If you read what's said its clear that Pompey aren't the only club with debts they are struggling to service. It's more evidence (if any were ever needed) that sports should never be treated as a 'business' investment. What's staggering is that some financial institutions/rich individuals seem to be continually conned into lending on terms that they would laugh out of court about were it any other kind of business.

The CAS have denied Togo's appeal against their ban from the African Nations Cup.

Pathetic.

IMO the major stars of African football, the Eto's, Drogba's and Kalou's

should say that if Togo aren't allowed in the competition, they won't be playing either.

Plenty of people have made tonnes of money from treating sports as a 'business' investment. Rough figures, but the Glazers paid nearly £800m for Man Utd in 2005. The figure stated for United fans to buy the club now is £1.2bn.

The Edwards family made fortunes out of Man Utd. The PLC made fortunes out of MU when they took the club public.

Ken Bates made a fortune from Chelsea. The Thai made a big profit out of Citeh from his short ownership of the club. While Sugar whines about his time at Spurs, I reckon his time at the club was very rewarding to him.

It is difficult to make money out of sports. It's easy to get badly burned. But there are a lot of people who have made massive amounts of money out of sport.

Debts are in the region of £60m according to the statement of affairs provided to the court. How are they going to raise that by selling players, when most of their best players aren't actually theirs to sell?

I'm happy for them to be allowed to sell outside the window, as long as the rule remains in place that other clubs aren't allowed to buy outside the window.

They'd be wise to take administration than run around trying to find a solution. They'll go down, sure, but you can guarantee once the debts are gone, someone will rush forward and take it on and start afresh.

PL have got it right in not allowing Portsmouth to sell outside the transfer window, rules are rules!

The transfer window is a huge pile of dog doo anyway. It should be scrapped.

In some ways I think the FA are right to reject their request, but is the transfer window really so important that a club should be allowed to go out of business just to keep it intact? I don't think so.

I said after we lost to Everton that there'd still be a few more twists in the title race. The first is today as Everton add to their win over us by beating United. Didn't think they'd do it TBH. Thought they'd roll over.

It should be scrapped. But it shouldn't be scrapped because of teams not been able to manage their finances. If they allowed Pompey to do business outside of the window then it would set a dangerous precedent. They should go into administration and sort themselves then come back next year in the Championship if allowed. I could see them getting knocked down to League One though.

What was that

3-1, didn't see that coming.

nice win for everton didn't see that coming at all

I did.

With the return of Arteta and the vastly underated russian winger and Landon Donovan, they have one of the best midfields in the country and are a match for anyone at home

nice to see hull city putting up a fight

Contrary to the rest of you, I thought Everton would do United today. Maybe not after they went 1-0 down, mind.

Fergie hates an early kick-off on Champions League weeks.

... and now playing with 10 men.

2-0 down now as well.

If Pompey survive the tax man and it is a big IF, They will still go down Imo. Once relegated to the Championship I expect absolute mayhem at Pompey the like the football league has not seen.

They took their chances. Second half was borderline awful. We were absolutely terrible, there was only Valencia who can be proud of his performance.

Giggs, Vidic and Rio can't get back into the side quick enough.

Very nice Everton.

Utd were poor and Everton fully deserved their win! Very damaging result.

Fergie should give Rooney the week off and not play him against WH midweek. Two games a week sometimes on his own up front are taking their toll imo. A break will do him no harm.

The good old beeb ey, thats why our t.v licences go up every feckin year I guess

Agree with you there Rooney looked knackered at times today although he wasn't getting the service he needed from the midfield. What has happened to Carrick? He was starting to look like his old self again after apoor start too the season but the last few games his passing has been poor. I think Fergie needs to sign a midfeilder who will drive the ball forward from midfeild, we have players who can pass a ball but when it comes to running with it we just don't seem to have anyone atm although Morrison looks like he may be the kind of player we need i think he'd be a bit young yet to be put into the first team

I thought the United players look in really poor condition. I know they've played midweek in Milan, but professional athletes shouldn't find that too challenging. Rooney is a big lad anyway, but today from the very first minute you could tell he wasn't in the right condition to play. His running and movement in general was laboured and his touch was simply awful. Some of his dribbling was funny at times, at one point he ran past us with it at his feet, after three or four poor touches he was dribbling it around his knees and knocking it 20 yards ahead of himself. I think United should have spotted this earlier and taken him off. Someone like Macheda or Diop would have provided more of a threat today than Wayne did, even Scholes behind Berbatov would have been an idea.

United are in real danger of becoming a complete one man team. Without Rooney I doubt they would win anything, I think they would struggle to compete for the title. There are too many average squad players there and there will be some heavy investment needed when the likes of Scholes, Giggs, Neville, VDS etc retire. The likes of Evans, Carrick, Park, Brown and Fletcher would struggle for a starting place in the Everton side at the moment. They are fine when you've got several world class players, but once Scholes and Giggs are gone how many top quality midfield and attacking players do United have left? Just the one?