They left it, as we might have expected, until the very last minute, but yesterday afternoon at the High Court in London agreement was finally reached which sold Fratton Park, the home of Portsmouth Football Club, to the club's supporters trust and with that comes something even more important. This means that the Trust can now complete its purchase of the club, meaning that Portsmouth will be fifty-one per cent owned by the Trust, the biggest club in English football to be owned under such a structure.
Today, Pompey fans' research reveals that Ali Al Faraj, Pompey's well-known invisible owner, does exist. However, the same research also suggests that Ali Al Faraj played no part in the running of Portsmouth Football Club despite being the designated 'Fit and Proper' owner between October 2009 and February 2010.
Considering so many of the events of the last three or four years or so, yesterday was an
altogether satisfactory day for Portsmouth Football Club. A win by three goals to nil at Crawley
Town lifted the team out of the relegation places at the foot of League One, whilst supporters were
able to keep themselves entertained with rumours of another bidder to rescue the club from
administration.
There's this bloke closely associated with Portsmouth Football Club. You all know him – obese,
uncouth, dreadlocked, tattooed and clanging a huge bell as though his life depended on it. While
his commitment to the club is laudable, even honourable on a good day, he is incredibly,
unutterably insufferable.
At Home Park last night, Plymouth Argyle comfortably beat a scratch Portsmouth side made up
largely of youth team players by three goals to nil in the First Round of this years League Cup.
Seldom could such a result have seemed more trivial in comparison with events going on elsewhere at
a football club than they did in Devon last night.
The darkest hour, optimists might say, comes before the dawn, to which pessimists might counter
by saying that one of English footballs longest-running financial seems to be approaching its
inevitable solution. At least, the rest of us may consider, we will at least have an answer, one
way or the other.
... but if they did this one would be pretty much what they'd come up with. Just when you think
it might brighten up another rainstorm blows through, drowning all hope of recovery. With the new
points deduction imposed by the Football League yesterday Pompey's Summer continues to mirror that
of Rangers in a macabre North South symmetry.
Pompey Supporters' Trust have made their bid for the club. Pause to take in the enormity of that
statement. This is possibly one of the biggest steps taken in the history of the Trust movement.
Not because of the fact that a Trust is in a position to take over a club so recently in the top
tier of the game but because they are taking on the most paradoxical owner in its history.
'Dinlow' is proper Pompey. It is used, often affectionately, to someone who has said or done
something idiotic. If Greg Clarke has not been a 'bit of a din' in his statement regarding
Portsmouth Football Club yesterday then he is guilty of being either over-simplistic or
disingenuous, I feel. He certainly hasn't helped the odds on the survival of the club.
If there is one lesson that can surely be taken from the last few years of the subsistence of
Portsmouth Football Club, it must surely be that this, perhaps above all other clubs, is the one
that defines everything that is wrong with football club ownership in this country at this time.
This is the club at which wages far above and beyond a level that could ever reasonably maintained
and which eventually found itself eventually being kicked from pillar to post as speculators from
across the world, none of whom had any previous connection with the club and who, we can be
reasonably certain, were primarily interested only in the possibility of that elusive pot of gold
at the end of the Premier League rainbow, walked away scot-free as the club bumped from crisis to
crisis.
How on earth did it come to this again? Two years ago, Portsmouth Football Club became the
poster boys for football's wretched current condition when they became the first Premier League
club to be nudged into administration. For all the heartache that this caused, the club was due to
be getting a clean start with this move a move which, it should be remembered, sealed the club's
fate with regard to relegation from the Premier League in the first place but it has only taken two
years to get back to administration again, and this time the feeling in the air around Fratton Park
has a distinctly fatalistic mood about it.
Portsmouth Football Club have been hit with yet another punch as the threat of administration
looms – with manager Michael Appleton stating he is ‘ready for a points deduction.'
But is a points deduction really fair on Portsmouth Football Club? Â
Pompey's recent dogged luck has been created by individuals who were inadequate to run the football
club and a controversial system in which they were appointed: the so called Fit and Proper Person's
Test.
When questions about your football club are raised in Westminster and the Prime Minister agrees
that the situation needs investigation then you know you are in a bad way. Not because you might be
investigated but because the Prime Minister actually knows what Penny Mordaunt, MP for Portsmouth
North, is talking about.
Its a form of 'Pass the Parcel'. Â A crowd of Russian, Israeli, Hungarian, Hong Kong and even
British businessmen sit in a darkened room and spin poor old Pompey around until it ends up in the
hands of one or more of them. The holder then has to keep it going until he finds an exit strategy.
Then it goes back on the table with the same players and gets spun around again.
Wahey! I sort of got one right. At least the Spectator Business magazine sort of thinks
so. Or at least Martin Lipton in the Daily Mirror sort of thinks so. From where I live on
the very tip of South-West Greater London, the Spectator Business magazine has been about
as elusive as.
