Liquor&Poker’s views on, well as the title says ‘Chainrai and SOS Pompey: alternative view’. Read on for more.
I’m writing in response to all of the recent coverage afforded in The News to the Pompey fan protests.
I would really like to know what people like Bob Beech should want to be happening at Fratton Park. He calls for Chainrai to ‘just go’ and for Lampitt to resign. If Chainrai were to leave and forgo collecting the millions he loaned the club to ensure its survival, then the club would fold very quickly. In addition: Don’t forget that the club, through Chainrai, has agreed to pay back the creditors, who have already lost money, millions of pounds per year (in exchange for the club’s survival).
The same goes for the call for Lampitt to resign. What do these fans think the club was trying to do in the transfer window? They were in negotiations with several players that Cotterill requested. We didn’t end up securing these players but that is the state of the market, other clubs have more cash and the players didn’t want to come. It is not for want of trying, there is no hidden agenda for Lampitt (previous head of integrity at the FA) to get the club relegated.
The raggedy group of thirty attention-hungry fans, chanting for the cameras do not represent the vast majority of the people who support the club. After all, a fan pays their money to watch the games that are played, nothing more. They do not have the right to demand to know such things as ‘where the money has gone’. The answer to the money question is quite simple: It has been returned to those parties who loaned it to the club in the first place, with interest. Voicing such concerns and opinions would have been more effective if they had taken place during the club’s previous poor management, not aimed at the current owner who tries to steady the ship.
Chainrai is not a media-courting figure such as previous owners. The fans have no right to expect him to be speaking to them. This he does through the person he employs to do so, i.e. the club’s Chief Executive, Lampitt.
Perhaps somebody might then like to tell me:
What do they see happening if Chainrai ‘just goes’ and the club folds within a month?
Under what genuine business reasons should Lampitt resign? For not being able to afford the desired players in this time of tight FA scrutiny?
Where were these concerns during the real time of mismanagement?
Groups such as SOS Pompey should be applauded for speaking up for their views and organising themselves well. ‘Releasing statements’ or making publicity stunts that cater to the crisis club image that the media like to use are methods that should be better thought through and not implied that they represent anything more than a small percentage of the people of Portsmouth.
Written by Liquor&Poker.
The views within this article are the views of the individual who wrote and submitted this piece, sometimes solely theirs. They are not necessarily shared by the Vital Pompey Site Journalists.
