Thetownend.com

The money problems at Porstmouth FC,are still continuing..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1217406/Portsmouth-chief-Peter-Storrie-admits-money-run-players-pay.html

I'm sure you could have made the point equally well without quoting the Daily Hate Mail.  You'll lower the tone of the forum!

Unfortunately they've provided more substance to the story than most other news outlets!
Normally,they'd be my last port of call  :)

Here's the Portsmouth News instead!

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Peter-Storrie-The-cash-has.5695394.jp

Seem to remember Livi making similar assurances that "players will get paid soon", "just some technical difficulties transferring funds" all last season. Before having the leccy cut off and coming within an ace of going bust before being relegated 2 divisions over the summer.

That is worrying.  You do get a feeling that Pompey are about to return to earth with a bump...on & off the field.

That is not a club that's going to respond well to a ten point deduction.

Did anyone hear the Pompey supporting chap on 6-0-6 the other week telling the nation that he felt that a club like Portsmouth should be in the Champions League.

Comments like those are the reason I listen to 6-0-6 :)

I'd love to have heard his justification. Presumably he didn't have one :)

Isn't the 10 points deduction a Football League thing?

I'm not aware of there being anything similar in the Premier League, or is there?

Either way I'd say they are looking royally fucked at the moment. Not sure why the new owner would want to pump anymore money in, he might as well just pile up £50m in bank notes and set fire to it - I'm sure Sky would pay a shit load of cash for the TV rights to it.

Could this be the first Premier League club to go bust?

Yes, but its 9 points IIRC
Probably not, although it's a neck and neck race between Pompey and West Ham at the moment, with Liverpool showing strongly on the outside rail. But in reality, don't think any of them are likely

If they do go out of business, Great Britain is going to turn in to a seesaw and might even sink as a result of 200,000 people on the south coast jumping up and down at the same time, with the knock on tidal wave wiping out the Isle of Wight. We'll probably hear the cheering in Swindon.

I would laugh my tits off if they went out of business. Arab money my arse.

At least you wouldnt see this cunt banging his drums and wanking his bell.

I give you, John Portsmouth FC Westwood.

[url width=200 height=151]http://i33.tinypic.com/10f0qxj.jpg[/url]

Didn't the premier come up with new rules about taking over clubs in trouble and running them....probaby end up sinking the club

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/oct/28/portsmouth-transfer-embargo-premier-league

It just gets worse as you read- not just have they been slapped with a transfer embargo- look who they were trying to sign!

Who?

Eugen Bopp. That'll save them!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/h/hull_city/8328913.stm

Hull look in trouble aswell. I thought you got 30m for Premier TV rights though? Not sure what this £7m figure is.

I think the £7m is the parachute payment, which they get for 2 years once they are relegated, assuming they don't get promoted back in that time.

Paul Hart sacked,Avram Grant favourite to take over.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/portsmouth/6645821/Portsmouth-sack-Paul-Hart-with-Avram-Grant-early-favourite-to-take-charge-at-Fratton-Park.html

Scandalous decision. They sell all his best players, and is then given 72 hours to get some players in before the window is closed.

It should be sack the board. Oh, they've already had 3 chairmen in 3 months !!

I hear Darren Ferguson is also a candidate

Avram Grant has been given the job, no surprise really - as soon as they bought him in as director of football he was probaly in line for the job

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8383161.stm

Apparently Pompey have not paid their players again,,,

Great investors they've got at that club then, pumping in the cash

Looks like they'll be in administration then:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8405591.stm

Given that these denials are worth about as much as the old "vote of confidence" in the manager. Does anyone else miss the times when that was all we heard about club boards - votes of confidence in a soon to be sacked manager.

No they won't, living about 700 yds from Fratton Park, I'm not sure where these rumours are emanating from but it ain't the club or the locals.

I do - it turned up in Championship Manager at one point as well:

You Have News: Mr Example Manager has been given a vote of confidence by the Swindon board.
You Have News: Mr Example Manager has been sacked by the Swindon board.

That doesn't mean much does it? The club are hardly likely to start such rumours and the locals will be the last to know. But I'll bow to your greater proximity to Fratton Park, that's clearly a deal-closer :)

I know a man who lives 650 yards from Fratton Park and he says they are fucked...

The minaret must be closed for maintenance...

Is there any evidence of either of them putting a single penny in to the club? If there is, I haven't see it.

Both are property investors and are there the re-development potential, they don't give a fuck about the club.

Portsmouth have been living well beyond their means for a good few years and its only a matter of time before it goes tits up and they end up in administration, followed by a rapid descent down the leagues.

:) You sound just like the Saints fan I sit next to at work, who outlines precisely this scenario and "passing them on the way back up" with considerable relish. And FWIW I reckon you're both right

I have images of you popping along to the ground everyday now just to ask if it's true.Fwiw i think people are saying it because month on month they are not paying the players on time.

Funny that he sounds like a Saints fan.

At Swindon late payment wasnt really serious until it went 2 or 3 months. The difference with Portsmouth the sums involved with their wage bill are so massive that you wonder if it will all unravel a lot quicker than it did at lower league clubs.

I certainly wouldnt be putting any cash in their collection bucket!

Ring that bell now then!....last orders please.

*bump*
Taxman served winding-up petition
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8434987.stm

Failed to pay their wages again, Lens asking for them to be shut down, £9m due to former owner at the end of January, a new owner not injecting promised funds (again) and fuck all players left that are worth decent money.

Makes you wonder just how bad things are at Portsmouth and how bad the total debt is.

Administration looming? Or maybe liquidation?

I like the sound of liquidation if it means another club getting promoted.

"I like the sound of liquidation if it means another club getting promoted."

I know it was probably a throw away comment, but I really wouldn't want a club to go under.

Think I read somewhere Palace failed to pay wages (on time)  again last month too

With the exception of Franchise.

You're right about Crystal Palace

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11706_5818892,00.html

Obviously. I meant proper football club. Even Oxford.

HAve you worked out which pub you are going to yet?

I wouldn't wish it on any club but having said that, Portsmouth seem to be one of the worst examples of a club spending money they don't have to buy success and it all falling apart when they have to pay it back. Don't forget that there are a number of clubs that Portsmouth owe money to, why should those clubs suffer? Its also clubs like Portsmouth that help to inflate salaries and transfer fees, which trickles down and ends up affecting clubs like ours.

Whilst it wouldn't be good for their fans, a Premier League club like Portsmouth going tits up might be the wake up call clubs and authorities need to stop fucking about and finally do something about the problem.

I think it would just open the floodgates and we'd see other clubs go out of business.  Surely that can never be a good thing

My mate is a season ticket holder and is very friendly with a couple of the players who visit his nightclub and they are very very pissed off, and have spoken about strike action.

They also think that if an investor is not on board inside the next month then they will be in administration, not good at all.

Don't think even that would be enough. If it was West Ham, then you'd see some action as every other sports journo in the country seems to be a West Ham fan, but apart from that never underestimate the sheer complacency and smugness of the football authorities

I must admit I have a relatively soft spot for them. My brother used to live down that way, & we used to have a real good time when Pompey played Us. We used to go on the pre match pub crawl with his work mates (from the dockyard) who all supported them. It was what you might call interesting going into pubs full of blue & being the only reds. Never really got any bother tho' other than the normal banter (Having a dozen dockers with you helps mind)
So I wouldn't want to see them go under, as I know that a lot of those guys still go every week & they are true football fans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8435997.stm

Hmm, a Payday loan?

Peter Storrie must have an interesting story to tell.

I'd happilly see them out of busniess if it shuts up that stupid cunt with the bell. After Winkleman he's got to be the biggest cunt connected with football  - after all Scum connections obviuosly. 

You mean John Portsmouth Football Club (Liquidated) Westwood ?

I am absolutely stunned his own haven't sorted him.

Will someone please put Pompey out of their misery...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8439545.stm

I see the statement which the convicted fraudster who's sorting out their accounts (no, really) promised yesterday would give the "answers to everything" failed to materialise

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/05/portsmouth-player-wages-missed-deadline

Haha what sort of tinpot club has convicted criminals on the board and fails to provide answers and doesn't pay its players.

Oh...

We never had a convicted criminal on the board, he was just an advisor. And general manager. But not a shadow director, oh no, that would have been illegal. And he wasn't a criminal, not really, the government just asked if he would mind awfully not being a director for a little while. Although if he had been acting as a shadow director, that, of course, would have been highly illegal. So it's a jolly good job he wasn't.

Its the same old problem we had. Property people in football who try and look interested in football, but really aren't.

I used to live in Pompey - it's a shit city full of shit people - I hope they go bust and the fans end up crying in the street - it's more than they deserve!!!

Everyone will be stunned to hear that the players didn't get paid today after all!

Maybe they should go to Ocean Finance !!!

"We had this big van load of money on the way but it got stuck in snow, honest"

I heard on Sky Sports News this morning that because of the frequency of the late payments, the players are legally entitled to get their contracts invalidated (or correct legal term) and walk away from the club.  It won't come to that I'm sure, but an interesting thought.

You made me remember an advert I saw earlier. "Borrow money before payday" it was like this one

http://www.paydaynow.co.uk/

TYPICAL 1737%APR

What, only 1737% APR !!!  Bargain !!!

They'll have more luck with Cash For Gold.

Think West Ham have got that one sewn up

Surely West Ham are trying to get Cash from Gold

(David)

Finally been paid, according to the club at least:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/portsmouth-players-finally-paid-1860948.html

Just in time for the players to start wondering if they'll get paid this month

Norwich's just released annual accounts make for interesting reading.They still seem more
than happy to be spending during the january transfer window,with moves for Macca,
Zak Whitbread and Oli Johnson.They're taking a risky route with players who simply won't
be good enough should they be promoted.They'd be no guarantee that players would be
willing to move on,should they gain promotion,whilst on very good contracts.

http://www.canaries.co.uk/page/NewsDetails/0,,10355~1926058,00.html

David James -> Stoke!?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/s/stoke_city/8459698.stm

Pompey £7m TV money -> everyone but Pompey!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8453406.stm

James is probably about the only player they could lose without having severe issues- this Begovic chap looks pretty good, and I expect James was on a large contract.

Not that it helps the general impression of them being fucked.

Hope he drops his soap.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8459969.stm

Harry Redknapp is a corrupt cunt.

To think some people wanted him as England manager, dont make me laugh!

I'm sure he'll beat the charges - he's as honest as the day is long

.. if you're a mayfly

Portsmouth -> Championship -> Toilet

And not neccessarily in that order!

Every team he manages seems to end up in the crapper, no business sense whatsover, i believe he's one of the main reasons why prem players wages are so stupid, 80k a week for that donkey utaka!

In Non-Pompey screwed club news, this Italian chap trying to buy West Ham (the one that owns Cagliari) has convictions for both fraud and false accounting. Now, I know the fit and proper persons test is nominal at best, but surely not? Especially when they have the alternative of the highly reputable porn peddlers Gold and Sullivan :D

He'd be excluded from becoming a director by the FPPT - one of the few things it DOES do is stop people with criminal convictions for financial offences from becoming directors. But as the guy apparently sorting out Portsmouth's finances also has a convinction for fraud, and as our own experience of people who should be disqualified under FPPT being able to side-step the rules by just running the club without being on the board show, I wouldn't hold your breath that this will be a serious block

Portsmouth have moved a step closer to administration with their attempt to have the HMRC winding up petition struck out rejected by the judge, so the hearing will go ahead on the 10th Feb.

WRONG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They went to court on the premise that they believed that their VAT demand was wrongly calculated.

The summing up basically said that that the process needed to go ahead and that they were given right of appeal by the Judge as he found the case so complicated.


Portsmouth will appeal and get set for this rumbling on for some time.


It is a disputed debt.


Cannot get wound up over a disputed debt

To be fair Fred he was only quoting pretty much verbatim the summary the BBC gave on the radio news. And not attributing it so he could have blamed them :)

Personally, I was shocked to see Northern Rock renew their sponsorship of Newcastle, when surely Pompey would have been a much better fit for their corporate profile

I wasn't Paul


Been very much on the undercurrent and rumors in the financial sectors for a couple of months now.

If I was a shareholder then I would be pretty pissed off, but when I look at in the cold light of day, £10 mill for 3 yrs sponsorship in the Prem is cheap as fucking chips.


Good business sense I say (cold heartedly !)


I may not agree with it, but I understand it

The original BBC article didn't say any of that extra stuff, they must have updated it.

It looks like Portsmouth are just arguing the toss about how much they owe. I was under the impression that the amount didn't matter too much in a winding up order, in that it would just proceed with the correct amount if the judge rules less is owing.

Either way, Portsmouth are looking more and more fucked. All the signs are there for them going in to administration or being wound up. Who the fuck is going to invest £50m to save them?

In all honesty I did not get my facts from the BBC website as they are wrong so often.

The amount (as long as it is above £750.00 does not matter, as that is the minimum amount a creditor can apply for a W.U.P)

What does matter is if the debtor disputes the amount or the history of transactions that led to the debt.

Law states that you cannot be wound up over a disputed debt, and this is exactly what Pompy are doing.

They have already launched themselves into the first round of mediation and they will pursue this course for all they are worth, purely to sustain the process.

Whilst "in mediation" this will not be set a new date for court, as it is seen that both parties are trying to reach settlement.

The hearing on 10.02.10 will be adjourned pending the outcome of mediation.

Like I said, expect this to rumble on for some time

I was just taking the opportunity to have a cheap dig at Portsmouth, tbh, I didn't expect a sober analysis of the business case!

oh sorry


been in shit work mode for too long !

Sort it out Elliot!

yeah, I will when I can grab a couple of hours away from work soapy clitoris wank

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8469950.stm

They're so fucked. The best bit about this is that Sol Campbell has image rights. Really?

Now being sued by Sol Campbell for £1.7m in missing payments he claims they owe him...

[EDIT] Doh! Beaten to it by Nemo

i'm sure campbell really needs that money.

Why is he suing them? Can't he just piggy back the winding up petition issued by HMRC? I was under the impression that any other creditors can join in once its been issued.

Frankly sick to death of the bloated corpulent bullshit that is post premier league / sky football.  Someone needs to go down.  Id rather it was united but if it has to be pompey so be it.  You cant go on frittering away money on shit like john utaka at 80k a week and being rescued by mysterious foreigners or not paying the revenue.  Whether campbell needs the money or not if they owe money and don't have the funds to pay it that is wrong.  I cant get away with it, why should a football club.

I know haven't exactly been the prime example of good practice, but hopefully now we are.

This wake up is needed.  

The Premier League won't lose sales in Asia and elsewhere if Portsmouth end up going the way of old Maidstone United.

Who would want to take this rotten to the core club on?

Surely the irony wasn't lost on the courts that the club were suggesting the VAT bill was too high yet their Chief Exec is being taken to court for tax evasion at the same time!

Does anyone really think that Portsmouth going in to administration will really have any effect?

It needs radical changes and a concerted effort from UEFA, the FA, Premier League and Football League to sort the problems out here. They need to do it soon as the Premier League is like a snow ball, getting bigger and bigger all the time with more and more money at stake.

I think the more pertinent question is whether any of us actually care whether Pompey go into administration?!

They arent my team, so I dont give two hoots, I dont recall that amount of fans of other teams showing us any sympathy in our dark past, so why should we in return?! I'm more inclined to feel sorry for fans of Chester, who have been shat upon left right and centre for the last couple of years, than a club that has illusions of grandeur because they won the FA cup.

