What makes Pompey bigger than Brighton? Brighton have better infrastructure, a bigger fanbase and a better team.
Weird whats happening with Totton, seems even at that level its the same old road to ruin by paying players too much. You'd think with the FA cup run, tv money, previous trip to Wembley and new ground (wasn't it financed by a land swap for houses to be built on their old ground?) they'd be in a healthy position. Winchester City almost went bust as well. Salisbury have had many problems. Just don't understand why clubs allow themselves to spend more than they are receiving in.
Which means that Pompey are bigger than Saints, and Huddersfield are bigger than both. History counts for a bit, but after a while you have to drop it.
It's not a lot different (or should I say "wasn't" back when I played) to how the pro clubs can get. Quite often non-league clubs would sign players on decent part-time money because the chairman's business was doing well and he felt big having his own team; then the business would struggle and the club would have players on contracts and keep paying them assuming Mr Chairman would have an upturn in his business and they'd be ok again.... the debt would then grow and then they'd go bust. None of the clubs I played for had big crowds (Newport IOW weren't bad for the level) and only a few teams we played against had good non-league crowds (Weymouth, Aldershot, Farnborough). Sound familiar? There was some relatively "silly" money paid even back then when you consider most of us had full time jobs and football was a hobby.
Seems like more and more clubs are finding that unless you've got some kind of cunning plan to get Conference football, the Southern League is just a huge money drain. Even if you're running a squad of bog standard players, own your ground, and pull in a reasonable crowd, the books don't get close to adding up. I posted this on the Pompey board a while ago by someone discussing moving up to the Southern League. The first bit about Winchester and cup winnings might make you roll your eyes. http://i37.tinypic.com/51zkia.jpg http://i34.tinypic.com/10xtsad.jpg
There is one problem with Pompey, they have had three years of being losers, they have kept a losing manager, and their finances will be tight. They will need a win run right from the start or they could struggle
