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Will we ever learn?

You would think that YEARS of lavish spending and massively inflated wages to go with this, all of which has taken us to the brink of financial collapse would have taught us something, right?

Evidently not...

According to Mick McCarthy and Phil Brown, at Wolves and Hull respectively, it was our 'excessive' wage payments that saw us sign 2-3 players over these clubs last summer, as we 'blew them out of the water' with our offers.

Several years of the outgoings getting nowhere near to the incomings on a monthly basis is eventually going to end in tears, and it still could for us.

Cutting these outgoings was something that was needed, yet even now - despite cutting the wage bill dramatically - it still seems that the income is barely, if it is at all, covering the expenditure, and people wonder why we are so close to collapse...

It is hard to have sympathy for an organisation that, even in the face of financial crisis, would continue to negotiate deals beyond their means, and that seems to be what we were doing in a frantic August 2009?

The most worrying thing of all (assuming we survive as 'seems' could well be the case now with a 'saviour' riding to the rescue) is that the man that had been doing these deals over the years, Peter Storrie, and was doing the deals last summer, even in the face of the financial crisis, is 'likely' to continue to do these deals in the years that 'could' lay ahead, which could well leave us with an eerie feeling of déjà vu down the line...

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Writer: pompeyrug

Date:Tuesday February 16 2010

Time: 1:30PM

Your Comments

Unfortunately unless you find a buyer, administration is the only feasible option as someone needs to come in and perform a massive restructure. Even if you do find a buyer, I wouldn't be surprised if several players are sold off at scrap prices just to reduce the wage bill. I feel so bad for pompey, great history, great fans, great city. Such a shame about the management of your club.

Gunnerman

i read something the other day that our sky tv money plus gate receipts, sponsorship and merchandising sales etc gave us a profit of over £25M a year after our record wage bill (approx 2007/8/9) was deducted. So for people to say we should know why we are in this mess is ludicrous. We were apparently only 5/6 mill less turn over than villa and everton. gate money nowadays (and we all know ours is relatively small) is no where near the importance it once was to top flight clubs. Total mismanagement is obviously to blame, but as even us novice fans could budget ok with that yearly turnover, the blame or 'knowledge of our financial deficiencies' cannot be pinned on our door. We just have to pick up the pieces.

Super Bock 1898

Yes, I hope people notice that THE MAN doing these deals for the players in question was PETER STORRIE and no-one else... Peter Storrie complained that he had no money from Gaydamak for 8 months and was negotiating all the deals himself just before the window last year. Notice that the Sky payments had to be withheld to pay Watford and now this Peter Storrie.. what have you got to say? I suggest you put some of your salary back to the club...

PompeyExile

A bit rich to blame Storrie .. at the point those players were signed weren't we in Fahim's reign and if not we had no idea that Fahaj didn't have any money.. To be honest (at the time) I would have been pretty *****ed off if we were losing players to the likes of Wolves & Wigan who are known (along with Burnley) to pay peanuts.. We must stop laying EVERYTHING at Peter Storries door .. he might be the Cheif Executive but his is not the owner or the Finance Director.. Christ we'll be blaming him for the performances on the pitch next .. Sorry to rant guys but isn't it about time everybody jumped off the 'Same old Pompey' & 'Let's blame Peter Storrie' bandwagons.. Really does my head in .. We are fuelling our own fire based on what two of our relegation rivals are saying.. Should have treated this with the contempt it deserved and put it straight in the bin.. It was aimed to wind us up and boy has it done so.. We must start being clever with what we are fed by the press

Chix

If i recall,didn't we have money to spend when we got back to the Prem and couldn't get any big names to join us as they all thought we were going straight back down? All fans pleading for us to get new players in! So,what is the answer? Pay inflated wages to tempt them down here - this is the result i guess

pompeymart1965

... and if we have failed to learn by are mistakes .. how the hell did we manage or why did we bother to sign Tosic for £750 per week .. surely we should have paid him £80k a week just like we (didn't) pay John Utaka ..

Chix

just 1 quick point Storrie is told by the financial directors how much he can offer for wages and transfer fee it is NOT him doing it off his own back, all he does is offer what he's been told he can to get the players that we so desperately needed, so to blame storrie is pretty short sighted, the whole infastructure at boardroom level needs to be torn down and built again from fresh, with people who can actually manage finances! (oh and just on the topic of utaka, £26k for a player of his supposed calibre really isn't that much so that has got to stop being banded around, whats more infuriating is the £25k Nugent is on... lol)

pompeym@

M@ .. Nugent (was) is on 12-15k per week - I've had the conversation with his Dad..

