Pompey - SAFC Blog

So Equinox makes way for Chix. Another anonymous Pompey fan – though the pictures will give him away to his mates at Fratton Park – but another great set of answers as Sunderland prepare to visit Portsmouth for the relaxing distraction of an FA Cup fourth round tie. Chix*, desrcibed at the Vital Pompey site as “undercover agent and Prof of History”, recalls a hair-raising 600-mile round trip, driven by a man with no arms, to see his team play at Roker Park, wonders where Pompey’s survival points are coming from and has none of that don’t-kick-a-man-when-he’s-down gush to offer Southampton …

Salut! Sunderland: Just how bad are things at Fratton Park, how bad will they get and why are the team not just rolling over in despair whoever they play?

Oh it’s bad! Too much to go into really but basically.. We have an owner nobody has ever seen or met (not even his advisors) with no money. We owe uncle Tom Cobley about £60m and can not afford to live day to day – Oh and we have a transfer embargo and the threat of (not administration) but liquidation looming and as I type a former captain suing us.. Oh did I mention we normally pay our players and backroom staff . late as well! On a scale of 1 to 10 we are currently around the minus 72 mark. So it’s pretty bad.

Why do the players not roll over? Because most of them are Championship players playing above their level trying to prove a point.. but to be honest we ain’t that good. Some will scrap and fight others try but just aren’t up to it, but there is a good team spirit and that might just be the thing that saves us .. well that and the odd 60 million quid of course!

As far as Salut! Sunderland is concerned, the Portsmouth fan known as Equinox* first surfaced in early 2008, when he answered the call via the Pompey online site to preview a game at Fratton Park. All the way from the south coast to a site for fans of a North-eastern club? Not quite. Our guest began: “Equinox lives in East Boldon. Yes that’s right, East Boldon, just a gnat’s wing away from your beloved SoL.” Living in the North East since 1989, he offered a spell prosecuting at Sunderland Magistrates’ Court as a good reason for an alias. Those days are gone, but he feels it is prudent to remain anonymous, the long arm of the outlaw being what it is. So what does Equinox think about the present turmoil at Pompey, and Saturday’s important game at our place? …

Salut! Sunderland: You have said Pompey is not a happy place. Leaving aside the Carling Cup (oops: Villa won 4-2) and last Saturday’s nice easy home game (vs Burnley, 2-0), you had a nightmare start, some green shoots and then another slump. What has gone wrong and has anything started to go right?

I think that it is fair to say that the stuffing has been knocked out of us, you can insert any similar phrase involving kicking and four colours if you want. Imagine being punched really hard in the guts and that’s how we feel. There have been stories, rumours, counter-rumours since Spring of this year and when you add that into actual factual happenings it really does look as if we are almost bankrupt and without a team. And then in steps Paul Hart who builds a team out of nothing, and, to be fair it probably isn’t the worst team tat the Premiership has seen but they had no pre-season and for a time at least, no wages. The past owner young master Gaydamak apparently said to the Chief exec that he didn’t care if we went into administration and then a feud started – Gaydamak ended up selling to the only skint arab in the village whose media pronouncements verged from the ridiculous to the downright mental.

And then we had all the bad luck going. In the first few games, deflected goals, very dodgy decisions, injuries you name it. And through it all Hart had to carry on trying to mould the team out of his rag bag of players. Personally I think he did well but there is no time in this league if your luck runs out…………….ours never ran out, it never actually started.

Who are you? We’re Portsmouth

Who are you? We’re Portsmouth