Let the bidding war begin!

If he is going lets get top dollar!
To be honest with you I had been resigned to losing Lassana Diarra in next months transfer window for some time - the fact that we kept him beyond the summer was a surprise to me in many ways. 'If' we can somehow manage to hold onto him next month then he will almost certainly be off in the summer.

Either way reports of an interest from the mighty Madrid are now gathering pace and I suspect that if true then the Spanish giants would be the Frenchman's fancy, even ahead of Manyoo, almost certainly Spurs and Citeh, unless money motivates him? - Although, how true these reports are is unclear as this 'link' to Madrid is an easy one to make seen as former Spurs manager Juande Ramos has now taken over, and he was always keen when in England.

So, as I have said over and over, as much as I would love us to keep the little fella I think our paths will part shortly - but it is essential that we get a 'bidding war' going and make whoever buys him pay a top, top price! At the end of the day we have refused his sale before, and as he is under contract and our financial position is not a critical one we do hold the power, so why let him go on the cheap!

However a 'laughable' £9m is being 'reported', with a deal with Madrid said to be close to completion - if we let him go for a measly £9m, and he is worth double that, then the only reason can be a 'release clause' of that fee was included in his contract. That would be funny though seen as we 'apparently' turned down a so called £15m offer in the summer - ah well, time will tell wont it.

Tony Adams seems confident of keeping his 'star names', and word that I have - although please do not hold me to this as I cannot offer a 100% assurance! - is that he has this belief because 'a deal has been done in principle to sell the club, and the prospective new owners are trying to do early repayment deals with current creditors.' So this is what leaves him in this positive frame of mind, but either way Diarra looks as though he is off...

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£15,000 fine leaves Pompey 'astounded'
The club have released a statement on the Pompey Site, in response to the fine imposed yesterday, where it is revealed the club are amazed at the fine handed out: 'Portsmouth FC is astounded that the FA have fined the club in respect of Benjani Mwaruwari's transfers to and from the club.

'We had no idea that the agent Willie McKay received a fee when the player joined us from Auxerre in January 2006 and both the agent and club confirmed this to the FA - evidence they have clearly ignored.'

I still think that Willy McKay has got off lightly compared to the club, but at the end of the day we continued to play with fire so it was inevitable that we would eventually get burnt!

PLAY UP POMPEY!

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