Oh, I used to live on the south coast and pretty much every pompey supporter I met was a complete cock, that may have clouded my judgement.

The fall of Chester City is indeed sad viewing.

Especially now that dodgier and dodgy Morell Maison is involved.

A couple of weeks ago on the BBC Non League radio show Maison pretty much let it slip that he was brought in by Stephen Vaughan Sr. who is supposed to be banned from football.

Manchester United: Only £716 million in debt - Collection buckets at the Leeds game perhaps ;)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8470595.stm

Just £68m paid in interest !!

The Man Utd debt is a bit different from most clubs though as a large chunk of it was, in effect, used by Glazer to buy the club. So its not actual debt that the football club has run up.

The football authorities are half the problem. UEFA have been letting Real Madrid get away with their massive debt for years. They had an estimated £500m deficit BEFORE spending £250m last summer, and this is despite getting around £300m from their council 5 years ago to 'buy' their training ground....only for the the council to give it back to them.

It's still debt that could knacker the football club though. Doesn't matter if they spent it on players, new stands or a leveraged buyout, it's still there and it's dragging them down

Here's hoping.

And that's why it's also dragging down Liverpool.That is why Benitez keeps on going about qualifying for the Chumpions League, and why their new ground has been put on the back burner.

The Glazers are also taking millions out of Man U

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/jan/20/manchester-united-glazers-finances

Turned on Sky sports news at 6 when I got home. Campbell issues law suit, Storie in Court, HMRC continues with WUP.

The UN will be turning up soon its such a disaster zone.

I say we get rid of the Premiership and all Premiership clubs. Scrap the lot. Except maybe Burnley, they've not done anything wrong. The world would be a better place.

And Pompey moan that they are banned from signing players, so they want to sign players who they cannot afford and won't be able to pay the clubs, I'm an rather surprised that the rats haven't started to desert the sinking ship yet, I bet Avram Grant is gutted that he will be a championship manager next season

Oh and why is it in the PL if you go into admin you get a 9 point deduction but in the FL it is 10 points, surely it should be the same rules for all.

Less teams, therefore less games, therefore less points available. I think as a proportion of total points available the Premiership punishment is harsher than the League's. But it doesn't matter anyway because they'll never have to apply it because no Premiership club could possibly have financial difficulties, that nice Mr Scudamore said so.

Give them chance! I thought that Stoke were doing the correct thing, but all of a sudden they are starting to bid 10 mill for players, and will end up in the crap. Seems to be if they stay up they start getting stupid, about the only team that hasn't is WBA imo.

Apparently Udinese are now saying that they will go to court to sue Pompey for outstanding transfer money.

Join the club !!

I thought the PL were paying their outstanding football debts

Maybe they can sell that bloomin' bell on eBay or sell that tattooed chap to scientific research?

[url width=600 height=800]http://beefbagel.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/john-portsmouth-football-club-westwood.jpg[/url]

Every penny counts...

That man makes me feel physically sick!

I bets hes never taken a wife

Portsmouth are arguing the toss over that. They reckon the PL can only use the TV money for debts to UK clubs, and that they've either paid off or agreed a payment schedule with ALL the clubs they owe money to.

No, just the UK ones - there wasn't enough money to pay all of them anyway

Haha, that bloke is in the Golden Eagle (pub at the end of my road) all the time, he's actually alright.

What club does he support?

Before Portsmouth went into the Premier League, I heard that Arsenal was his Prem team :)

He was in the CGH for a pre season friendly a few years ago (the one before last).

He's an idiot and he stinks of piss.

Granted he's a bit fragant, however you can level this accusation at quite a number of CGH patrons too!

Tap patrons definately out fragrance CGH patrons.

What a pair of idiots, how much are they in debt? Sums up the stupid people who run these clubs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/w/west_ham_utd/8473694.stm

To be fair, they've basically said they're not running at as a business.

If it's that or go down, RvN would be worth every penny. Of course, if they were to go down with him, they'd be fucked.

I think they already know they're not going to get him, if they seriously think they still will, then revealing those kinds of figures while serious negotiations are still ongoing would appear to be a major bollock-drop. In fact I strongly suspect they entered the bidding knowing they wouldn't, but would be able to wave this demonstration of their "ambition" and "passion for the club" and general "Sven comes to Notts County"-ness in front of the fans and the media.

I think they seem to know what they are doing. They recognise that they can't spend stupid amounts on players and just want one big signing who can make a real difference. West Ham will be in a very difficult situation if they get relegated, and whilst it would be wild to assume that they'd suffer the same fate as Leeds, Southampton et al, there's always a chance it could happen. Staying in the PL this season would be a huge boost.

Not looking great for Portsmouth paying staff on time this week either:

This is in a story where they're denying a possible takover by Gadaffi's son - raising the interesting possibilty they could go from a Premier League transfer embargo straight into UN sanctions

It's a rumour started by Southampton fans on local radio - apparently.

Quite possibly as it's on the back page of the Mirror, so almost certainly bullshit. But they'd really need to go to those kinds of lengths if they want to take the whole "basket case club" thing to the next level.

The quote about "Who knows?" re wages is from soccernet, btw, not the Mirror. So that's probably bullshit as well, but then any journo who wants can make up pretty much anything they like about Portsmouth these days - what are Pompey going to do about it? Sue them for damage to their reputation?

Apparently their transfer embargo is to be lifted as they have agreed repayments with other clubs - so they have just to agree repayments with the clubs that they won't be able to afford to pay when they sign players, how pathetic, they have not got any money and face the HMRC in a high court showdown yet the PL will allow them to rack up more debt that they cannot afford or pay

Loans and free's evidently

Will have to take the hit on wages mind, unless they can unload players (hardly like it as they are down to the bare bones now !)

Another club with millions of debt who will eventually be back in business after going through administration and that millions of debt having been agreed to be paid back probably at a rate of 5p for every pound they owe.  More money the public purse should be getting being defaulted on.

I have no sympathy.  It disgusts me that these clubs (us included in the past) can continue to trade like this.  Its the regular man in the street whois being screwed.

Grr.

I've never been a fan of Barry Hearn but he talked a lot of sense on the Late Kick Off. He said he'll never let Orient borrow a single penny when he's in charge, clubs that spent what they can't afford are cheats and any club going in to administration should be demoted two divisions.

I like the sound of the last bit, with that hanging over clubs I doubt so many would fuck about with money like they do at present. A 10 point deduction means fuck all, going down two divisions would hurt every club it happens to.

Barry Hearn is in the process of trying to sell Brisbane Road to one of his own companies and lease it back to the club, which the Orient fans are against.

Here's some links fron the Leyton Orient Fans Trust (LOFT) :

http://www.leytonorientfanstrust.com/story.asp?storyChosen=174

http://www.leytonorientfanstrust.com/story.asp?storyChosen=176

Pompey have now had their website taken down as they haven't paid the operator. If it's Premium TV I don't think they've lost much!

http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/

Edit: Also, Begovic and Kaboul are in talks with Spurs- anyone still taking bets on them getting relegated? I might put every penny I own on it.

But how are they going to communicate their "No, it's fine, really, there's no problem, honest, gov, you see we're expecting this postal order from our very rich aunt....." bullshit when they fail to pay the players again tomorrow?

The Friday smoke signal statement with Peter Storrie!

It's just come back. Must have found £20 down the back of the sofa

Hahahahah, just went on the site and one of the first links is for Portsmouth FC financial services:

http://www.pfcfinancialservices.co.uk/home/

Anyone keen?

What a fantastic irony. You just couldn't make it up.

Having thought about it, I reckon it's a wind up. It just seems to deliberate to be for real.

Its not like Portsmouth are running any of those financial services. They are all provided and run by banks and credit card companies who pay Portsmouth a commission for the business they get through them. Lots of clubs do it, Swindon have in the past, just to earn a few extra quid.

Looks like they won't be paying wages on time again:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/28/portsmouth-warn-staff-over-wages

And the CEO only found out about Kaboul being sold to Spurs after talks had started:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8486073.stm

But given the charges Storrie's facing for tax-dodging relating to transfers you've got to love this quote:
These people really have no idea, do they?

Especially given that it was Spurs/Redknapp involved as well.

Spurs are after Kaboul?! Weird...

What is it with Redknapp??!! He loves bringing back ex spurs players doesn't he? Chimbonda, Keane, Defoe and now Kaboul.

Chimbonda?

Double bubble on the brown envelopes?

And the pompey keeper Spurs are after. Being sold behind Avram Grants back apparently.

Was that pompey keeper not the one playing for bournemouth when we dicked them 4-1 a couple of seasons ago. Paynter got a hat tirck?

If so he was terrible!

Yeah that's the guy!

You have to remember that half of those were only ex Spurs because they got bought by Redknapp himself. Crouch to was (sorta) ex Spurs to.

In 18 months we will either be in the same league as Portsmouth, or in the one above.

Actually if we get promoted twice in a row (and this is what I am hoping for having invested in a 3 year ST) then we will be two divisions above them in 2011/12.

They are going to sink like a stone.

THey realyl are in the Sh!t I like it where Peter "Jacka" Storry says his position is untenable and things are being done behind his back - then he says he's staying as he wants to help, he is the one that has attracted these "owners" and has caused a lot of the problems there

Nothing like a bit of blind optimism! :)

I too can see them following their south coast neighbours down to League 1 the way things are going.

Peter Storrie has been Chief exec at West Ham, Southend and Pompey.

All three have had money worries in the last year.

Coincidence !?

Storrie's salary at Pompey...In excess of £1m a year !! (That's when it gets paid of course !!)

I heard a ridiculous stat about pompey today.  The ratio of wages to turnover is 95 percent.  How the fuck can you expect to run on 5 percent of your turnover.

Ridiculous.

A Portsmouth fan who bought their old company name for a bit of fun is now getting landed with their very un-fun debts and court orders for hundreds of thousands:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/31/portsmouth-fan-told-pay-club-debts

Serves him right

'tard

That is funny but you have to feel for the guy a bit. 

Be interesting to know where he stands from a legal standpoint.

If he'd bought it on a false premise he'd probably be alright i'd imagine.

Ironically this would then screw up portsmouth even more

See that Pompey are now being taken over by the Hong Kong chap that was loaning al mirage the money as mirage has defaulted on his payment he owes something like £20m, I sure this is all just a smokescreen though as they are due in court next week to face the hmrc winding up order, this new chap will send his messenger to say he has just taken over and needs time to evaluate the club to see what can be done and where the money will come from thus getting a stay of execution, previous owner Gaydamak still owed a fair wack of cash also

What's that now, the fourth takeover in one season? Surely if they keep going, they have to find someone with some money eventually

The news about Avram and his brothel visit,that we all knew about has finally been published
in the national media.

I had to smile when i saw the name of his wife.  ;D

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/news/7151797/Avram-Grant-Premier-League-bosss-brothel-visit.html

I'm thinking of taking them over myself, I've got a couple of hundred quid stashed away.

You'll be overpaying...by a couple of hundred quid !!!

With that much, you'd have enough change to buy Notts County and still have a day out by the sea.

Or pay for the manager to have half an hour with one of his whores

Chanrai has money, he just has no interest in football, the only reason he's taken over is to get his loan back.

So, hoping for a quick turnround and a new takeover asap then?

Hertha, I've put my name down to be Portsmouth owner for April, do you want to sign up to force me out in May?

I'm on holiday in May. Can you get Fred to do it and I'll take over in June?

I think Peter Trembling and Sven are pencilled in for June, but I don't imagine they'll hang round long. Is July OK for you?

Can I do it by proxy?

Nearly as many owners as P'Boro have had managers this season and Franchise have had in it's existence

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article7014791.ece

Nothing story really, as he's got 4 bad backs and probably needs a massage.  With this buyout thing, am i reading it right, in the fact that it's the guy who leant another guy some money to buy it? So in effect they are as skint or skinter than they were yesterday?

Yeah, basically the debt was secured against the club and Chinrai has called it in and reposessed the club- as I said earlier, he genuinely is a rich man, but doesn't want to own the club and is only interested in getting his money back- luckily for Pompey, he'll probably find it harder to do that if they're relegated so he might need to be medium-termist about it and get them a few decent free players to try and stay up.

The guy who writes the Grauniad's Digger column was on t'radio earlier and from what he said there may be more to this than meets the eye, certainly very odd at least. Remember the last but three owner Sacha Gaydamak (the guy who sold up in the summer)? There was always a suspicion that he was actually only acting for his Dad, Arcady Gaydamak who has interests in French and Israeli clubs, but who couldn't himself buy Portsmouth because he is that very rarest of creatures - one of the few people in the known universe who would actually fail the Fit and Proper Persons Test due to having a couple of fraud/financial shenannigans convictions stacked up in Israel.

So your man Chainrai used to be a business partner of Gaydamak Snr, but they fell out. Which ended up in Chainrai suing Gaydamak Snr for the money he was owed and winning about £17m last October. Which he then promptly invested in Portsmouth, not the most obvious thing to do with £17m you've just fought tooth and nail through the courts to get back from the father of the guy who used to own the club (and who may or may not have been acting as a proxy for his Dad) and who himself still owns a sizeable chunk of the club's property assets and is owed £20+m from when he sold up. Bearing in mind that Portsmouth was already a basketcase back in October, which clearly had no proper assets, a mountain of creditors and a shitload of debt

So it's that slightly odd investment which has given Chainrai control of the club, a club he apparently doesn't really want for itself, but just as a means of getting his money back. But why in hell did he put it in in the first place?

Pompey currently employ a lawyer convicted of fraud ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/feb/03/portsmouth-mark-jacob-premier-league

Page 4 of this thread. Do keep up.

They don't just employ him though - up until this new takeover, he was pretty much running the club in a "I'm not a shadow director, I'm just a trusted consultant/adviser to the family/general manager" kind of way, in flagrant breach of PL regs and the increasingly exposed as not fit to wipe your arse on FPPT. It was him that negotiated the transfers Storrie and Grant knew nothing about.

Sorry !!! :D

What kind of tinpot club would allow a convicted criminal do something like that?

...Oh.

We've been way out-tinpotted here. As Mr Storrie said when he was punting the al-Miraj "consortium" first time round (failed bid over the summer before they actually took over in the Autumn when it turned out Fahim was full of more shit than actual cash)
As indeed they subsequently did. Not even Mikey D managed to get our website closed down.

You couldn't make this shit up - Ali Al Faraj is planning to challenge the Balram Chainrai take over in court, if he wins he would be their 5th owner of the season:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8497491.stm

You've got to wonder what is really going on. With 3 different owners this season who were all only interested in making a short term profit from the club, surely they must have seen something to make them think there was profit. Or maybe they're just twats.

They probably see the TV money that comes in and the lure of owning a PL club.

The latest owners has applied to HMRC to postpone the court case set for next week, I can't see why HMRC would dothat as pompey have not got any money to pay them they have already borrowed against their income from their share of TV revenue (See West Ham).

What happens if HMRC put pompey into admin Gaydamak claims to be owned more than them I assue he then becomes biggest creditor and can then vote for whatever takeover he see's fit being the biggest creditor - but can pompey go into admin with the only assests being the playing staff and office furniture ?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/news/7163527/Managing-Portsmouth-drives-Avram-to-massages-says-wife.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/news/7163527/Managing-Portsmouth-drives-Avram-to-massages-says-wife.html)


"He's the manager of Portsmouth. Do you know how tough that is? He's a great manager stuck in a crappy team."