Strong press reports tonight would suggest that Portsmouth Football Club are about to go the way of
Maidstone United. To be frank, I'll believe it when I see it and would like to place a bet on the
number of times the words "stay of execution" are used in the press over the next week.That said,
this article reveals that plans for a successor club, are already afoot and that this will be
labelled,
Why are you smiling John? You've scored 7 goals in your last 65 matches Here's a
quick one from the fire-sale that is the Portsmouth Football Club.
John Utaka is heading back to the Premier League.
I write this not because I recommend you purchase Utaka in the Fantasy Premier League, but just
because I wanted to call out Utaka's reasoning for returning to the English top flight: "I would like to stay in the Premier League.
The problem with the media's attempted coverage of Portsmouth's saga is that the saga is little
to do with Portsmouth, or football, at all. And in newspapers carefully compartmentalised into
home, foreign, business and sports news... and celebrity shite, the off-the-field tale of
Portsmouth doesn't belong exclusively within any one compartment.
As explored by Scarf on these pages recently and ad nauseam on every other website in Christendom,
Portsmouth Football Club isn't perhaps the most watertight prospective new employer one can think
of amid the teeth of global crisis. So, having enjoyed a period of middle eastern exoticism under
Avram Grant, it's the watery gruel of the Championship from now on for Pompey; their choice of
manager
Portsmouth Football Club may be clouded with controversy, but following this weekend's
hard-fought FA Cup final at Wembley, it's easy to see some positives from this past season. The
club may be heading down to the Coca Cola Championship for next season, but many members involved
with the club this season proved that hard work can go a long way.
As the Portsmouth players put on their uniforms in the Wembley locker room this afternoon, they
were under no allusions about what the future held for them and their team. They were going to be
relegated down to the Championship League after the season. Once there, they were far more likely
to be relegated again this time next year as opposed to being promoted back to the Premiership.
What have the following all got in common? Suliaman Al Fahim, Laurence Bassini, Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir? Apart from the fact they all seem intent on bringing joy to the hearts of the Fratton Faithful by throwing money at Portsmouth Football Club? For it seems there has been a virulent outbreak of 'white knight syndrome' among aspiring football-club owners down Pompey way.
Portsmouth Football Club 5 April 1898 10 August 2012.
R.I.P.
Yet nothing is ever as it seems at Pompey. Beneath the choppy waters a constant storm wages on
the ocean bed. Whilst Pompey Supporters Trust holds itself ready to do a deal with players, charge
holders and creditors, the strange PR spin emanating from Fratton Park seems to be creating a web
of misconception and deception.
League championship side Portsmouth has reportedly asked players and employees to hold off on
collecting their salaries, after the club's administrator warned that it could run out of money
within two months.
The club entered administration for the second time since 2010 last week, and the club's
administrator, Trevor Birch, believes the tactic is necessary for the team to remain in
business.
Harry Redknapp, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, has said in court that he believes he is being
victimised because of his cockney accent (an accent peculiar to those from London). The cockney
accent in British culture has long been associated with deviant behaviour, much like in New York an
Italian might be stereotyped as being part of the mafia simply on the basis of the person being
Italian.
In what could take him out of the running for the England manager job, Tottenham Hotspur boss
Harry Redknapp will face trial for tax evasion next year.
Redknapp is accused of two counts of cheating the public revenue between specific dates in 2002
and 2007 when he was manager of Portsmouth Football Club.
The core argument of football clubs is always about the positive impact of a sponsorship on the
brand of the sponsor. This post purely focuses on the brand impact of Jobsite's sponsorship of
Portsmouth Football Club.
Nothing in Adrian Chiles' BBC career became him like the leaving of it, as Shakespeare might
have written of his fellow-midlander if he watched ‘Match of the Day 2'. "This is what modern
football has become." Chiles told his last MOTD2 audience, with all the indignation at his
disposal. "An administrator signing autographs.
It says a lot, and none of it good, about the Premier League that all the right questions about
Portsmouth's situation are being asked by others, from HM Revenue and Customs to Private Eye
magazine. It is becoming clearer by the day that Portsmouth Football Club has become a venue for an
entirely non-football fight between two groups of business people.
Redknapp is to face trial accused of tax evasion relating to his time as manager of Portsmouth
Football Club. The trial is due to start Monday 23rd January, and is likely to last for two weeks.
Two payments totalling $295,000 (about £183,000) were allegedly made by Mr Mandaric to a Monaco
bank account opened by Mr Redknapp, apparently linked to a bonus scheme where Redknapp was given a
small percentage of any profits from transfers.
First, three non-technical updates. Yes, this is a house of contradiction.
I realized this morning that I never linked to my Deadspin piece on Football Manager 2011 from
a few days back. It's about reality, and Uruguay, and things that happened in a hard rain that
didn't exist. Check it out.
It was really bad news for football when it was announced yesterday that Portsmouth Football Club
may go out of existence soon. There has been some late disagreement between the Administrator
Andrew Andronikou and one major creditor Alexandre Gaydamak, Â and the statement said that the
future of Portsmouth FC is now in jeopardy.
