact that the actual figure ended up at £6.6 million than the figure allocated by The Trust is probably the biggest indication that a total of £2 million wouldn’t ever have been enough whatever they said whilst the negotiations were taking place or since the agreements were struck with the players. As I stated earlier I don’t want Portpin to take over the club anymore than Mike does but I do want you to ask yourself the question of whether you think The Trust would genuinely have been able to strike a deal with the players with a pot of just two million. If your answer to that question is that you don’t genuinely believe that such a compromise could have been reached then the point made about where the other £6.6 million would have been spent becomes totally irrelevant which in fact it already is because the deal was struck and because no proof of funds had been shown The Trust were allowed no input on the matter.

Now when Portpin pulled out, PCC offered to loan the Trust £1.5m. Birch faced having to renegotiate the compromise agreements with the players. When Portpin returned to the table, falsely claiming to have been asked to do so by Football League, PCC, PFA and PKF, at a stroke they wiped out £7.5m of trust funding. The loan was conditional on there being only one bid and now the Trust would have to meet the player compromises if they wanted to stay in the game.

The Trust managed to do this. They leveraged the development opportunity to solve the ownership problem.

As for financial viability: the Trust has access to a large pool of cash funding - which probably amounts to something like £7m. I don't know precisely because I'm not part of the bid team and you don't negotiate by placing your cards on the table face up. £11m parachute payments plus £7m =£18m.

Now if you read my first blog you will have seen the point whereby I noted that the Football League values the trust bid to be worth in the region of £6.5 million in total. This was the figure given to me from a trusted and reliable source which I have no reason to doubt the validity of. I have no grounds to doubt the figures because over a considerable period of time the only discrepancy of any sort on any information I have received has been the clubs that Liam Lawrence and Tal Ben Haim departed to once the compromise deals had been finalised. I certainly didn’t make the figures up off the top of my head and on that basis I would challenge any claims towards the Trust having access to a large pool of cash funding and certainly one that is valued at over half a million more than the figure that the Football League is basing the bid on.  Furthermore I have been informed that genuine concerns were raised about the Trust bid and its ability to keep the club afloat for more than 9 to 12 months in total. Now feel free to double check the response made but no attempt was made within it to challenge any of the figures that I attributed from the football league and once again I can only re-iterate my concerns as a fan that The Trust bid doesn’t carry the financial weight necessary to provide a long term stable platform for the club. I have to place my faith in the fact that claims are made that the Football league have now approved the Trust’s business plan.

I mentioned in my blog my concerns over the choice of Iain McInnes but as no reply was forthcoming on the matter from Mike then I can only re-iterate those thoughts once again and add my worry that positions were alleged to have been made on offer within the club to High Worth Net Individuals willing to invest figures of over £100,000 to the Trust’s bid. It’s my opinion that those who will be running the club in the future will have been given the position on the basis that they are the best person to do that job whether it’s booking tickets for a game or at the top of the pile as the of Chairman Portsmouth FC.

The next part of the reply refers largely to Portpin and the comparisons of the two deals and as I’ve stated in both blogs if you require answers as to why Portpin shouldn’t be allowed to take over the club again then you go to Mike because there is no point in me trying to go into the relevant factors when someone is clearly more qualified to do so on the subject than I am.

As for twitter, pack mentalities and so on; well a couple of points to be made here as well. The first is that I've received a lot of personal abuse from people who believe in Fahim and Portpin - this is not a one sided thing. Secondly, there is a large majority passionately in favour of the trust and passionately opposed to Portpin taking over. Now if you wish to discuss these things on public forum then be prepared to get the views of others, passionately expressed as football fans do. If the weight of opinion is so large that you feel it to be oppressive, well this simply suggests you are in a small minority. Personally, I'm a vegetarian lib dem Buddhist and I quite often find my views on various topics are minority opinions. Now I'm faced with a choice here, I can either post my thoughts on a public forum and deal with the brickbats from the majority who don't share my opinions, or I can shut up, or speak to like minded people somewhere else. That's what free speech is. It doesn't enshrine your right to air your opinions publicly without challenge or argument, or even contempt and condemnation. It enshrines your right to say it, not to say it with impunity.

Now in my time as an admin on The PBA it’s fair to say that I’ve been called many things. The most frequent thing I’ve been called in my time is the word probably most hated in the whole of the United Kingdom and believe me I have been called it many, many times and at the end of the day given the position I was in and the fact I was helping to run what’s considered to be the most notorious of Portsmouth fan pages then it is fair game to expect a fair amount of abuse to come back at us. What I would say though having dropped out of the game and reached for my pipe and slippers I don’t actually think it’s fair game for people who don’t even follow me on Twitter to pop and randomly aim abuse my way. I didn’t sign up for that. To me Twitter is pretty much a two way ball game at heart. If I comment on something and you follow me and you choose to comment on what I’ve said then that’s to be expected. There’s a reason you follow me in the first place whatever it is and therefore I think that gives you some degree of right to therefore be able to comment on what I’ve said in turn. Now at that juncture you also have another right and that’s to hit the unfollow button if you don’t agree with what I’ve said and I suspect that I have managed to lose more followers in my time than I have ever gained. If anyone knows of a way of proving or disproving that statement then let me know and I will put it to the test to find out. I’ll also be honest and say that sometimes during an argument I don’t mind others jumping in and wanting to help because let’s face it we all like a bit of moral support at one stage or another. Now what I would challenge is when you write something on Twitter; do you write it as a wish to discuss things on a public forum or do you write it as a generalised statement or a thought confined within the 140 character limit per say? I think it’s safe to assume quite correctly that if you post a link to a blog for example and especially on the subject of Pompey that you do so with the intent of being open to responses on the matter. On the other hand though I don’t think personally that expressing a view within a Tweet actually automatically opens you up to being challenged or criticism just because it happens to be on Twitter. What seems to happen is very reminiscent of being in the play ground but with new tactics applied. Seeing the comment a flag is raised for all to see and in the case of Twitter this is done with a retweet. Usually the first person jumps in with a metaphorical punch and others then rally around seeing the flag and before you know it, if we were back in the playground there would be shouts of ‘Fight, fight, fight,’ and some people would wade in to try stop the fight whilst others would hope the nose they made meant it carried on escalating even if they were taking no part in it. This is my opinion and the criticism I have against actions of certain individuals that go on whilst using Twitter.

Now I have once again opened myself up to Mike to reply as he has done me. What is occurring here is a debate. We have a common ground together in that we both love the club. Second to that we both want what is best for the club. Thirdly we don’t believe that Portpin should be allowed anywhere near the club. What we disagree on is that the Trust should be allowed to take over as things stand. Now however there is a fourth point that we do both agree on and that point is this; If a party should come to the table other than Portpin and prove that they have the necessary funds to take over the club successfully and move us on that if the deal included a 20% stake for the Trust that it would be beneficial to the long term success of the club. The end result and wishes are for an owner to take stablise the club first and then the hope that long term they are able to take the club forward. Mike obviously has his views on the matter on who’s already in a position to do it and I have mine on the matter. If you don’t share my views then I promise I will not in any way shape or form try to force them upon you. If you are going to call me the c word in a reply though make it a bit more imaginative though please.

I was going to respond to Neil Allen’s blog at this juncture as well but I’ve already run over by 600 more words than I’d used in the first one and I’m sure I have bored you enough already. I shall save my thoughts on that matter for the next one by which time I’m sure you’ll all have got bored of anything I have to say (quite rightly) and go and concentrate back on more important matters instead.

I promise you are under no obligation to read anything else that I write and I should also point out the views held and expressed within the contents of this blog are my own.