Oh dear.

He's gets paid quite a bit of money to be manager of Pompey....Oh.

That's genius

"He can do whatever he likes with his body."

Rise up Sisters!

I know it's a cliche but, really, you couldn't make it up. Like a cross between The Thick of It, Footballers' Wives and Monty Python

I bet she takes it up the arse. I love modern girls :D

Fuck me, she's drunk her own piss on TV as well:


I reckon Portsmouth will end up selling their story to Hollywood and get more than enough money for it to cover their debts. There's probably even a sequel in it. Only problem is the critics in the USA will brand it "ridiculous and totally unbelievable".

Has the prostitute been paid yet?

We should make her England captain

Apparently she hasn't put her invoice in yet - she takes it in arrears

She must have pretty big lug holes then!

Someone's been watching their Tommy Cooper xmas dvd...

:D

Nice to see the team showing solidarity with the off-field management today by showing they know how to score a hatful of own goals too

Following the Avram Grant  brothel philosophy of 'any holes a goal'.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/721516/LIGHTS-OUT-FOR-PORTSMOUTH.html

"Members of fans' group the Portsmouth Supporters' Trust want to create their own version of FC United, the club set up by Manchester United fans in protest against the Glazer family.

The new team, dubbed 'AFC Pompey', would go into the Zamaretto Southern League - six divisions below the Premier League.

Pompey legend Guy Whittingham and former Republic of Ireland midfielder Alan McLoughlin are being lined up as the management team. "

Abandon ship!

Just a thought, if Pompey go out of business in The Championship, will that mean four will go up from Division One?

No, I think it's one less team gets relegated.

If they don't have over half their team out of contract at the end of this season they'll be in huge trouble over the summer.

And if they do, they'll be in huge trouble over the summer as nobody will join them.

Apparently 2 seperate groups have expressed interest in taking over, not sure who would want such a basket case club so wonder if it would be Avram's brothel Madam and HMRC  :)

I think they're trying to do to HMRC, what Notts County did 4 weeks ago, and say that they are speaking to investors as a delaying tactic.

Pompey in court today - I suspect they will pay part of what they owe and get more time to pay the rest or they will go into admin can't see anything else happening

They will get an extension of 28 days, if they fail to get an owner, will go into administration on the 27th day of the 28 day extension I would imagine.

Also Cardiff, Chester and Southend should find out their futures today.

Apparently not - according to the Beeb, they offered that and HMRC told them to stuff it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8505321.stm

Luiquidation hearing starting right about now.

I honestly don't know what I would like to see happen.  I can't see the club being liquidated, but if it did happen it would be a tragedy for the fans.  On the other hand, I really think the whole of football needs a massive wake-up call to show that thins cannot go on as they are at the moment, and a premier league club going out of business may do exactly that. 

Administration is my best guess - the only problem here (and who are we to cast the first stone here...) is that many creditors go unpaid.

Good article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/feb/10/portsmouth-cardiff-hmrc-winding-up

Case adjourned until 2pm...

Cardiff and Southend WUP's adjourned for 28 days...

Pompey decision now imminent...

I thought it was adjourned until 2pm?

Have they died yet?

HMRC reckon they're owed 11.5m, and their lawyers believe Pompey are insolvent. Pompey are bringing up the usual stuff about takeovers in the hope of an adjournment.

On death's door...

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/football/4999259.Portsmouth_are__insolvent_/?ref=rss

Seven day adjournment.

With a deadline of Monday to file a "statement of affairs". What's Avram's private life got to do with it?

Maybe he claimed the bill on expenses?

Apparently Avram's hookers have more assets than the club.

Can't see how they can arrange to pay back they money that they owe - sounds like the judge is taking into account all other debts also - they clearly have no money and who is going to buy them with such massive debts to clear straight away

From what the judge said it really doesn't look good for them. I reckon it will take a major investor / takeover to convince the judge that they aren't insolvent and can trade out of the whole they are in. With the debt levels they are talking about I'd be amazed if they manage to convince someone else to piss their money away.

Potentially the biggest problem they have is that HMRC don't give a flying fuck about the money, the principle is far more important to them as it sends out a message to every they they won't take any shit. Given the choice between half the money they are owed and pushing ahead with the bankruptcy (and getting fuck all money) they will go for bankruptcy every single time.

From the size of their debts they'd need to reduce their wage bill to that of a good league 1 club whilst staying in the premier league to actually pay it off over any sort of reasonable period

If (when) they go in to administration, I'm pretty certain HMRC won't be able to block any rescue plans as they aren't owed a high enough percentage of the total - the various previous owners will control the decision. Which means we could very well see someone buying the club for a few pence in the pound and they get to start again with a clean slate.

Worst thing about that is HMRC will be beyond pissed and will start taking it out on every other club that owes them money.

According to the summary on R5 the main reason the judge has given an adjournment is so Portsmouth can have chance they can prove they're not trading insolvently - but he expressed serious reservations that they'd be able to do so. They wanted 21 days, he's given them a week, unless they can prove they're not trading insolvently, that could be it.

At least Peter Storrie's confident that there are "interested parties" who can "turn the club round" (again) - so that's good, because his word's proven to be absolutely reliable throughout all this. About as reliable as his tax returns.

It's a bit of a toss-up really isn't it as to who looks worst in all this - Storrie or Scudamore.

Surely they are trading insolvantly given that they seem to be borrowing more and more money each month just to pay the wage bill?

I don't fully know the ins and outs of this, but the R5 reporter talking about it last night was saying that even administration might not do allow them to start again as Gaydamuk has somehow managed to ring-fence the £20m+ he's owed so that he gets full whack even in an x pence in the pound administration. Which tbh I'd have thought was bullshit, but he sounded pretty convinced about it.

Gaydamuk still owns the land around the ground any new owners would need in order to redevelop the ground. It's worthless in its own right as it's covenanted only to be used for the FC, but equally anyone who takes on the FC, even if they can get it back to some kind of health, can't redevelop the ground without Gaydamuk's co-operation. Maybe that's how he's secured his £20m on a pound for pound basis

Look, let them die.

I dont wish ill on the supporters, I have friends who are pompey supporters but I would say the same to them.

How many clubs are getting out of paying what they owe in taxes and therefore to the public purse at the moment.  Quite a lot.  So we end up not getting the money to put into services for the good of the country because some fuckwit has run a club like a cunt, it can't continue, its morally wrong.  I pay taxes, sometimes a little late, but I pay them, I dont expect the taxpayer to do it for me. 

David Conn writes about it in the guardian today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/feb/10/portsmouth-cardiff-hmrc-winding-up

I thank AF and co for trying to run our club sensibly.  It could have been us going tits up.  Someone big has too to stop the culture of ridiculous spending in football continuing.

First pictures of Portsmouth's proposed new kit:

[url width=200 height=267]http://www.mclarke.com.au/Pictures/Barrister.jpg[/url]

Rumours are that Chadari is considering putting some money into the club to keep it going as he stands to lose a lot of money if they go under

Who? Are you sure you're not just making up random names to keep it interesting?

I worry about our justice system. Quoted in the paper today

"it seems to me that there is a very real risk that they are undoubtedly trading while insolvent"

I believe the response is 'FFS'

I'm not sure if that even makes sense.

"Very real risk" and "undoubtedly" ???

Kind of treading on my point there BR...

I had heard earlier in the week, that Portsmouth were trying to use future parachute payments
as a way of raising capital.Today's Guardian article would seem to support this story.

Convicted fraudster Daniel Azougy and Ken Dulieu,who was involved with Southampton Leisure Holdings,
remain in the background.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/11/portsmouth-avram-grant-fa-tax

Crisis what crisis Mr Scudamore? Nice to show that you've got your finger on the pulse of
fans worries over leveraged debt.Never mind Richard, all is well because we're set for a
"thrilling" end to the season.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/7215692/Richard-Scudamore-contemplates-business-end-of-a-thrilling-Premier-League-season.html

This weeks owner

Chadari != Chainrai

Surely the only real solution is to let Greece play in the Premier League and Portsmouth take their place in the Euro?

Don't be silly - Lewis Hamilton will take their place and Portsmouth will be driving for McLaren next year.

Or maybe we could trade their place in the PL to the winner of the hardest animal competition, on the promise of a bye for PFC into next year's second round, perhaps guaranteeing them an unseeded opponent such as the adder?

Kind of, or undoubtedly?

There's a real risk of it being undoubtedly..

Hoping the bloke with the bell cries this afternoon after defeat by the saints

Is it which commentator can bum Ricky Lambert the most?
He's no Billy Paynter.

Correct. I laughed so hard when they were bigging up his freekick delivery, and he smashed a cross from the wing into the one-man wall, at knee height.

Lee Barnard was even worse :D

David James thinks Pompey will still exist in a few weeks' time because "it's too important for football that a top flight club doesn't go under". Why should top flight clubs be any different to any other? In case he hadn't realised, they've only kept themselves in the top flight by pissing away money they didn't have.

I'm not part of the "just let them die" brigade having seen STFC in the same situation, but they have no divine right to keep trading when insolvent.

And another copmlaint about the commentator - saying Pompey and Saints could be playing in the same division next year. My arse. Saints are 16 (SIXTEEN) points off the play-offs.

Ive met Westwood :D

Agree with this, it is sad when any club goes under, whether Premier League, League 2 or Southern Division.

I've noticed chairmen of other clubs getting a bit more vocal about it recently. One from the 2nd division was bitching about Notts County beating them as they had better players, which his club couldn't afford and as it turns out neither could Notts County.

You could argue the same with Portsmouth - they've kept their place in the Premier League using players they can't afford, robbing a well run club in the Championship of a place. Though obviously that argument falls apart when you consider most of the Championship clubs are spending money they can't afford either.

One of the papers said the government are considering appointing a football regulator, primarily to sort the financial mess out. Not sure I'd be in favour of that, but maybe the threat alone will be enough for football to get its house in order.

Some of it needs to come from the fans though, as they aren't blameless. I was listening to a phone in the other day and there were fans of numerous clubs saying that their clubs needed investment, solely to bring in better players so they could get promoted or challenge for the title. Probably the only fans that wouldn't want investment solely in players are those that support clubs that have come close to going to the wall.

It was happening here pre-season - people demanding more money to be spent etc. If we weren't winning people would be once again saying how Fitton needs to open his wallet. Bollocks i say, you can see what it does to clubs, i wouldn't want to be like we once were ever again.

Also, the fans are blameless in my opinion, it's not like they're spending the money, thank fuck, it's dumb chairmen with their egos and dreams. The fans are merely giving them a gentle nudge. :)

Well thats alright then, fuck me football is saved. Hellelujah. Another fucking quango.

Doesn't FIFA get rather touchy about Governments interfering in football anyway?

In terms of the rules, yes. But I think even FIFA might struggle to come up with an argument against a body to enforce/encourage the financial stability of clubs. It never stops them trying though!

Dodgy (mainly foreign) types buy clubs and spend money they dont have chasing the dream.

Government appoints regulator, probablly well paid and on tasty public sector pension, paid for by the taxpayer. No doubt reglator will have fuck all in the way of power either.

What a fantastic situation.

I know it's wrong considering what we've been through, but i really want Pompey to go under.

Amen to that brother

Some of them do think they are a premier league club so can't possibly go under (see David James)

It may actually be a wakeup call to the PL if pompey went under or into admin

Its harsh on pompey fans, but I really think that they need to go under for something serious to happen with football finances.  No one will care if its a lower league team, it needs to be someone big-ish.

I don't want them to go under, but I do want them to spiral down the leagues whilst trying to stay in existence.

Quangos are the saviour of all humanity. I'd love to see Portsmouth go under. A precedent needs to be set and if it means a prem club going under, cool. Also, it'll likely mean 1 extra auto place in all leagues no?

To go off on quangos quickly, one recently compiled a 63 page report on how fitting average speed cameras across the whole motorway network and eventually having car's speeds restricted (automatically) should be introduced to reduce our carbon footprint. Someone with a speeding issue paying lip service to environmental issues in the hope of grinding their axe?

Why is it harsh on them? They've had a good few seasons in the PL and an FA Cup Final, which the club simply couldn't afford and now others are going to end up paying for it. I doubt there were many (if any) of them that were complaining about the over spending when things were going well, so its tough shit now its all gone wrong.

I doubt they will go under though, most likely administration and someone buying them on the cheap with the majority of the debts being written off - the same as always.

Its harsh because no-one really knew what was going on. Gaydamark is worth a few quid so could afford to pump some money in, the fans didnt know what the players were being paid or where the money was coming from to pay for it. The fans didnt sanction players at a club with a 20,000 ground being paid £80k a week or whatever, and even if they did object to it what the fuck are they going to do exactly?

Its all very well saying they enjoyed their day in the sun etc, but with hindsight if you gave them the choice of winning the cup and the current situation or no cup win and a few years worth of relegation struggles, they'd pick the latter.

I do think theres something dodgy though. Redknapp was allowed to spend a lot of money, but to be fair to him a lot of the players who were then sold were sold at a profit.  Ok those same players were on big money, but the likes of Crouch, Defoe, Diarra were only there 2 seasons, so how the fuck are they the best part of £100m in debt now?

Is Terry Brady still involved there?  After leaving us when the front garden deal collapsed he ended up at Portsmough, and with all the changes going on there...

More likely that one less team will be relegated from the prem.

There will still need to be an extra promotion place somewhere in the league ladder though - if one fewer is relegated from the prem but you still promote three from the championship, the championship will be left with 23 teams, and so forth.

will also go up ?

Yeah, I knew that. I was just testing you. It was a simple test, but don't get complacent.

Do I get any kind of reward?

[url width=373 height=499]http://www.pickle-it.com/catalog/images.php?id=16[/url]

Good work, thank you.

Pompey have to hand in their financial statement to the courts by 4pm today - wonder if they have managed to employ Diamandis to convince the court they have money

By the BBC, they say they've delivered it...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8519103.stm

And I see previous owner al Fahim is in trouble in Dubai :


http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100217/NATIONAL/702169823/1133/BUSINESS

 

DUBAI // A court has issued an arrest warrant for Sulaiman al Fahim, the former public face of Hydra Properties and host of the business-themed reality television show Hydra Executives, for failing to pay a debt of more than Dh8 million.

The warrant was issued last Thursday after a ruling against Mr al Fahim by the Dubai Property Court in January last year in connection with a property dispute.

An investor from Azerbaijan demanded to be repaid after a development by Mr al Fahim’s company, Al Buraq Development and Investment, failed to go ahead in Dubai, court documents show.

An arrest warrant has also been issued against Saqr Abdullah Mohammed, the owner of another Dubai company involved in the deal, Ghantoot Star General Trading.

 

The Dubai Property Court ordered Mr al Fahim, who is also the former owner of the English Premier League football club Portsmouth, to repay the Azerbaijani investor, identified as AM, a total of Dh8,634,836 (US$2.3m) – the original Dh8m he invested plus court and legal fees.

In its judgment, the court said a nine per cent daily penalty would be imposed from the date of the first court hearing until the date the sum was repaid. By that rule, it would mean that, up until today, Dh374,579,070 was owed.

Mr al Fahim, who is believed to be in Britain, faces only a local arrest warrant, not an international one.

