Duncan Barkes

It impacts the club.

to say of one of our most flamboyant, successful, valuable colleagues, for that's what he is, he, if you're a Pompey fan, is your colleague, should go, is appalling, ridiculous, counterproductive.

It's just like shooting yourself in the foot.

You can have an opinion like that, keep it between your two ears.

If you want to voice it, you can say it to perhaps you've got a mate or two who is as much of a dallard as you are when it comes to footballing matters and humanity.

We don't know how much there is in this rumour, possibly absolutely nothing at all.

It's conceivable that with things going quiet, journalists have to, I'm not going to say make stories up, they would never do that, would they?

But they're allowed to speculate.

And provided they populate their articles and reportage with phrases such as, perhaps, and it appears, or according to a source, there's a good one.

There's a good one.

You can get away with murder if you say according to a source.

So then they get people talking and thinking about Josh Murphy being poached by Leicester.

And Leicester do have money.

And they've been very quiet in the transfer field this winter.

They've hardly done anything, hardly bought anybody.

And they're going through a bad patch, results-wise.

They're lying 14th in the table because of the logjam which was mentioned of this particular championship table.

They're lying 14th, but they're only three points off being right there for a playoff place.

So they have no great fears.

They're certainly not lighting up the sky.