Chix

ahh now that makes alot more sense but then why the hell where burnley not prepared to pay his wages when their cap is £15k (if i'm not mistaken).. either way does show how much these things get blowen up in the press lol

pompeym@

http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/2010/02/why-the-prem-league-is-about-to-go-bust/ good article here chaps.

Gunnerman

Chixy, granted not everything is storrie's fault but NOT laying blame enough at his door is what also does my head in!
as for nugent on 12-15k per week, sorry but this is not what we were saying the other week - £25-40k is what was being mentioned...

pompeyrug

It's not just you in the creek, seems the whole league is on a knife-edge.

Gunnerman

Rug .. No it wasn't .. If you recall i said 20k max based on what his Dad said and you said it would was in the region of 40k .. alos Rob said that that David (snr) said that when he left Bury he took a pay cut from his 10k a year to 8k and was 'expecting' a significant increase when he arrived at Pompey .. which never materalised and he got just over double .. do the maths yourself .. but first we had James on 120k a week .. which was wrong.. then Campell on 90k a week .. which was wrong.. then Utaka on 80k which you personally know is wrong.. We need to realise what we are talking about with these salaries .. if ANYBODY was on 40k per week that is £2 million a year !! .. Let me know how much the wage bill was for Any of the past five months .. £1.8 million was it and I'll break down the figures (roughly) for you .. it'll prove these huge salaries do not exist .. at least not in Pompey .. now

Chix

I'm on £25 a week.

Lysimachus

i have been looking around trying to find comment/articles and find one where you said £20k, so i will give you that ;-) i still think it is that minimum, something more like £25k tbh, at least - i only know that utaka is on a third of that £80k per month as i am told this is the case, so does it make it true? i would HOPE so tho!
when all is said and done none of us really know who is on what but what we DO know is the outgoing has not been covered by the incoming each month for whatever reason and we have been offering wages that we should not have, and could not sustain and i would fear us doing this again 'if/when' we sort things out!

pompeyrug

I think Mick McCarthy is talking about missing out on Mokoena early on in the summer and O'Hara for the loan deal. I know Mokoena is on £25k a week and received a £500,000 signing on fee.

stillthewhizz

Rug I agree with you. All the salaries being bandied about are all part of the rumour mill - but whatever they are they're obviously more than we can afford. The only common factor in all this is Storrie who was in direct control of the finances until Al Faraj took over. He would have been advising the various owners that we could cover these outgoings. If he was my CEO he would have been out of the door a long time ago.

PFCblue

Basically there has been total mismanagement and ineptitude at PFC for a long time, one owner after the other, and it has now got us into the state where we have been trading whilst insolvent, which is illegal, and we should be in administration. Admin would also offer a certain amount of protection against liquidation. I'm starting to see that the liquidation outcome is what the current owners want to happen, otherwise they would be doing more to prevent it. Heaven help us if this fabulous new rich owner doesn't materialise for real this time. By the way, I've now got the day off on Monday 1st March, and I am pondering going to the high court. Sitting in my Pompey shirt making puppy eyes at the judge.

tracyc

I think the 2 of the players being muted dont even play, Smith, Williamson (well thats one off the books then), and Ben Heim, as for Storrie, i predict he will get the club sold and walk away blaming the scummers upsetting his wife before end of season.

Midge

i keep saying to myself that looking for causes on WHY we got in the mess is not going to help anything so i do not want to keep doing this, clearly with the above i have again gone back to those thoughts...
upon reflection, not that i regret it, i want to again make that vow to STOP looking back and looking for blame we just have to look forward in hope that we can have learned from this, well people running have learned from this...

pompeyrug

Chix said 'Nugent (was) is on 12-15k per week - I've had the conversation with his Dad' ... I have to say I have had it on good authority that Burnley wanted to sign Nigent permanently. But Nugent declined (because Burnley have a salary cap of 12K per week). He prefers to stay on loan until the end of the season (and then sign) as his contractual wages at Pompey are at least TRIPLE that he wold get at Burnley.. So he is still part of our wage bill!!!

PompeyExile

The club did try to sell Nugent, but if he refuses there's nothing they can do. I think I read somewhere that Pompey were paying a proportion of his wages, probably that over and above their cap level. How much that actually is seems unclear, but if Chix has his info from Nugent's Dad, then that sounds like a good source to me.

tracyc

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