Portsmouth "Two Weeks Away" From Annihilation

According to the BBC, The administrators of Portsmouth have told staff at the financially-stricken club they face being made redundant

In June, Portpin agreed to complete its purchase of the club on condition the wage bill was reduced through player sales and compromise agreements. Portsmouth cannot afford to keep any of their eight contracted players - Tal Ben Haim, Greg Halford, Erik Huseklepp, Dave Kitson, Liam Lawrence, David Norris, Luke Varney, Kanu

In February, Pompey made around 30 staff redundant including chief executive David Lampitt and the club face liquidation if they cannot reduce their playing staff further.

In total they have eight senior players left on the books and most of them will have to leave for the club to survive.

http://www.footballtradedirectory.com/news/2012/july/portsmouth-fc-on-the-brink.html
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Very sad state of affairs

Good ol Arry will take no blam as usual...

Wow, they really are at the bottom.

seems like yesterday when they were in the UEFA cup and drew 2-2 with Milan at home

I think we sponsored this club once through our tourism agency.

S32TABLANCA wrote:I think we sponsored this club once through our tourism agency.

I'm pretty certain no . Though Madrid did give the Pompeys 20m for Lass .

OT , pretty sad news .

RealGunner wrote:seems like yesterday when they were in the UEFA cup and drew 2-2 with Milan at home

And Boateng was playing for them.

Kanu, Defoe, Johnson, Kranjcar...

Kanu @ Arsenal

Will never forget that day

I feel bad for them, they only have 11 players left at the club

If the 8 seniors leave, they're completely f*cked

drakefyre wrote:

S32TABLANCA wrote:I think we sponsored this club once through our tourism agency.

I'm pretty certain no . Though Madrid did give the Pompeys 20m for Lass .

OT , pretty sad news .

When I said 'we', I was actually referring to the tourism agency of my country. However I seem to be wrong there too, we sponsored Sheffield United. Portsmouth FC was sponsored by our national airline.

Whoa, yeah that is pretty frakking sad. They had a very solid team back a few years ago. Until they got randomly relegated.

How can you frack up PL qualification, with the massive ammounts of money involved? If measly Liga clubs or Buli clubs can maintain some sort of stability with shitty money, Portsmouth must have really frakked up.

That's the thing; they didn't have massive amounts of money. Portsmouth were always a small club with small income. Their success came from spending beyond their means on wages and transfer fees. Then, it turned out that they had several outstanding payments for players, and things just kind of snowballed from there.

The fact they've gone through three or four owners since then has not helped them at all. They haven't had the stability to see out a difficult phase.

It'd be a real shame if they do go out of business, but this is what happens if clubs aren't managed properly.

feels like yesterday we were in the FA cup with them.

Lex wrote:I feel bad for them, they only have 11 players left at the club

If the 8 seniors leave, they're completely f*cked

No, it's actually vice versa, they need the seniors out so they can afford brining new, much cheaper players in.


But anyway, I feel bad for Portsmouth's fans. A few people destroyed the club. Maybe they will finally be liquidated now or even if they somehow managed to survive that, surely they'd be relegation-bound in League One with their 10 point penalty and need to assemble the whole team from a scratch.

The administrator at Portsmouth has served notice that the club will be shut down on 10 August unless all senior players still on the books at the 2008 FA Cup winners accept compromise deals on their wages or agree to transfers away from Fratton Park before that date.

Trevor Birch has revealed he will have "no option" but to liquidate the club by that deadline, four days before a Capital One Cup tie against Plymouth and eight before Pompey are due to start their League One campaign at home to Bournemouth, if agreement is not reached with the seven remaining senior players at the club. Both interested purchasers – the former owner, Balram Chainrai and the Portsmouth Supporters' Trust – have apparently stipulated that their attempts to complete a takeover are dependent upon settlements being reached with those high earners.

"The facts are straightforward: under the terms of the offer for the club, in order to complete the CVA proposal, the players have to leave and conclude compromise settlements," said Birch, a partner at PKF and the joint administrator of Pompey. "This condition has been imposed by the Pompey Supporters' Trust as well as by [Chainrai's company] Portpin. Both interested parties have made it clear that they won't take on the club unless there is movement from the players.

"We will continue to do all we can to facilitate these deals but the club's future hinges on the willingness of certain players and their agents to sign up to compromise agreements that are affordable both in terms of the amount and timing of repayments. Unless we make significant progress on this front by 10 August, then we are likely to have no option other than to close the club."

Birch has implemented a £5,000-a-week salary cap at the stricken club in an attempt to prolong the club's existence in the short term – as the players would be classed as "football creditors", the excess money owed would be paid at a later date if liquidation is avoided – but long-term progress would require such as Tal Ben Haim, who earns £36,000 a week, and Nwankwo Kanu accepting a compromise on the remainder of their lucrative deals.

Kanu, who is in Nigeria, has lodged a claim for £3m in back pay with Pompey and Ben Haim claimed this week that he is due a similar amount in salary arrears, bonuses and the remainder of his contract. Birch has stressed that any new owner would inherit considerable liabilities and would need to guarantee around £10m to football creditors before the Football League, which is closely monitoring the situation, will be satisfied, meaning an agreement on a compromise amount with those players is key.

David Norris, Greg Halford, Dave Kitson, Erik Huseklepp and Liam Lawrence are all in talks aimed at reaching an agreement or smoothing their transfers away. Luke Varney has joined Leeds for around £200,000, money that was paid directly to Derby County to cover the player's original transfer to the south coast club.

"We are making good progress with three or four players," added Birch. "But, despite many conversations and offers over the past few weeks, some players and agents still don't understand what's at stake here. If the club is liquidated, players will not be protected by the Football Creditor provisions. They will become ordinary unsecured creditors in a situation where there is unlikely to be any dividend."

Pompey were deducted 10 points when they returned to administration last term and were duly relegated to League One, where they will begin with a further 10-point penalty.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jul/24/portsmouth-club-closure-deadline?CMP=twt_gu

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So it's either they get liquidated, or they play next season with a bunch of cheap signing and youth players with a 10 point deduction.

Definitely between a rock and a hard place, there.

Relegated to league 2 today, and will start next season on -10 points.

from playing European football and being FA Cup winners in 2008 to 4th tier in space of 5 years

Unlucky for Portsmouth.

What was the biggest reason they actually went into administration back in 2010? I mean a lot of clubs are in debt, however what made them crumble?

Yohan Modric wrote:Unlucky for Portsmouth.

What was the biggest reason they actually went into administration back in 2010? I mean a lot of clubs are in debt, however what made them crumble?

Droopy overspending and handing out lavish contracts to crap players and their owners, they have changed owners multiple times in the last few years, large unpaid debt and taxes

This has been coming for a long time. It's sad to see but you can't keep asking the players to take pay cuts. It's not like they're going from 100K per week to 70k we're talking about looow low wages.

In other news, QPR loaned money (£15m) for the first time since Tony Fernandez took charge of the club

Secured against all their assets.