Sources close to the investigation said an Interpol red notice had not been filed. It would be the likely next step for the UAE authorities should they want Mr al Fahim extradited. Mr al Fahim would be arrested if he were to re-enter the UAE or any UAE embassy or government building.

A spokesman for Mr al Fahim was unable to comment on the case.

The court documents said Mr al Fahim had cleared almost all his assets from this country. Inquiries sent by the court to local banks found that Mr al Fahim had transferred all his local funds to undisclosed overseas locations.

The Dubai Land Department said he personally owned only one plot of land in the emirate, in Mirdiff, and sold it after the court judgment was issued against him on January 14 last year.

It was also disclosed that Mr al Fahim owned assets worth only Dh3,000 in stocks in the UAE.

The court said in its judgment sheet that the amount demanded was large in comparison to the amount requested by the plaintiff, but was small in comparison with the assets Mr al Fahim is believed to hold.

The judgment was issued to effect immediate repayment by the defendant, it said.

The case was registered on October 24, 2008, after AM signed purchase contracts with Al Buraq Development and Investment for two floors, off-plan, at the Sky Tower development in Business Bay.

AM bought floors 12 and 14 of the tower for Dh23,102,343. In June 2006, he paid just over Dh8m up front.

The investor was promised that the tower would be completed by the end of 2008. But one year into the project, he learnt that building work had not started and he decided to investigate.


 

Dubai Properties, which initially owned the land, even claimed that the land was never handed to Al Buraq Development and Investment in the first place, as Al Buraq did not meet the terms of the deal that had been agreed.

In November 2008, Mr al Fahim’s defence lawyers told the court that the plot was sold to Ghantoot Star General Trading for Dh97,500,000 and that Al Buraq and Mr al Fahim no longer had any involvement in the case.


 

The legal team asked for Mr al Fahim’s name to be dropped from the case.

The court refused to drop the case against Mr al Fahim, saying the deal was made between him and the plaintiff before the alleged sale of the project. The plot remains undeveloped.

Mr al Fahim, 32, amassed a fortune through his Abu Dhabi-based Hydra Properties empire, which is behind a number of developments across the UAE.

He has regularly courted the limelight, particularly in his role as host of the Hydra Executives reality TV programme.


 

In March last year, he was named the world’s fourth most influential Arab by Arabian Business magazine and was elected as the first president of the newly formed Arab Union for Real Estate Development.

He hit the international headlines last year with his protracted purchase of ailing Portsmouth FC.

The deal took almost three months to complete and his ownership lasted little more than 40 days after he failed to inject capital and pay the players’ wages on time.

This triggered a takeover by the Saudi Arabian property magnate Ali al Faraj.

Mr al Fahim, who stepped down as chief executive of Hydra Properties during his purchase of the club, remains on the company’s board.

Neither Mr al Fahim nor Ghantoot Star General Trading were available for comment last night.

More details are emerging as to their level of debt,as indicated in their statement of affairs,
filed this afternoon.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article7030994.ece

They'll be fine, they only owe £1.75 wages this month.

£1.75, my lunchtime sandwich costs more

Flash bastard. Bet you get your jewellery from Ratners too don't you?

Fuck sake, they not gone bust yet?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8522283.stm

And if you listen very carefully, you'll hear the sounds of the barrel being scraped.

Anyone want this lovely John Utaka, yours for only 20p and a packet of Wotsits?

Shouldnt be allowed.

Wouldnt happen to anyone else, but thats just my opinion.

The downside is hes on 80 grande a week.....any takers?...

Not going to happen. FIFA won't allow it.

Didnt he come out in the press and say he was on 1/3 of that?

Probably.....anyway the point is that a smaller club would have gone under by now...cant change the rules just for them.

Did they try to shift any of these players in January? If they did, and nobody wanted them then, what's going to be different 3 weeks on? If they didn't then it's their own fault.

I thought there was a special rule in the Football League for clubs to sell players due to financial reasons, though its possible this was a good few years ago and it got removed when the new transfer windows and emergency loans system came in to place.

I don't see the problem with allowing it, providing they are in the hands of the administrator and that they don't gain anything from it player wise - no signing of decent players to replace those sold even if it means fielding a youth team.

But as others have said, why the fuck didn't they offload everyone in January to help balance the books?

They tried to and couldn't shift them, even the ones they were trying to get shot of an a free. And for the same reason that they're in this shit in the first place - they offered the players stupid wages that they now can't afford to pay and astonishingly other clubs aren't keen to either.

I suppose there's an outside chance some clubs may be more interested now if they've picked up a couple of long-term injuries they didn't anticipate in Jan, but if this is their genius scheme for saving the club, they may as well put the padlocks on now.

They actually signed someone in Jan didn't they? That Portuguese defender. Idiots.

They signed quite a few both loan's and freebies, surely if they was / are that much in debt etc then they should have been under a full transfer embargo so they could not sign anyone, I bet the players are looking forward to pay day

It's the other staff, on salaries that they really need to cover their expenses, that I feel sorry for, not players on tens of thousands a week.

Interesting.

If the request is granted, I predict that we will move in to sign Matt Ritchie.

what a joke of a club, the sooner they go under the sooner we dont have to listen to that fucking bell anymore.

That won't even cover their tea and biscuits.

All this because the current owner won't put them into admin as he would get very little of his money back.

Of course, if the judge lets HMRC get their winding up petition next week, the owner will get sweet FA.

It's a typical game of brinkmanship from an owner that's prepared to run the risk of the club disappearing altogether in the hope of getting some of his dosh back.

Fuck. There's something oddly familiar about that isn't there. I don't remember 5live doing a live fans forum at the County Ground Hotel when we were a couple of days away from being wound up, but I suppose the world begins and ends with the Prem nowadays.

Why would any club want to pay for pompey players now anyway?  Just wait a few weeks and I reckon they'll get them for free

Answer: Harry Redknapp.

I'm sure he'll be happy to help.

Exactly. They are due to go back to court on March 1st, a few days after the players are due to be paid...but they'll probably be late...again, depending on the outcome of the winding-up petition.

One thing I don't get is what happens if the winding up order is granted. Doesn't that mean a receiver will be appointed to liquidate the club? Or will they go in to administration before it's granted? Or can they do it after? Or will the receiver put it in to administration before liquidation? Any experts out there?

Winding up = receiver = liquidation. No way back.

Administration = insolvency practioner = possible survival.

That was my understanding, so why with the winding up order potentially being issued are they still talking about administration? Or would the judge give them the option of administration instead of the winding up order?

There is no option. You either petition for administration or a winding up order. If HMRC are going for the WUO then that is game over.

I think if they go into admin, effectively all the debts are frozen and the Administrator would be appointed to see if the club can become a going concern again. Liquidation would be they think the club is completely insolvent and the assets divided up under insolvency rules, HMRC are no longer a preferred creditor.

I think HMRC and Pompey are playing a bit of brinkmanship, if Pompey stave off the winding up order then they aviod going into admin and the 10 points deduction. The current owner would lose most of the £17m he has loaned if say administrators settled 5p in the £1. HMRC are pushing for the winding up order in the hope Pompey settle their debt as if the go into admin they get treated as a normal creditor at say 5p in the £1.

So basically it would be for the court to decide if the club has a chance of paying the debt hence the court ordering in specialist insolvency accountants.

What I'm not sure of is if Pompey went into liquidation is if the football preferred creditors rule applies as if Pompey could no longer trade then basically their place in the Premier/Football League isn't worth anything. The football creditors rule ensures other clubs get paid in full, if they didn't the League wouldn't allow them to take part and a football club as a business has no chance of survival if they can't join the league competition and would have to liquidate. HMRC have challenged it in the courts and if went against them so they have lost millions as a result

I'm not so sure that HMRC are playing brinkmanship, when Swindon's new board attended their first Trust meeting IIRC they made it clear that not only were Swindon 24 hours from being wound up but that the patience of HMRC had snapped and that they were now actively looking for a club to wind up.

Quite. From personal experience (several times) they don't fuck about. HMRC have no view on how valuable or useful or how much heritage you have as a business, they just want what they are owed. Not negotiable.

 
I accept what you're saying about HMRC, but I believe they have lost patience as you say with football clubs and looking at the most likely method to get the money owed to them and in full. Administration isn't necessarily the best option for HMRC and if Pompey are still desparately trying to avoid it still then HMRC will look to force their hand in making them pay up. If Pompey can find the money then they get HMRC off their backs and just keep limping on.

I can't see that there is any other option for Pompey but administration unless they find the money to pay HMRC e.g get the Premier League to advance the £14m parachute payment. They're going down anyway to they may as well take the 9 point deduction but the current owner. The problem is that Chainrai and the previous ower Gadaymak may have too much to lose by administration (unless their loans are secured, say against the ground) as they just become unsecured creditors.

The whole thing is a mess and I'm sure in time it will unwind what really happened but the scenario is a reminder of how close we came.

Don't even own the ground do they?

There was something on 5 Live tonight that they own the ground but Gadaymak own's the surrounding land so the redevelopment potential is limited

HMRC do not do brinkmanship. They do pay us the money you owe us in full or we'll do everything we can to shut you down. They'd prefer getting nothing and winding up the business than getting 50p in the £1. For them its not just about getting all the money they are owed, its about sending out a message that you can't fuck with them so others won't try to.

Plus they're pissed off with all football clubs and want to cause as much pain as possible until the shit stops.

If I remember rightly when we first went into Administration there was a Football League rule that it you went into admin, that you had to pay HMRC in full as well as football creditors. That rule has been changed and clubs have gone down the Administration route and HMRC have lost out. Like you say HMRC are right pissed off and it Pompey went into liquidation it would put a rocket up the arse of a lot of clubs.

So if they get liquidated is it a case of players contracts become null and void so they are all free to move on for free or does the insolvency person move in and sell everything including the kitchen sink for whatever anyone will pay including players and pompey are immediately no longer exisit ? 

No they liquidate the players as well. It's kind of like the Pharoahs being buried with their slaves, concubines etc - when the business goes down, they line all the players up and shoot them. It's a kindness really, no-one wants to see the streets cluttered up with homeless Utakas wandering about the place.

I see the PL are defending the F&PPT, which like Pompey's defence, is full of holes...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8522777.stm

Pompey's rivals are not a happy bunch at the prosepct of them selling players to their relegation rivals and they come up with a good point

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11661_5958885,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8522283.stm

Be a joke if fifa let this happen

And meanwhile, another new owner being lined up (and incredibly, somebody is apparently still letting Storrie conduct these negotiations):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/19/portsmouth-ownership-victor-cattermole

Will be a far bigger joke if the winding up order is granted and Pompey are liquidated. All their results will be expunged which will affect a lot of other teams. Which will make the Premier League look pretty bad. Still can't see it happening. Some kind of deal will be worked out, maybe not to save Pompey but to ensure they complete their fixtures.

I'm wondering if they might advance all the Premier League money due to them (TV money, parachute payments for the next few years) on the condition they aren't wound up till the season ends. Good thing from the creditors point of view is that they'd probably get at least 50% of their money back.

Isn't it funny how all these owners are either UAE or Hong Kong based, the last few have been hong kong, probably all from the same group

It won't make that much difference, most teams beat them anyway, so they'll all have the same amount of points deducted

Disagree, we would be in moral hazard territory. Like the banks, football can't keep taking the piss, a line has to be drawn somewhere thank god it wasn't us.

I wasn't referring to them being wound up being a joke. Just that the Premier League would be a joke if it happened before the end of the season and their results were expunged - though I find it hard to believe they will let it happen.

there is a simple solution to the points problem:  liquidate them, expunge all the points, but double the parachute payment to those that go down;  they can take the extra cash out of the total fund for the next year or two.  Mind you, it could backfire, can just see bolton and hull having games where 95 own goals were scored...

Rejected:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8522283.stm

And need to find £22m to finish the season apparently:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/20/portsmouth-high-court

Bring on the next round of the carnival

Always thought they'd be bailed out somehow, still do,  but £22m just to finish the season - bloody hell! - time is running out.

You'd think this would be the stimulus the FL and Premier League bods need sit round a table to work out how to stop the game from imploding.  But it seems they don't actually care.

In all honesty I think there's very little they can do, bar scrapping the Premier League and thus the incentives to chuck stupid amounts of cash into black holes in hope of promotion etc. As much as that sounds like a good idea, it wouldn't be supported by any team in or near the premier League and therefore won't happen.

There is plenty they can do. The PL are implementing some new financial controls, though I'm not sure they are going to have that much of an affect. I still think a 2 division automatic relegation for administration would go a long way to sorting it out - a 9 or 10 point deduction means fuck all.

What are the plans? Hadn't heard of this. Also, people complain enough about the 10 point penalty being unfair on fans, I'm not sure that football is ready for a 2-division demotion as a punishment yet.

Well, it was tried once before...

It was pretty obvious they needed to sell some players on deadline day. We had a bid rejected for Ritchie. Any move to sell players outside the window is a complete non starter.

Its probably started to dawn on Pompey that the players can rip ip their contracts before the transfer window re-opens if they continue to falter on the wages. Muppets!

I think I read about them in one of the many articles on Pompey, maybe on the BBC website. If I remember correctly they are aimed at providing an early warning for when a club is in financial difficulties - clubs have to provide financial statements and the like, if there are problems they will get a transfer ban. Something like that.

Do many fans really complain about the penalties for administration? I reckon a lot of it is just the media stirring up shit to create a story that doesn't exist. Most people are more than pissed off with the whole money situation in football and I doubt many would have a problem with clamping down on excesses.

You obviously have a very short memory - most people were (rightly) outraged by the excessive penalties imposed on Bournemouth, Rotherham and especially Luton as the wrong people were being penalised - in each case, the debts forcing the clubs into admin were incurred by previous regimes who promptly fucked off and left the new incumbents to face 17-30 pt penalties. Whereas virtually no-one had any problem with the penalty imposed on Leeds (except for Leeds fans) as it was incurred by Bates' attempt to circumvent the rules for which he still hasn't been properly punished (whatever did happen to that FL inquiry into the Leeds' ownership? Bottled it? Thought so). Likewise, I don't think many people felt Southampton were unduly harshly punished. But the examples of Luton/Rotherham/Bournemouth (and we only narrowly avoided it) highlights the problem with points deductions/relegations - that they always punish the club/fans when quite often the people who have caused the problem have long since left and got off scot-free, leaving a blameless new regime to not only pick up the pieces of their catastrophic financial mismanagement but also spending an entire season fighting off almost certain relegation (and potentially many more trying to regain their League status in Luton's case). While the dickheads who caused the problem are still free to do the same at another club.

I'd be more impressed with any/all of these regulations if they showed any willingness to attempt to stop the problems before they were caused; if they showed any backbone in enforcing the regs in even slightly "difficult" cases; and if they showed any intention whatever to actually clean up the game as opposed to gashing up some hasty piece of window dressing until the clamour dies down (until the next time of course)

Amen brother.

Even if the shares are probably not worth the paper they are written on, a nice gesture by al Fahim :

From Sky Sports News

Sulaiman al Fahim is to stand down as non-executive chairman of Portsmouth
and will give his 10 per cent shareholding to the supporters' trust.


The Dubai businessman is one of four people to have owned the ailing
Premier League club this season, having taken over from Sacha Gaydamak last
summer before selling Pompey to Ali Al Faraj.

