Duncan Barkes

Excellent piece of broadcasting from John Percy of the esteemed Daily Telegraph.

And there you have it.

There's a possibility that three teams may go down from the championship this season, at the end of this season, largely or entirely because of financial irregularities.

And that only underlines what Michael Eisner has been saying recently, reminding people of just how precarious finances generally are right across the championship.

With the exception of one or two clubs who are keeping their noses clean, and Pompey are one of those.

Everybody seems to be overspending, almost everybody seems to be overspending and overspending dramatically.

Because that threshold of £39 million, the maximum amount that you can lose over three years, is enormous.

peanuts compared to what some clubs are spending.

And goodness knows how they're getting away with it.

Well, some of them aren't getting away with it, of course.

And you just wonder how many other clubs are being investigated in the same way that apparently West Brom are.

And they'll find out their fate, we understand, in a couple of weeks' time.

And the rules state that if those financial irregularities are accumulated over a three-season period, then the following season, that's this season in the case of West Brom, is when any penalties will be imposed.

It's not certain that one of those penalties will be a points deduction, but if it is, then that falls very nicely into Pompey's hands.

The other thing just to note is that Pompey are being well looked after by the accountants or maybe the Eisners themselves, and those who are jumping up and down, and they're only naive, that's the best way of describing supporters who think that all you have to do in order to

Get success is to buy three, four or five, five to 10 million pound players.

It simply doesn't work like that.

What does work is if you accumulate the losses of 39 million pounds over three years and we lost 13 million pounds.

over the last three seasons that means that we've got 26 million to play with if we want to push ourselves to the limit and what does 26 million pounds buy you in the footballer market at the moment at best at the very best top two-thirds of the championship so it's just not worth the risk

Absolutely not worth the risk.