Friday, March 2

Pay up Pompey

Terrible news that Portsmouth might go into liquidation. Their fans don't deserve it and from a selfish viewpoint it's pretty bad for West Ham too as we've taken six points off them. Today's Guardian has printed a Championship table where Portsmouth's games are expunged. We'd be down to third, six points behind Southampton and two behind Reading though we would have two games in hand over the Saints and one over Reading. Not going up because another club folded would be a very West Ham way of torturing the fans.

It might help if Alexandre Gaydamak, the last Pompey owner but five, waived some of the £2.2 million he's getting from the Premier League parachute payments, while Milan Mandaric and Harry Redknapp could surely spare a bob or two towards the Pompey fighting fund. Or how about a voluntary levy of one per cent on all Premiership wages with the proceeds going to any club facing liquidation? If only we had a 50+1 rule like the German Bundesliga, where 51 per cent of clubs are owned by members, i.e. the fans, and iffy foreign investors are only allowed 49 per cent, clubs like Portsmouth would never have got to the point of extinction.

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