Despite relinquishing ownership to Al Faraj, he retained a 10 per cent
stake in the club and was also given the position of non-executive chairman at
Fratton Park.
Al Fahim revealed on Sunday that he was considering whether to resign from
that role or invest more money to aid Portsmouth's hopes of avoiding a
winding-up order.

However, Al Fahim has now decided to step down and has passed on his stake
in the division's bottom club to the Portsmouth Supporters' Trust.

Pompey could soon have a fifth owner of the campaign after chief executive
Peter Storrie revealed on Sunday evening that he is waiting to receive
proof of funds from a South African consortium.
Negotiations have reached an advanced stage, but Storrie is waiting on
proof of funds from the bank before he will give any deal the green light.
"It's a very simple, straightforward position," he told Sky Sports News.

"As far as general negotiations are concerned that's about complete. It is
now all about proof of funds. If proof of funds can come through bona-fide
banks then Balram Chainrai is in London and is prepared to push ahead and
get the deal done.
"The ball is very much in their court to show us they have the actual
funds.


"We've gone through too many things over the last year, people that have
come in who have said they have the funds to take the club forward, when
they haven't.
"This is all about proving to us, the board and the owner, that the money
is there to take the club forward.
"To be fair to them they have provided proof of funds through a lawyer,
but we need to see it from a bank. We need to see it, the Premier League need
to see it, everyone needs to see it."

... are they not dead yet?

Talk about slow and painful.

It amazes me that there are people who (apparently) are willing to piss money away on Portsmouth. There are far better (and arguably bigger) clubs that you could take over for less money and with far more potential for getting a decent return on your money. So why do people do it?

Southampton were a bargain at £15m (which got them a debt free club including the ground fully paid off). I'd imagine Crystal Palace would be a far better option than Portsmouth, cheaper and lots of potential.

One of the comments made me laugh, they referred to Portsmouth as a Premier League club (they won't be in about 10 weeks time) with a rich history (of being shit?) and well worth saving (????).

Bollocks, desparate attempt to salvage some small scrap of credibility from the complete kicking his reputation has (rightly) taken.

But one of the things I find most difficult to understand is how the fuck Storrie is STILL allowed to be involved in this mess? He's been the ever-present at ushering in (and then quickly out) the various "No, honestly, this time they really are the saviours" regimes that have fucked this club up, he was Chief Exec when they so massively overspent to get themselves in this mess, he's facing charges of tax fraud and yet not only is he still picking up over £1m quid a year to fuck up on such an epic scale, he's apparently being given free rein to explore new and ever-more inventive ways of fucking up still further. Who's he got negatives of?

New consortium comes forward to bid for Pompey:

[url width=466 height=262]http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/assets/images/2010/02/18/100218154754_mabhouh_passports_afp_466.jpg[/url]

Mossad denies club being bought to be used as front for "wet operations"

Nah, you wouldn't get anyone turning up at Fratton park in tennis gear

When I first started going to games, we were in the same division as Portsmouth, Ipswich, Wolves, West Brom and Plymouth.  And rightly or wrongly, I still think taht we could one day rub shoulders/hold our own with those clubs again.  I know our fan base is smaller than all of those clubs...but my point is that the perceived gap between a club like ours and a club like Portsmouth is probably much larger than it is in reality.

I have no wish at all for Portsmouth fans to have their club taken from them, but have very little sympathy with the club itself.  Portsmouth FC is the footballing equivalent of the hick from Louisiana bringing home $25,000 a year who took out a sub-prime self-cert mortgage and over-extended himself.  They were living a lifestyle they could not afford, and now the chickens are back.

I doubt they will go out of business all together, but I can see a lengthy period of financial consolidation that will almost certainly result in them dropping to our division and, possibly, lower than that.

Good i want to see if that smelly bell ringer still turns up at Grimsby on a cold tuesday in December, although i think i already know the answer to that.

The sad twat has obviously got fuck all else to do.

Pompey have now said they will go into admin on friday if a new owner is not found by then

I hear that Chainrai has sold the stadium to one of his company's and is going to lease it back over 15 years for £1m a year so he get's his money back.

Can HMRC stop them from going into admin if they have a winding up order against them ?

I'm wondering if he'll get away with taking ownership of the ground in exchange for wiping out £10m of the debt he is owed, as he's basically ensured he gets a good chunk of his money back whilst shafting the other creditors in the process. Wouldn't surprise me if HMRC challenge the ground sale in court.

They will need to go in to administration before the winding up petition is held, otherwise if it is granted there is little chance of them getting it reversed afterwards (you can appeal a winding up order within 7 days but you'd have to have pretty good grounds for succeeding).

I have read some reports suggesting that the courts might refuse to grant the club administration, as the debts and finances are so bad. Not sure whether that can or is likely to happen though. Plus its possible the administrator would wind the club up on the spot anyway, especially if the debts are only going to increase over the coming months.

I was wondering that - wouldn't he essentially have forcibly taken over a business, asset-stripped it's one tangible asset then chucked it into admin/possible folding so no-one else gets anything but he gets a nice chunk of property out of the ruins?

No, only a judge can put a business into admin, but HMRC can and will play fun and games when they try and do a CVA and give all creditors around 10p in the pound, as proved with Leeds.

Here's a quote today from Chainrai's spokesman Phil Hall.Unbelievably the reaction from a large
section of Pompey fans, is to thank Chainrai and to pat him on the back!


''Administration would mean the club re-emerging as a healthy financial entity. The club would then become an attractive proposition for a potential buyer who could invest new funds in rebuilding the club's future.

We would like to ask the fans, the staff and management of Portsmouth Football Club for their support and patience should this step be taken, as they believe it is the only route left open to them.

The serving of this notice means the winding-up order is automatically suspended. It means the club is safe, it can fulfil its fixtures and as far as is possible it is business as usual.

Mr Chainrai hopes the supporters will get fully behind the team as usual for their Premier League match at Burnley on Saturday and the following weekend's FA Cup quarter-final at home to Birmingham.

Mr Chainrai has agreed to continue funding the club going forward until its long-term future is decided. He will also pay for the administration process out of his own pocket."

Bates originally offered 1p in the pound, he eventually upped the offer to 8p in the pound which was rejected. Not sure the final deal was ever made public, I can't find any record of it.

But the magic figure for a CVA is approval from 75% of the debtors (by ££££). The latest figures suggest the total debt is £70m with HMRC owed £18m, which would give HMRC the 25% they need to block the CVA - which they will do, they'll want payment in full or Portsmouth shut down.

All that money for one FA Cup, Prem status for a handful of years and David Nugent. They virtually went backrupt in 70s and wetn down to the bottmo division - i can see the same happenning again.

Of course, they could get our old mate Andy Andronikous as the administrator...

I thuoght only Diamond Mike appointed him.

Nah, although I think Diamandis is the only one who brings him quite so much repeat business!

Reported in the Sun this morning (spot the spelling mistakes) :

Andrew Andronika from administrators Harper Young has already been lined up to move in tomorrow to try and settle debts of more than £70m, including £18m to the taxman.

In the Metro, words to the effect that....

Should they go in to administration, the points deduction would mean certain relegation and a lengthy rebuilding spell in the Championship.

Have to admit that, if I was a Pompey fan, I would be very happy right now with a lengthy spell in the Championship.  The reality, I think, will be rather less rosy than that.  I think they're about to get to know the lower leagues quite well.

If they go into admin on Friday, they have to come out by the start of next season with an agreed CVA, or they will probably have another 15 point penalty imposed in the Championship.

Once a club is in administration, how long do they have to come out of it before additional points penalties?

I know there is an additional penalty (determined by the league) for not exiting administration with a CVA but I'm not sure on the rules regarding time scales.

They have to start the new season out of administration.

Excellent piece on the BBC Blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mattslater/2010/02/portsmouth_fc_in_crisis_qa.html

Very good article. Also noteworthy is comment number 16.

"And as far as being treated unfairly... I wonder how Swindon fans feel seeing clubs getting points deductions when they got relegated two divisions because of the actions of a couple of directors?"

Admittedly reduced to one division on appeal, but yes...point taken and agreed!

Which is why I don't give a flying fuck about the effect on fans of things like this.

The last paragraph of David Conn's Guardian article,sums things up perfectly.....

One of the Premier League and FA's arguments is that if clubs have to live within their income, the rich clubs will surely dominate, but that is a separate argument, for another determined inquiry – how to make the sport more competitive again. At present, the report shows, the rich clubs dominate anyway; the top four clubs in each league make on average four times the money of every other club in their league. Attempting to bridge that gap the English way, by relying on a "benefactor" to put money in, now requires just two words to point out its flaws: Fratton Park

 

Shit attitude. The fact that we have been through it all before and we know how horrible it is should make us more sympathetic, not less. An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind...

Whoops. I didn't mean to post that as I thought better of it and didn't finish the entire post.

But my point is that all those years ago when we got demoted it was far worse than has happened to any other club and in turn their fans. A point deduction even leading to relegation is nothing compared to having a season in the top flight taken away from you - which is a massive thing for a club such as ours. I don't remember the fans of any other club giving a toss about it, so why should I feel any sympathy at all for fans of other clubs when something nowhere near as bad happens to them?

There is also the fact that we in effect cheated our way to the top flight and were punished accordingly. The same applies to all the other clubs, Portsmouth have used money they didn't have to buy success so why shouldn't they be punished for it?

Swindon used money they didn't have to pay me. That's even worse when you think about it.

I hope you paid for your ticket last night at the CG? I understand you were scouting for Colchester.

At least Pompey's day at Wembley for the Cup Final will still mean something and the Football League aren't happily pocketing money from a full Wembley stadium under the pretence that winning the game would see your team in the top tier. The Football League is full of shit...!

Fucking hell, they have! (Mentioned earlier, but now on the Beeb)

"Andrew Andronikou of accountants Hacker Young has been engaged as Pompey's administrator by the crisis-hit club."

From the BBC

I'm very, very sorry Pompey.

I still can't believe Storrie is drawing his full salary and got paid a total of £1.2m last year. Absolutely shocking.

As I think others have suggested, people such as Storrie that allow massive debts to be run up on their watch should be banned from football for life. Fuck all chance of that happening though.

I wonder if Pompey need a general manager to secure additional investment from some Portuguese blokes...

Do you know someone then?

Spot on jonny.

And as for Andronikou as administrator - Jesus Wept. Don't ever think you've hit rock bottom, it can always get worse

you could not make this up, haha

 :D

the guy who sits next to me at work is a pompey fan. I'll enjoy filling him in on mr andronikou tomorrow.

Storrie has defended his aleged £1.4m wages by saying he earns half that. That's OK then!

Note to Andronikou - I can lose Pompey money for a mere 300k a year Think of the savings ;)

Someone should enlighten Pompey fan's on their administrator, tell them to pop over here we'll help them out - if they thought things couldn't get any worse

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1253019/Punch-Portsmouth-Jamie-OHara-KOs-team-mate-Michael-Brown-training-ground-melee.html

Michael Brown in horror challenge shock.

just seen this..oh dear

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/39There-isn39t-a-better-man.6103445.jp

An experienced football administrator, Mr Andronikou has already saved one club from extinction - clearing Swindon Town's creditors when they went in to administration in 2002 and 2007, earning him huge praise.

I nearly spat my lunch out at this point but then...

Bob Holt, director of Swindon between 2001 and 2007, told The News: 'He's a first class operator. If the club stands a chance of surviving, this is the man you want at the helm.

'I think this is probably one of the best things to happen to Portsmouth, he'll probably end up saving the club.'

Mr Holt says he has known Mr Andronikou since 2002, when Swindon first went in to administration.


Omifuckinglord it's Baghdad Bob.

He'll deny he said that tomorrow!

Oh dear.

Saving Portsmouth FC is like saving a house.

Oh no they didn't ask Bob Holt for a quote did they?!

They're fucked.

Is it me, or do the above statements make an oxymoron when talking about an administrator?

where's that from Nemo? I'm having field day with a pompey fan at work.

Check the post above Nemo's ;)

I've left them a comment on the article, hopefully one or two will pop over here and find out what a cunt Andronikou really is.

After all they've been through, having Andronikou turn up as administrator must be like being caught in a civil war, having your house and possessions destroyed by rogue troops but thinking you've at least reached safety when you finally manage to battle your way through to a refugee camp. And then you get introduced to the camp director, Mr Satan.

"He's very personable and keeps the fans and everyone informed what's going on."
Couldn't. Make. It. Up. FFS

Hahaha, I actualled laughed out loud when I read this.

Reckon I should have a mosey on down to Fratton Park and warn the locals?

Busybody

Busy... Nothing could be further from the truth Davis and I suspect you know it!

:D

This is all a bit surreal.

I would like to extend my deepest sympathy to any Pompey fan reading this.  Andrew forking Andronikou?!  You poor, poor people.

Also quite strange to think that Bob Holt actually still exists.

I quite like Bob Holt in a "wouldn't mind kicking his face in" sort of way. Fond memories.

Bob Holt is one of only a few people on this planet I could quite happily punch to death. Jesus Pompey fans if you didnt think you could go any lower andronikou arrives. YOU ARE FUCKED.

Holt, dear god! Pompey are but a diamond mike/dsm deal away from their worst case scenario!

i didn't feel any sympathy for portsmouth until now.

Storrie is charged with Tax Evasion as well isn't he?  on top of Portsmouth trying to claim VAT doesn't exist - are we sure Dunwoody are not in there already?

Who prints there programmes?

Colin Farmery, of Pompey Supporters' Trust, now wants a meeting with him.

He said: 'It's encouraging to hear he's got good references from Swindon.


No, he's got a good reference from Bob Holt, which is like getting a good reference from Saddam Hussein !!!

To be fair to PST, they've likely got to deal with Andronikou over the coming months, and we well know he has, shall we say, a somewhat fragile ego. So it doesn't do any harm to accept him at face value in your first public comment. Certainly wouldn't help Pompey fans if PST came out and said "We've heard this bloke Andronikou is a right dodgy cunt and we wouldn't trust him in charge of the WI tea and biscuits kitty" would it? Strikes me they're playing a smart straight bat on this

Is he mates with Willie "the cackle" Carson

What amazes me is how Andronique has the time to do this. I mean he's normally busy dealing with his best mate Diamandis's companies.

Jesus, have Pompey got Baghdad Bob writing their club statements now? This sounds so very familiar:

'The owner and board of Portsmouth Football Club are disappointed at recent inaccurate media speculation regarding the club's finances and the threat of administration.

'Ali Al Faraj and his associates took over the running of the club and inherited a business that had substantial debts. Dealing with the finances has been the priority since Al Faraj came in to pay the players before taking over the club from Sulaiman Al Fahim.

'The club is not going into administration. If that were the case it would have happened at the end of September or early October. This week alone, HM Revenue and Customs were paid £2m and other historical arrears are being dealt with on an ongoing basis.

'The new owner has not had the benefit of TV revenue to aid the club, with the next major instalment due in January. However, he and his associates have already invested substantial funds to keep the club operating and will continue to do so.

'The owner remains committed to the club and has shown that through his investment to date. He will also provide manager Avram Grant with all the tools he needs to ensure the club reaches a position the players' performances deserve - away from the relegation zone.

'Despite media rumours Peter Storrie remains chief executive and has been holding talks on behalf of the club in other parts of the world.

'Much is happening behind the scenes but constant malicious rumours and speculation do not assist with the proposed major long-term funding that is currently being put in place.

