Who Can We Trust: The So-Called 'Football Men'

A Bid for a Debenture

This week, the High Court will hear an administrator’s request to remove Portpin’s debenture on Fratton Park, a move that would clear the path for the Pompey Supporters Trust to buy Portsmouth Football Club. Yet standing in the way is a new bid from a familiar face in English football boardrooms: Keith Harris. His proposal is not to buy the club, nor even the ground, but to spend £6.3m purchasing the very debenture the court case seeks to nullify.

It is a perplexing move. The money, which was apparently unavailable for a ground purchase six weeks ago, has suddenly materialised to buy a security that could soon be worthless. For a club destined for League Two, burdened with the need for redevelopment, taking on such a debt seems counter-intuitive. The Trust, meanwhile, offers £3m for the ground as equity, a bid with the administrator’s and the Football League’s approval. Harris has neither, despite claims to the contrary made on local radio last Friday.

The actions of these self-styled ‘football men’ often defy simple logic. They are the fixers, the brokers, the individuals who glide between clubs, facilitating takeovers and promising investment. Unregulated by the game’s governing bodies, they have an outsized influence on the financial health and, in some cases, the very existence of clubs. But what, precisely, are they fixing?

The Fixer's Record

Keith Harris, often labelled ‘Football’s Mr Fixit’, provides a compelling case study. Working through his firm Seymour Pierce, which recently went out of business owing creditors £6m, Harris has been involved in some of the most high-profile club sales of the modern era. He is credited with bringing Roman Abramovich to Chelsea and Randy Lerner to Aston Villa. Less auspiciously, his fingerprints are on deals that saw Thaksin Shinawatra arrive at Manchester City, Carson Yeung at Birmingham, an Icelandic bank at West Ham, and Vladimir Antonov’s CSI at Portsmouth.

The list of failures and near-misses is just as long. He attempted to broker deals to sell Newcastle for Mike Ashley and, at different times, both Everton and Liverpool. He was also involved in the Red Knights’ attempt to take over Manchester United from the Glazers. Perhaps most damningly, during his time as chairman of the Football League, the collapse of the ITV Digital deal led indirectly to the insolvency of thirteen member clubs. The assessment that his ‘track record in football isn’t anything to write home about’ feels like a considerable understatement.

Harris is not alone. His business associate David Bick, now of Square1 Consulting, promotes football club ownership as a ‘growth play’. The strategy is simple: buy cheap, preferably out of administration, restructure, and sell on for a profit. It is a model that treats creditors as an inconvenience and clubs as assets to be flipped. We have seen it before. Jerome Anderson, another agent, offered Blackburn to Laurence Bassini before Bassini, introduced by Harris, took Watford into financial difficulty instead. Christopher Samuelson, Anderson’s colleague, brokered the Zingarevitch deal for Reading. A small circle of names appears again and again.

The Portsmouth Situation

This history makes Harris’s personal attempt to own a club, particularly in direct opposition to a fan-led bid, all the more curious. The bid for Portsmouth promises backing from Asia and the UK, but the so-called ‘passive investors’ remain shrouded in secrecy. Given the calibre of individuals Harris has introduced to the game before, including the now-banned Bassini and the disgraced Shinawatra, supporters are right to be sceptical.

Transparency is not forthcoming. When questions are asked about the source of the £6.3m, the response is the threat of legal action.

The bid’s claims of a clean break with the past are also undermined by the proposed personnel. Harris’s choice for financial director is John Redgate, a man appointed by Portpin’s administrator in 2010 and kept on by both Portpin and CSI. Redgate was involved in the deal that saw season ticket money diverted from the club and helped place Portsmouth into its current administration in February 2012. He is a Pompey fan, but he is also a businessman with a history.

So why make this play now? Why pay over the odds for a debenture on the brink of being legally challenged? It is not a classic growth play. It saddles a lower-league club with debt when an equity-based, fan-owned alternative is ready, approved, and waiting. Success for Harris could mean the Football League refuses to hand over the ‘Golden Share’, potentially driving the club towards liquidation.

For a man who has made his name in football, it is a strange way of doing business. The question hangs over Fratton Park: just what is Mr Harris trying to fix, and for whom?