My bad, that's actually from December 2009.

Someone on the Trust board needs to call Colin and give him the "heads up"

Well said Fred,here's their Fans Trust website.

http://www.pompeytrust.com/

http://boards.footymad.net/forum.php?tno=424&fid=203&sty=2&act=1&mid=2122649178

Suffice to say they have had the info

I wonder idf we will see any of Ankle's bag men follow him in to help with a rescue act

The comment by Pompeyblue55 about their/our former administrator,begars belief.

http://www.fansonline.net/portsmouth/mb/view.php?id=241954

Oh yes he is my friend!

Ignorance is bliss !

He must have done a good job because they're still in business? Leeds are still in business, doesn't exactly mean that Peter Ridsdale deserves a pat on the back now does it.

I'd disown him quick if I was you !! If Andronikou had his way, we would've been sold to the Portugeezers...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8527495.stm

Official now.

What is? That they're expected to go in to administration? Can a statement like that be official?

Yes, in as much as anything coming from the rather confusing Portsmouth hierachy can be.
 http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/LatestNews/news/Portsmouth-Football-Club-Statement-665.aspx

Just being on the BBC makes it official. They type in all their updates in full dinner dress and black tie

The very same statement that i posted last tuesday! Hardly an up to date, by the hour, statement.

Damn.

Ah well, it's Statement Friday tomororow, should be some more wonderful stuff then.

So this is club statement 665, does that mean that the official appointment of Mr Andronikou may come in club statement 666? Seems fitting somehow...  ::)

There are quotes from Mr Andronikou already,preparing the way for entering Admin tomorrow......


Portsmouth will become the first English Premier League club to go into financial administration on Friday.

Four undisclosed buyers failed to prove they had the funds to buy the club by a Thursday deadline set by Andrew Andronikou of UHY Hacker Young, who will serve as the administrator.

Pompey, which is bottom of the world's richest football league, will be docked nine points as a result of entering financial administration, which is a form of bankruptcy protection.

"We made a conscious decision to put it into administration tomorrow morning," Andronikou told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Andronikou, an insolvency expert, will issue a detailed statement on Friday outlining how the club will be restructured to prevent it going into liquidation and made attractive for a potential buyer.

.........enter Best Holdings and a link to Portugal.

Poor Pompey..............I can see a rowing boat entering the harbour with Mike Diamandis in a Pirates outfit. The boat is being rowed by Bob Holt whilst Sandy Mule Face Woman gray is looking athrough a telescope trying to locate Fratton Park.

We were very lucky.

...........who has been shagging your Wife.

How lucky we are Mr D. Its almost boring now watching the best football seen at the CG in years and not discussing where Rufus Brevett is going to play.

Happy Days.

Is Bob just trying to get a local mooring?

How you doing ?

I got a call today from Mex. Was in an important meeting and burst out laughing when he told me about Android. Just got strange looks.

Just when Pompey thought it was looking better another crook pops up. My theory is that God is a Scummer Saints fan and is now punishing Pompey. Maybe he spared us as we play in red.

Just logged on and wondered how this thred can have generated six new pages...then the reality struck...fucking Andronikou?!  We need to keep an eye on the emergence of Diamond Mike...and as for Bob Holt, I'm stunned...just sat here shaking my head, poor, poor Pompey.

Andronikou. Theres a name to send shudders down your spine.

Dodgy geezers ahoy straight off the boat for the sinking ship pompey.

Going back to the blog on the BBC about administration, I've just noticed the author of the blog making the following comments this afternoon :

But v quickly, Pompey will be in admin within 24 hours. That's when the fun really starts. Swindon fans will have fond memories of Hacker Young's Andrew Andronikou (as will my mate who used to work for the Sportsman)...let's hope things go more smoothly this time around.


With those comments, I would think Andronikou will be keenly watched...

In other previous STFC involvement news, Little Jim's ex club has hit the dirt.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/irish/8530623.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/irish/8530623.stm)

Looks like D day today. Going to be deducted 9 points. I always thought it was 10?

Statement expected from Pompey today that they are appointing 2 new directors to help with theior administration and to help attract new buyers:

Sandy Gray will be Finance Director

Mr Whippy will be talking to potential new owners in his head and inviting pompey fins down the pub for a drink and a chat

I think the Premier League have different rules from The Football League, i may be wrong

There are less teams and therefore less points available overall so the punishment is less. Worked out as a percentage of available points it is actually a harsher penalty I believe.

jayohaitchenn is right. FL is 10 points, PL is 9. The PL punishment is (marginally) proportionately harsher due to the fewer number of games played, IIRC the FL led the way on points deductions for admin after Leicester's blatant gerrymandering of the system, then the PL followed suit. Technically they're wholly separate regulatory systems, but both are locking the stable door long after the horse has galloped off over the horizon

I'd have though Fratton Park had enough houses in the Area & a move to the Eastleigh Junction on the M27 would not be too poular in Portsmouth

By The Sun today, Andronikou saved us twice, in 2002 and 2007....Morons.

Officially into admin now...

Apparently, Storrie has given a list to Andronikou of people he could let go to save costs. Amazingly, Storrie hasn't put himself on that list, despite Andronikou is now in charge of the day-to-day running of the club, which puts Storrie effectively out of work.

Storrie should've done the honourable thing and resigned.

yeah, but he has offered to take a pay cut! which is really nice of him!

Pompey fan on Sky sports news thinks Storrie is payed £600,000 a year by the club and £600,000 a year by Gaydamak to keep his mouth shut and safeguard his debt.

Resign you prick!

If Andronikou doesn't put Storrie at the top of his cost-cutting list, that in and of itself should set alarm bells ringing about why he's been brought in.

Well substitute the names Storrie for Diamandis & we have a very familar senario do we not ?

I think Storrie is more the Holt figure in all this. Although I still fervently hope that the very least to come out of this is that he never works in football ever again

Surely Marc Jacob is the Diamanadis figure. Or Kushner.

Im already fed up with the way in which the press are covering this.  Now its officially happened, they're talking about should the government bail out portsmouth and what an historic event it is.

Life exists outside of plastic football in plastic stadiums with plastic fans.  Just because its the sky premiership or whatever its called, it's suddenly subject of mainstream news network phone ins instead of being left for the niche channels.

Maybe Im just a grumpy sod.  I think thats probably the case.

For those missing the hilarity of the Friday statement, apparently Andronikou's doing a press conference at 3 pm. Presumably wearing his shining armour

No you're not a grumpy sod...fully agree with that.

This has got to be the longest, drawn own saga of a club going into admin. At least when Palace went into admin last month, they just did it !!

And it's only historic, as it's the first Premiership club, who should have enough money, but Pompey have done an excellent job in how not to run a Premiership club.

And of course the plight off Notts County, which happens to be the oldest club IN THE WORLD, is neither historic nor newsworthy.

Now that will be worth a dollar.

He's going to love this, being quoted everywhere seeing his face on TV, he'll make himself into a celeb

Precisely.  Portsmouth are a bog standard, mid-ranking football club who have recently punched well above their true weight precisely because they over-extended themselves and lived beyond their means.  The binge has now ended, and the hangover is finally kicking in.  Without financial mismanagement on a shocking scale (a scale which, incidentally, makes our own financial horror stories of the last 20 years pale in to insignificance), they simply would not have been up there in the first place.  This is no more 'historic' than the chicken and avocado sandwich I have just eaten for my lunch.

Pompey fan at work has just told me the fa are considering kicking them out of the FA cup and docking another 20 points next season...?

Put him right on our friend from Hackey Young as well; he's not a happy bunny.

Try Smoked salmon, bacon and avacado, blinding sandwich. Leroy reckons i'm a poof for eating that, but it's worth it.

I think it would be worth it simply to attract Leroy's opprobrium.

On SSN now sporting some wonderful forehead bumfluff.

Our friend is now live on Sky Sports News at a Press Conference.

It's funny that Pompey didn't get this publicity when they were in admin before...

Ah, but they weren't in the "Best League in the World" (tm) then.

Shocking that he's gone early on this one. Has he no respect for the tradition of the Friday statement - it should be continually delayed so that the fuckwittery can be finely honed throughout the day. Anyone watching the oaf care to give a summary?

The summary was effectively "I don't know, I've only been here two hours, I'll tell you in a week."

Funny that, that's what he was still saying to our creditors after 6 years

He described Storrie's position as "untenable".

He will "cut things to the bone" and issue a further statement next week.

He used the word "transparency" an awful lot.Excuse me while i fall over laughing!  ;D

He's going to have the spotlight on him at Portsmouth like he's never experienced before. With us, it was only a few busybodies who tried to hold him to account, and we all remember how well he responded to that. Hopefully the full glare of national publicity will restrain him a little from any "antics" at Portsmouth

Oh no! Sky Sports are now interviewing none other than Trevor Watkins!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8538829.stm

This made me smile. Didn't realise Storrie was 1.2 million a year though!

Christ, it's "Fuckwits' Parade" up there this afternoon, isn't it?

Are they going to Baghdad Bob next ?

They'll be interviewing Diamond Mike next.

Please god let that happen.

Looks like Pompey fans are catching on quick:

http://www.fansonline.net/portsmouth/mb/view.php?id=243025

I heard they might be thrown out of the FA Cup but haven't seen any news report to back it up.

Can't see it happening but maybe it should be a new additional punishment for entering administration - not allowed to participate in any cup competitions including being thrown out of any they are still in.

Where did he appear from....didn't see that one coming ?

I'm still waiting for the appointment of Sandy Gray to sort out the books

Busybody.

A vacancy has arisen as Pompey's head of communications has departed.

I'm sure that we can think of someone who could fill this role  ;)

KoT?

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_5983418,00.html

He added in a statement: "The company will exit administration by way of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) thus avoiding any further points deductions next season

But HMRC will oppose any CVA so they surely won't be able to agree a CVA agreeable to all parties

I loved this quote:

He added they aim to conduct the administration on a transparent basis

Being head of communications at Portsmouth is, in many ways, a lot like selling a house ...

 :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

Of course, if they want someone who will develop plans for a redevelopment of Fratton Park, we also know of someone. He's always got plenty of plans in his head...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8539422.stm

He says that they still want to sell some players, and get the parachute payments earlier, despite the PL saying no.

And enter a CVA, which HMRC have indicated they would block.

The CVA bit at the end of his press conference made me laugh. The guy is a clown.

Next news is

Relocate to a M27 junction somewhere nerar Southampton
Cover Fratton Park with houses
Try to thwart any takeovers unless by Portugese Football agents
Slag off the fan base at any given opportunity

Pompey fans need to make Storries position untenable if he wont resign. They need to make sure he gets nowhere near the ground.

Adronikou will be ringing all his old mates. The ones who make the money out of failed companies and run them down. Like Pauld said, this time the national media are involved. When people like BEST holdings show up they will be suverely scrutinised.

The real battle at the moment is that clubs put debts to other football clubs before their debt to the tax man. Clearly this rule will have to be broken at some stage? The tax man is the one who has the power the close clubs?

Unfortunately,this comment has appeared on a national news website comments section   :doh:


"Watching the press conference, Andrew Andronikou seems to be the most honest, open and level headed person I've ever seen speak from within a football club. It's a shame that he's there as the administrator. If that man had been there as chief exec rather than Storrie, I suspect that they would never have ended up in this horrible mess".

To be fair, he can come across quite well in the media, at least until someone has the temerity to question him and he goes apeshit. And if you didn't know his previous, compared to shower of shite they've had running Portsmouth for the last couple of years, pretty much anyone would be impressive

He's undoubtedly a smooth operator and will enjoy the initial limelight.When he comes under
close scrutiny for the actions that he takes and is questioned by the media and fans,a different
creature emerges.

The local MP has said that the Premier League should honour the debts of Portsmouth FC to businesses in the area, so that they don't suffer as a result of the club going into administration. He almost makes it sound like the club had no part in squandering such vast amounts of money.

Proof that Pompey fc and MPs are corrupt cunts!

When will people in Britain get used to the idea of what taxes should be used for?

Fucking sponger.

HMRC challenged the football debts rule in court...and lost !!

Blimey. Didnt realise that. No wonder they are pissed off.

They are pissed off. But its a bit two faced as for a long time they were the preferential creditors and didn't have a problem getting paid in full whilst all the other creditors got fuck all or nothing - they're just getting some of their own medicine.

The court said as it was in the FA/FL laws that all football creditors are paid in full, they weren't going to overturn it, as it was their competition, and it doesn't breach the law of the land.

When you say "they", it's not like it's some private company trying to make profits by ripping people off. That money is supposed to go to the government to be spent on worthy causes like public services, bankers' bonuses and the like.

Andronikou was on SSN saying he was going to challenge the 9 points deduction and also ask the transfer window to be re-opened.

I would be really pissed off if an exception is made for them.

As would many... It won't happen.

This chap liked the attention when he was lurking around Swindon. I imagine he's on cloud nine right now.

Newsflash - Westwood "Mr Pompey" is now the Chairman. Ringing the bells of change.

If this had happened in the late 70's early 80's Storrie and Co would have got a good kicking going into work.

I could have been a Pompey fan as my old Man is from there. Still have relatives down there now and my Nan used to live on the famous Paulsgrove Estate. Makes Penhill look like Park Lane.

Remember a great game at the CG around 1977 when Chris Kamara made his home debut against Pompey. Scored a diving header in the Bank in a 3-1 win.
My first real experience of trouble at football having boarded the train at Didcot full of Pompey.
When Kammy's goal went in the Pompey fans didn't just stand and clap.............they were nuts in them days.
I still love the City, people and the tradition and have many happy memories as a kid visiting Pompey.
Took my kids and Mrs down there last year and went "back in time" to all the old haunts. Yes I still have a soft spot for Pompey and love the place.

My first game was v Pompey in 71. I remember the late 70s games against Pompey. They were always game and sometimes we got a shoing and sometimes they did. I remember a 4-3 home win in the LC when there was a power strike and the locals were told to remove all items from their gardens that could be used as weapons - sound advice back then. Now they're a bunch of gayers.

The BBC has a page of quotes from Pompey fans. Interesting to see the thoughts of Pompey fans, naturally there are some odd ones.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/8538776.stm

And another bemusing one. This time from a professor of economics explaining the situation. He says that Pompey will have to adjust to playing one or two leagues lower, but "as Leeds fans will tell you, you come back up aswell"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8538000/8538108.stm

They're not promoted yet mate.

Must admit that I wasn't really paying close attention during our financial meltdown and so know very little about Andronikou other than everyone on here thinking he's a cunt. Having watched the press conference he held I've come to conclussion that he is a self loving, egotistical, self centred, publicity loving, overly confident cunt who has already managed to alienate the PL (club and league), FA, FIFA and done endless harm to Portsmouth's chances due to his smugness regarding getting the PL to reverse its decision over transfers and the parachute payments.

Is there anything I missed?

On a more general note (and it doesn't just apply to Andronikou), what is it with administrators making such a big thing about saving the club and the business. I was under the impression their sole (and legal) obligation was to work on behalf of the creditors and to get them as much money as possible, even if that means liquidation. So how do they get away with it?

Yes, the "We're going to exit Administration via a CVA" - wonder if anyone from HMRC was watching that?

But generally yes, you're right, he doesn't seem to have lost the "God complex" he showed in such abundance when he was here. And worryingly for Portsmouth, he seems, as when he was here, to be basing much of his strategy on false promises which are not in his gift to give.

In STFC's case he seemed not to be working on behalf of the creditors, or the club but on behalf of the likes of his best pal (& source of business) Diamandis, Wills & Carson etc.
Don't forget he was complicit in refusing to even negotiate with a serious attempt by the fans consortium to rescue the club. He was then complicit in bringing in BEST who made the situation worse, & they then did their level best to put off AF & co by their last minute demands for more money etc. I remember that meeting when he kept saying he could vary the CVA etc etc etc. A load of crap that was too. We were in fact 24 hrs from extinction by the time Seton Wills saw sense & sold.

Was a bit on football focus today and seeing that fuckin Andronikou wanted to make me throw something at the tele!! Grrrr.

Sky Sports News have just broken news that HRMC are challenging Pompey going into voluntary administration in the High Court tomorrow. This one runs on and on.

When Sky asked Andronikou about it he said he thought HMRC were just "crossing their i's and dotting their t's".

And he's 'not unduly worried'. Sound Familiar?

I've just read they think they  might not get docked points, and hope to sell some players and then have them loaned back by the buying teams. They really are in la la land.

It is understood HMRC objects to the club's move into voluntary administration and will seek to have the club wound up.

Reports suggest that HMRC has questioned whether Balram Chainrai had the legal right to put the club into administration.

Andrew Andronikou, the administrator in charge of the stricken Barclays Premier League club, was informed of the latest development today.

Despite uncertainty over the nature of HMRC's objection, Andronikou is confident Portsmouth will continue down the route of administration as planned.

'We're having to go to court to show that the debenture is valid,' he said.

There sure were some sparky contests - I always remember being slightly shocked that Kammy was the victim of racist chanting from the Pompey fans - not shocked by the racism in those days to be honest (never liked it) but by the fact they could make monkey noises at a player who had done well for them.

 Could be fun to be playing them again sooner than we might have imagined

have they been docked points yet?

I can't remember another Town player ever getting such abuse from his former teams fans.
It seemed to be open house with their racist abuse of Kammy.

The monkey chants were bad enough,but if you think it was bad when we played them at
the CG,it was far worse down at Fratton Park.Kammy had to put up with both the monkey
and N***** chants.It was really nasty.

Fortunately,when we played them again in the League Cup in 87, it had disappeared.

No, they've postponed a decision until after the court hearing tomorrow.

That's not "they" though, that's all Andronikou.

One assumes HMRC are challenging not so much the fact of administration as the voluntary administration - i.e. HMRC want to appoint their own administrator. Shocking to think they don't seem to have faith in Mr Andronikou to do a stand-up job for them after the sterling job he did for all the creditors here

Based on the experts Sky have wheeled out the consensus is that no one knows what grounds HMRC are challenging it on, let alone what will happen though it is unlikely they'll be wound up on the spot. They also thought that HMRC are really, really pissed as this is an unusual step for them to take and shows they're going to do everything they can to get their own way.

I wonder if they will go as nuclear with other clubs that owe them money, or if they're going to town as its a PL team.

On the grounds of legal validity:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/portsmouth/7346808/Portsmouths-administration-challenged-in-court.html

What's uncertain is what their desired outcome is - whether they want to get rid of the administration order altogether or impose their own (and so get the right to appoint their own administrator).

They just did a piece on Cattermole (or whatever his name is) who is looking to buy Pompey, on Sky. He reckons he gave Pompey proof of funds to the tune of €200m. An executive from Pompey said it was from a financial institution that no one had heard of so they asked for more proof and a meeting. Instead of a meeting Cattermole sent along a representative who apparently was only 22 years old. When Pompey asked to meet at his office the kid said I don't have an office, we'll have to meet at my dad's house. Priceless.

Assuming any of its true of course - bear in mind they clearly don't want to sell to the guy, so there'll be a load of spin here, especially where Phil Hall (the poor man's Max Clifford) is involved. Although the New Zealand Securities Commission seem to think Cattermole is dodgy as fuck - they put out an official warning that no-one should invest in his company as it's basically a pyramid scheme and unlawful in NZ.

If nothing else, this move by HMRC suggests that exiting via a CVA seems a bit unlikely right now, which would cause a further points penalty at the start of their Championship season in August.  If they are not careful they could slide right through to our league pretty sharpish.

Consensus on the radio was that the administration being sanctioned was a formality, and this was the HMRC firing an opening salvo in a bid to challenge the 'football debts first' ruling.  They didn't elaborate on what the likely course of events would be though.

I don't know why but the name 'Andronikou' makes me think of

[url width=450 height=534]http://www.thegreenhead.com/imgs/robby-the-robot-1.jpg[/url]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/securities-commission/news/article.cfm?o_id=189&objectid=10628994

Talk about fit and proper.

To be fair, Thaksin passed and he was probably the least fit and proper person on earth.

HMRC have challenged it before and lost, unlikely they'll try again. The rule doesn't actually say football debts first though does it? Doesn't it just say that all football creditors have to be paid in full?


HMRC are and always were going to block the CVA when they get to that point - it is standard practice for them for all football clubs. Question is whether they can block it on their own or get the support they might need from other creditors. Though all a blocked CVA would mean is a bigger points penalty as they'd exit admin by another means.

Surely that equates to the same thing. If you have £15 cash and football debts of £10 everyone else will be left to share the £5. Unless you are suggesting football creditors can wait indefinitely for the full wedge.

Quite. Which is what made Andronikou's blanket statement that they will exit admin via a CVA as if it was just a given so extraordinary. Although no more extraordinary than any of the other claims he made about points deductions/parachute payments/selling players, I suppose.

I think the point I was trying to make is that the FA rule (to pay football debts in full and exclude them from a CVA) isn't a law and nor is it binding on a club, its just something that has to be complied with if the club wishes to continue playing football. Which I believe is why the courts told HMRC to get stuffed when they challenged it - the judge said its a football rule and they can have any rules they want.

If a club wishes they could ignore the rule and pay everyone an equal share, they would be able to exit administration via a CVA but they wouldn't be able to play football under the jurisdiction of the FA anymore.

IIRC, they are owed a significant percentage of the total amount and thus have the power to block the CVA on their own.

Well well well


HMRC calling into question the impartiality of Andronikou


Never saw that one coming did we ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/02/portsmouth-need-7m-march

AS it is now adjourned until March 15 surely this means that the courts feel there is a validity to HMRC's concerns ?

Andronikou and Chainrai took a bit of a kicking didn't they?

Yes. The new hearing is to further investigate the relationship between the club and it's various recent owners, between the owners themselves and whether Chainrai was entitled to appoint an administrator. Basically HMRC won on all points.



Seems he has a bit of a problem being over "confident" on "formalities"

did Andronikunt ever sign off our CVA after it was completed. Thought I read somewhere that he had yet to do so?

Nope, this is from the Companies House website as of a few mins ago:
Which will of course be adversely affecting the club's credit ratings etc. Maybe Fitton should look at filing a formal complaint against him for dereliction of duty. Or maybe even a little light legal action of his own.

Or at the very least a strongly worded letter to the Court, copying in HMRC and the various newspapers. Stick the wind up him a bit.

Absolutely. Perhaps someone should let the Pompey fans know and warn them? :) will hit national headlines then!

Interesting write up from the pompey press

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/frattonlatest/Pompey-to-go-back-before.6115398.jp?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FrattonLatest+%28The+News+-+Fratton+Latest%29&CommentPage=9&CommentPageLength=10#comments

And we have the greed, self-interest and jaw-dropping stupidity of the expanded G18 to thank for delaying and watering down rules that might finally start to put football's finances back on a less suicidal footing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8546561.stm

Way to go ECA - never mind the good of the game, you just make sure you suck up every last drop from that gravy train, you greedy myopic bastards

And you know the top clubs will bend the rules, when, and if, it eventually comes in...

Exactly. Abromavich will simply "sponsor" Chelsea to the tune of 40 million a year thus increasing their turnover artificially.

To be honest, right now, I don't see that as a major problem or at least not so much as the catastrophic debts some clubs face. Chelsea and Man City's owners have gifted them huge amounts and converted it into share capital, rather than debt which is, as Wenger(?) said, "financial doping". But it's not threatening the future of the clubs. Whereas what is a real threat to clubs not just at the top, but throughout football, is the mortgaging of the club's future to pay for an unsustainable present. It's what happened at Leeds under Ridsdale, Portsmouth, West Ham, Cardiff under Ridsdale (again - why are the football authorities not spotting a pattern here?), Bournemouth, Man Utd, Liverpool, Southend etc etc.

And you've also got Real Madrid spending £250m last summer, despite being an estimated £500m in debt...

Those new rules will not prevent someone bank rolling a club, but it does state the money cannot take the form of a loan and must be done as equity instead. Which seems reasonable to me, if someone wants to piss away their money on a football club then that's good (more money going in to the game) but it can't be allowed if there is a risk of them walking away and leaving the club with a debt it can't pay.

I'm not convinced its the big clubs that are the real problem anyway. Its the clubs below the big clubs that are spending money they don't have in an attempt to catch up with the big clubs, this then spreads down the leagues as other clubs try to catch up with those above them.

Once clubs are forced to only spend money they have I can see wages dropping massively within a year or two and pretty much resolving most of the financial issues in the English game.

Getting back to the Pompey issue, reading up on the latest court hearing I reckon its looking potentially very bad for them. The way some of the loans and financing has been handled is decidedly dodgy and could be enough for their admin to be over turned by the court, which in turn could very quickly result in the winding up order being granted and the club liquidated.

You forgot the most obvious one! Swindon Town.

I really would hate to think what would have happened to our club if Diamandis & Co were still in charge, I reckon we could have been facing a Chester

I was talking specifically about clubs mortgaging future payments/monies due to meet short term debt/spending. That wasn't our problem - ours was staggering incompetence over a long period, coupled with a grim determination to hold on to the club come what may because in Mike D's fantasies there was a golden payout that was always just about to happen. But never did and was never going to while he/they were in the picture.

It looks as if Mr Andronikou won't be receiving any advance on the 'parachute payments'.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/Premier-League-deny-39parachute-payments39.6120920.jp

Apparently Pompey are worh £30m by our favourite administrator, despite having hardly no assets and plenty of debts...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8548666.stm

Didn't the court (or somebody else) judge their playing staff to be worth £20m? Goodness knows where the other £10m has come from.

Storrie apparently said their players are worth £38m on their statement to the High Court, whilst HMRC said it was likelyto be £21m.

Andronikou reckons the squad is worth £38m, HMRC reckon £21m. And on the latter figure, HMRC conclude their liabilities exceed their assets by £65m. But then bear in mind he was loudly trumpeting as a done deal the BEST sale which broke down because the Wills/Diamandis crew valued Swindon at the time at £18m, a valuation one would assume he thought was reasonable so confident was he that the deal was completed (remember he cancelled the creditors' meeting "because the club has now been sold"). So one might conclude he doesn't have a great track record in valuing football clubs.

Pretty certain the £21m figure was that given by the auditor that prepared the financial statement for the court, whilst Pompey themselves (Storrie, Andronikou or whoever) reckoned it was £38m. I believe the low figure for the players was one of the reasons why the auditor wasn't appointed as the administrator.

I'm guessing the £30m figure being thrown about is what they feel someone would pay for the club as part of a CVA, so if they total debts are £90m then everyone would get 33p in the pound. Or something like that.

I can't see anyone paying that. The value of the squad is questionable, there are massive wage bills and they'll most likely have to honour some of them, they will be in the Championship next season and a good chunk of the PL payments (TV and parachute) will go directly to football creditors. I'm sure there are plenty of other clubs that are a far better financial investment if you've got £30m to spend.

The players/squad are only worth what other clubs are willing to pay for them and considering that all in the football world will know that Portsmouth aren't in a position to fuck about, that figure won't be particularly high.

I am surprised that I am making such an obvious statement really, are those 'in charge' really that fucking clueless?

Yes.

Andronikou wealds the axe....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8560834.stm

Jacob goes,but Storrie stays on the gravy train for the time being and another press conference
is called by our former administator.You're loving the limelight Mr A!

Some quotes included,from staff who've sadly lost their jobs today.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Jacob-leaves-Pompey-along-with.6139220.jp

Apparently Storrie has taken a 40% pay cut, and will not get a bonus !!

But he is still on £10k a week. It's a tough life.

There was a piece on sky sports news about it, some very upset people about the club. A guy in the warehouse summed it up quite well, he got the chop but what he earns in a year is what most of the players earns in 3 days, so how can the club be saving that much by laying off these people. Players don't NEED 60k a week to live on ffs. If I was a fan I would be disgusted that the players weren't offering to take pay cuts to help out the club.

Another good article about this here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/16380000aweek-footballers-fail-to-take-pay-cuts-to-save-club-cleaners-1919453.html

I think it's disgusting too. I'm not sure whether the players would take much notice of any attempt to get them to reduce some of their wages.

apparantly, the club is restricted in what they can do with the players contracts due to PFA regulations. I heard that two players had voluntarily come forward to take pay cuts.

Looks like HMRC are now prepared to accept the administration order:

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/hmrc-expected-to-accept-portsmouth-administration-1919722.html

Although so far we only have Andronikou's word on this and we know what that's worth - he was muttering about "minor paperwork" before the last court case where HMRC seemed to have a rather more serious take on it

Perfect example that the PFA is now too powerful and needs cutting down to size.

Even if all the players had taken pay cuts I doubt it would have saved anyone's job, the club would still need to offload as many staff as they can to reduce out goings - they still can't be anywhere near breaking even, let alone repaying their debts.

Besides it just masks the real problem - the club paying salaries they couldn't afford and then not offloading players when they had the chance in the January transfer window. Amazing that Storrie holds on to his job though, what exactly is there for him to do now the administrator is running the show?

With Andronikou not officially installed as administrator until after the HMRC hearing does he have authority to get rid of people and make changes yet ?

He is officially the administrator. HMRC challenged it at the last court hearing but the court did not rule either way, hence he is still the administrator. If they were to pursue that challenge on Monday and win, he would no longer be the administrator, which might make an interesting situation for those he's sacked, but if he is correct in saying that they will not now challenge his appointment, then that might be why he's felt able to start sacking people.

HMRC have confirmed that they accept Andronikou as the administrator, I assuem this means that the court case has now been cancelled and he can get on with selling pompey to Diamandis

I guess they'll be 9 points lighter soon then

This made me laugh......I'm sure he done all this at Swindon as well with his mate Diamandis who gives him some business

Pompey's administrator is to investigate payments made between the club and a London law firm which employed former director Mark Jacob.
Andrew Andronikou said he has two members of staff investigating transactions between Pompey and law firm Fuglers between October last year and January.

He said the payments were 'unexplained' and that he was duty bound to investigate them

Full story:

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/frattonlatest/Administrator-to-probe-Pompey-payments.6147409.jp?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FrattonLatest+%28The+News+-+Fratton+Latest%29

As I understand it, the court hearing will proceed but HMRC will formally drop their challenge to the administration order at that hearing. Guardian reporting today it's not so much they accept the original administration order (or Chainrai's ownership, presumably) as that they see no financial benefit in pursuing a point of principle. And as they're legally bound to get best value for the taxpayer, they can't proceed on principle alone.

Rumours on Pompey sites today that Storries finally walked (or been pushed)

BBC reporting now that Storrie has gone.

My understanding of HMRC is that getting back as much of the money they are owed is seldom their priority.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, if a business is running up more debt they want to shut it down before it can run up even more debt to them. Secondly, they want to send out a message to other businesses that they have to pay their bills on time or they will shut them down. In the long term both of these points will actually mean more value for the tax payer.

Besides, I know for a fact they will have a business wound up even when they won't get back enough money to cover the costs incurred in winding it up and when there are other options presented to them which will give a better return. HMRC is all about principle and you really don't want to fuck with them.

I wasn't suggesting anyone would want to fuck with HMRC! :) I was paraphrasing (perhaps badly) what was in the Guardian's Digger column, which has clearly come from a briefing, probably from within HMRC to give an unofficial spin on why they're backing down on what was a very bullish stance re the administration order. How true it is, is another matter. Nonetheless, it does seem to point to HMRC having more confidence they will actually recover some of the debt they're owed which points to them having been shown some kind of information indicating Pompey will be a viable business going forward. Which has to be good news for Portsmouth fans, I'd have thought.

I would imagine that the only reason HMRC have backed down is because they knew they wouldn't win.

But staying on in a consultancy role. Any bets the invoices will total what he would have  earned anyway?

Nationals starting to push at the door of what's been going on down there:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/portsmouth/7423568/Portsmouth-administrators-investigate-missing-millions.html

And from the looks of this (which IS very thoroughly researched), this could just be the tip of the iceberg:

http://fansonline.net/pompey-fans/article.php?id=174

fuck me sounds like a film! does this mean storie is sleeping with the fishes?

I think the fishes knocked him back

New owners in the offing?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/portsmouth/7437654/Portsmouth-fans-set-to-eye-new-owner-Rob-Lloyd-with-caution.html

Hope for their sake this guy's more Andrew Fitton than Jim Little.

Meanwhile, the News of the Screws coverage provides a splendid opportunity for a caption competition:
[url width=516 height=350]http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00099/AndrewAndronikou_516_99393a.jpg[/url]
AAAARRGGGGHHH! I spy Busy-Bodies!

[url width=516 height=350]http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00099/AndrewAndronikou_516_99393a.jpg[/url]
Fucking hell! Just remembered, I completely forgot to sign off Swindon's CVA!

Fuck, is that Narkis over there?

[url width=516 height=350]http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00099/AndrewAndronikou_516_99393a.jpg[/url]
Now I know what it feels like to be shafted!

The chap on the left reminds me of Skeletor from the Dolph Lundgren epic Masters of the Universe.

[url width=400 height=226]http://burnallzombies.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/skeletor5.jpg[/url]

Crickey, that's not Terry Brady is it?

Heh, good work Si.

"Christ, that bang wasn't my car, was it?"

Andronikou catches his first glimpse of Pompey fan Westfield

[url width=516 height=350]http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00099/AndrewAndronikou_516_99393a.jpg[/url]
Finger! I said you could use a finger! Not the whole damn fist!

As Andrew learnt the meaning of 'shitting yourself', a member of the crowd learnt the meaning of 'the shit hitting the fan'.

"Where's your car dude?"

Kneesey does it. Pompey Administrator ans associate Diamond Mike (not shown) join together in Pompey blow.

That's who I believe it is.

Another crook.

Pompey admin order declared valid. Onward with the 9pts deduction then:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/16/portsmouth-administration-high-court

There is no doubt that HMRC will continue to wind-up a company even when they won't get back enough money to cover the costs incurred in winding it up (although determining likely asset realisations and thereby likely cost recoveries is near-impossible with information publically available). Unlike a normal supplier they are unable to suspend supply or limit the extent of their liability. Sometimes proceeding with a compulsory winding-up is the only way to stop a company continuing to trade whilst insolvent. 

When HMRC are kept fully informed, and the directors are able to present evidence that the business is viable together with sensible proposals for repayment to creditors (whether that be in full or on a pence in the £ basis) HMRC are usually amicable to alternatives to winding-up. The difficulty is that businesses that require formal insolvency procedures are rarely viable.. CVA proposals are usually the last gasp attempt of a director with huge personal exposure to save him or herself and are based on fantasy. Usually HMRC cotton on to this fairly quickly and reject proposals outright.

**I don’t work for HMRC but I do work for a firm of Insolvency Practitioners

Seems our favourite Administrator intends to challenge the 9 point deduction now as well! twat

He said that in his first press conference also.

I see they've also come to an agreement regarding Campbell's lawsuit, of which they owe him the money, but it'll be paid once the new owners take over.

If they take over ;)

I wonder if English football will get to witness the return of Ibon Arrieta.

He reckons they should exit administration in 6-8 weeks - that hopeful's surely

Sounds like he's been reading back through his "How i saved Swindon" notes. I would imagine there are lots of words crossed out, so he can't read them properly.

Have they figured out exactly how much is owed and to who? I imagine HMRC will be blocking the CVA if they can, which would cause a major delay, so it will come down to whether HMRC have 25% of the debt or can get other creditors to support them.

The 9 point deduction has just been confirmed by the Premier League.

Seems not - they've got what they wanted from it, and are maintaining a high-line aggressive stance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mattslater/2010/03/taxman_beats_tactical_retreat.html

Sadly I can only see one outcome here, eventually HMRC are going to force Portsmouth out of business altogether. They've had enough of being owed money by football clubs and they want to make an example out of one or more and Portsmouth are the highest profile and biggest defaulters at the moment.

Even if our favourite administrator manages to do a deal with the existing creditors, its highly likely that fresh tax debts will continue to build up which will no doubt bring another winding up petition from HMRC.

It also seems they are determined to scrutinise the conduct of the administration and if it isnt done strictly by the book they will challenge its legality.

Going by Andronikou`s record at STFC, that is not good news for Portsmouth.

Bizarrely, I think that's Portsmouth's best hope for him doing things straight tbh - he knows he's going to be under a massive amount of scrutiny on this one, legally and from the media, and we know he doesn't like any kind of scrutiny whatever. So if he doesn't play it absolutely straight down the line, he's really taking a huge risk. He can't afford NOT to play this straight down the line, unless his God complex overrides any kind of common sense whatever

He is loving the limelight he always did I really can't seem him doing this by the book, I'd be shocked if he did

There's a world of difference between being in the limelight and being under scrutiny. He loved the limelight when he was here, it was when he started to be questioned he went a bit "off". But in this instance, leaving aside any media scrutiny (and there will be that), just the in your face stance HMRC have taken should be enough to warn anyone involved they'd be mad to try and pull any fast ones. Andronikou may be many things, but he's not stupid.

What "things" is he then? Can we compile a list?

"Football should be decided on the pitch" says Grant... now I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure you were on your way down anyway Avram!

Balding

Attractive
Dynamic
Eloquent
Well dressed
Not in least bit litigious :)

seeing his face on tv all the time makes me angry.

A subject of considerable obession for pauld who perhaps would be better off getting over it?

My main interest has been in Portsmouth's collapse into the abyss which is part of my (admitted) obsession with the ongoing piss-poor state of governance of the English game. I don't think I was alone in taking an additional interest in Andronikou's sudden reappearance though.

Andronikou's been upsetting poor Peter Story teller

Sounds like he did learn a thing or two about how a football club should not be run at swindon after all 

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/frattonlatest/Administrator--Storrie-must-bear.6162743.jp?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FrattonLatest+%28The+News+-+Fratton+Latest%29

Andronikou in potentially controversial comment shock

How is calling Storrie a twat controversial? Surely it's more stating the obvious?

Haha Andronikou is all mouth until the shoe is on the other foot. I can't wait until he gets the negative limelight.

Henry Winter, the Telegraph's soft soaper in chief, giving Storrie the "At home with Mikey D" treatment in the Telegraph today:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/portsmouth/7481807/Portsmouths-Peter-Storrie-pure-hatred-has-been-put-around-about-me.html

What an embarrassing piece of journalism, as bad as the brown tongue job he did on Scudamore recently

Unless I misread that, Storrie seems to think he'll be getting a phone call from the Government / FA / Premier League asking for his help in sorting out the financial problems in football. What a fucking twat.

Maybe they're going to ask "What would you do Peter?" to establish precisely what not to do in any given situation

Surely Andronikou in potentially correct comment shock?

Not just us who have doubts about Mr Andronikou it seems:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article7069905.ece

Love the professional way he responds to the allegations:

Good article here having a go at Storrie, and his 'bonus' arrangements...

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/760454/BREATHTAKING-in-its-arrogance-mind-boggling-in-its-delusion-nauseating-in-its-self-pity-depressing-in-its-egotism-Peter-Storrie-has-given-his-definitive-version-of-the-events-that-have-reduced-a-once-proud-club-to-financial-footballing-and-moral-rubble.html

That's one long headline.

That's because the debt is so huge...

I'm at work and our webblocker has blocked the News of the World website with the category of "tasteless" :D

See that Pompey have been fined £1m by the premier league for continuing to break their rules during the season - obviously just to help them out a little bit with their cash flow problems

I think that's called kicking them while they're down.

So Pompey are being allowed to sell players, in spite of European transfer window regulations which were forced upon clubs who didn't want them for the exact reason Pompey have asked to be excepted.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8585099.stm

It says players won't be able to play for their new clubs until next season, leaving players in a tricky position given that they won't get any games between leaving Pompey and playing for their new club in pre-season or for their contry at the World Cup.

The BBC lists the following conditions set by the Premier League;


That could be interpreted as saying that they can sell to a Football League club and the player will be able to play for their new club immediately - as the next season condition is only attached to transfers to Premier League clubs. Either way, I'm guessing this could mean we could sign Ritchie permanently now and maybe he won't count as a loan player any more.

Good thinking!

It's a load of old shit. If I was the buying club why would I pay now and not get until the summer just to help? Fuck Portsmouth they can wait 'til the end of the season to offload their shite that no-one wanted in January anyway.

They not gone bust yet?

Fucking hell

Andronikou going to sell the whole team apparently (well, the ones that aren't on loan) and aiming to raise £20-30m by doing so, so they can start again in the Championship "with a completely new team and the club's future secured". Or at least with that nice Mr Chanrai's loan paid off, anyway.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/24/portsmouth-permission-sell-players

He should get someone in to advise him, someone he knows and trusts and with a track record in player sales. Maybe someone who "did the best bit of business in whole Football League" when he sold Fallon a few years back.

Maybe he has.....

Andronikou quotes both apparently from today....

From the BBC article: "This has given us an option, but we're not necessarily going to sell players."

From the Guardian article: "We need to sell between eight and 10 of our first-team squad."

Well, it's not like he has a track record of contradicting himself (and the known facts), is it?

I'd imagine AA sees our present :clap: fans and thinks "yep,did a good job in saving that club"

That's certainly what he told all the media. And with endorsements from no less a business brain than Bob Holt, who would question that verdict?

Indeed, only a busybody. On a sidenote has anyone seen or heard anything from Mr Wilkes...don't think he got the credit he deserved.

Am I right in thinking he still technically has unfinished business with us having not signed off our CVA?

Yes. Much to Mr Fitton's annoyance as it still impacts our creditworthiness. But to be fair, it's only getting on for 2 years since Fitton paid it all off, and you can't expect such a high-profile chap as he to lower himself to the minutiae of actually doing the job he's so handsomely paid for when there's no SKY cameras around to record the moment. Face it, he's moved on to more glamorous disasters than us.

Yes, he's still around, though flat-out busy (body) every time I've seen him this season, which hasn't been often admittedly (I guess in part cos he's so busy). Which is good - always nice to hear of businesses doing well in these uncertain times. I'd certainly hope he got credit from people - Mike put in a hell of a lot of work and played a crucial part in everything that went on back then.

Would any national media be interested in covering this debacle? Surely an exclusive, on "why Andronikou will never save Pompey" would shift a few papers, especially if it featured a respectable and successful businessman (ie Fitton) being held back in his running of a football club by the incompetance of said arsehole.

So what is the hold up. There must be more to it than the paperwork slipping down the back of Andronikou fridge. Not even he is that incompetent.

So what's the technicality?

No idea.
<Shrugs> As best I can see (and I'm basing this on what Fitton/Watkins said at the last AGM), it's all done and dusted, there should be no hold-up, all Mr Andronikou has to do is get out his big red "Sorted" stamp and shuffle it off to Companies House. But he hasn't. There may well be more to it than that, but if it's a choice between believing Fitton/Watkins have done everything in their power to resolve this or the possibility that Mr Andronikou may be a bit of an arse, I'm afraid I know where my money would be.

It apparently wouldn't be the first time that Andronikou

In that case the question remains, as professional as they are, why they haven't made a few phonecalls to David Conn and the like to mention that...

I think I'll go for the safe option of AA being a useless cunt.

Well, it may be that there is a pukka reason it's not been closed out which they've found out since the remarks made at the AGM. Fitton did sound pretty pissed off then though. Or it may be that they reckon they're better off not getting into a public slanging match with him. No idea. Ask them.

That's pretty much what the judge said :)

Christ, I'm a lot cleverer than I thuoght. I can't be a judge though as they like rough bum sex and thats not for me. I'll just stick to being wise and clever. 

Well, there's a surprise. Despite all the bullshit about fresh starts, investigations, dozen potential owners etc, Andronikou's now saying that Chainrai is the only potential owner who "ticks all the boxes"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/25/balram-chainrai-portsmouth?

Can anyone else think of an example where the administrator allowed the Administration/CVA process to be used as a device to flip a football club back to the original owners, shorn of some inconvenient debt? Let's hope Portsmouth are better at paying their CVA payments when they fall due. Their recent track record doesn't inspire confidence.

Due to worries over libel laws I wouldn't say Andrew Androniku is a total cunt who is fucking useless at his job and is in the pocket of anyone who bungs him a wedge.

I also wouldn't say he comes across as a smug prick who needs a kicking.

I wouldn't, I really wouldn't.

And I think we'd all agree with you there

(That it would be unwise to say, obviously)

I don't have to worry about libel laws and so I will say all of the above repeatedly.

Don't say it into a mirror five times though

I liked his performance on SSN last night.

Sorry if this has already been posted but Ritchie has been recalled http://www.swindontownfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10341~2006481,00.html and goes straight into the squad against spurs.

I think Andronikou probably read what we were saying about him in this thread.

Tosser.

Do we have enough cover? I suppose now that Macklin's back he'll have to do...

Marshall, Macklin, Henshall, Bodin, Ward.

Should be okay on the left wing really.

O'Bri.. oh hang on.

Did our latest sicknote get a one or two year deal? Surely we have to get rid in the summer.

One thing that hasn't happened this season is a youth player or two stepping up. We're led to believe that we've got some great up and coming players but where are they? Part of the problem has been Wilson not giving them the chance as he's brought in loan players instead, whilst they have pretty much all been excellent signings I wish he had given some of the younger players a chance at least.

Henshall and Thompson in particular have been getting some good press, so why not give them a run out? Putting them in to a team that is confident, playing well and winning is as good a time as any - even if it is just a 15 minute run out towards the end of a game. With Ritchie going back it will likely give Marshall, Henshall, Macklin more of a chance of getting some minutes so maybe it isn't a bad thing.

I agree. DW has brought in players like Douglas, Ferry, Cuthbert, Darby and Nouble when our own youth players haven't had a sniff. Who cares if they're not good/mature/strong enough to sustain a promotion challenge?! Bloody immigrants, coming over here and giving us success.