Portsmouth And The Longest Hangover

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...

'I stand by my story and will fight them every step of the way.' Micah Hall, the Pompey blogger whose work is at the centre of the suit placed on Fansnetwork last week has now received an opportunity to defend his work. A letter from libel-specialist lawyers Mishcon...

Those amongst us that occasionally doubt the power the most vocal of football bloggers seldom pause to consider the lengths that some people go to in order to prevent them having their say. This is a story that will ring bells in a number of clubs around the country....

At first glance it seemed like bad news. Another spanner in the Pompey Trust bid for ownership of the club. Balram Chainrai's Portpin are not happy at the Football League's rejection of the Keith Harris bid for Pompey. On Friday 22 Februaury the BBC website reported:...

There has been a rare old tussle going on down Pompey way this last week. In microcosm our beleagured club continues to be a perfect illustration of all that is questionable about football governance as it currently stands. On 7 February it appeared that the long...

Football has a cruel way of heaping cruel irony upon cruel irony. Just two days ago, Supporters Direct hosted an event at the Houses of Parliament to lobby for the recommendations of the Select Committee for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) into...

Below is full text of Pompey blogger Portus-eg's findings regarding events at Pompey at the time of the sale of the club by Portpin to CSI in June 2011. It makes interesting reading.  The blog was first published here: http://portus-eg.blogspot.co.uk/ under the title:...

The perils of administration. A cautionary tale. Since October 2012 the Pompey Trust’s bid business partners have committed £800,000 of their own money to the club. If the Trust bid succeeds they will convert this sum to equity in the club. If the Trust bid fails they...

Thursday 15 November 2012. Mark the date. On this day Pompey's administrators PKF announced they had reached a conditional agreement to sell the club to the Pompey Supporters Trust. The completed deal will be unique in English football.  Its success will be a landmark...

The battle for the soul of football took one step in the right direction yesterday. The nomination of Pompey Supporters Trust as the preferred bidder for the club is a stunning volte-face in the negotiations to bring the club out of administration. It appears to have...

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'...

The Football League's Owners' and Directors' Test Rule Book must be looking a bit battered by now, what with the role of those called Chairman and those not called Directors being called into question. Yesterday Peter Ridsdale, despite being chairman in name, is...

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,...

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...

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...

... 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...

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...

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...

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,...

We have been waiting for this since November - but that doesn't make it any better. The new manager, the younger team, and games like the awayday at Blackpool notwithstanding, no one has been able to fully enjoy the simplicity of Championship survival. That is...

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...

Its a form of 'Pass the Parcel'.  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...

This article first appeared on Pompeyonline in March 2011 and is part of a series aimed at chronicling the history of the club's fall into administration. “One point two million pound a year, Peter? You’re havin’ a laugh, mush!” Immortal words, captured by Sky on 26...

With Liverpool having hogged the headlines over the last couple of weeks or so, it is easy to forget that there are other clubs in considerably greater trouble than they are at the moment. In Scotland, Dundee FC are understood to be on the brink (more on that in the...

So, Portsmouth won at the High Court yesterday, then. It's worth taking a moment to consider what that means, exactly. It means that their unsecured debt has been reduced by 80%, and that the overwhelming majority of creditors will lose, cumulatively, a massive amount...

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...

It is a funny election where the returning officer decides who the electorate is. Technically, all administrations throw up this scenario, although it has only seemed important in recent years, purely by chance, at Leeds United in 2007 and Portsmouth almost ever...

The full extent of the financial horror at Portsmouth, then, is starting to become apparent. It is starting to feel as if every time the club's administrator, Andrew Andronikou, opens or moves anything, there is a red bill hiding underneath, behind or within it. The...

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...

It is perhaps symptomatic of the times that at least one of this weekend's FA Cup semi-finals has seen the majority of the previews unable to properly be able to focus on the football itself. Given the nature of Harry Redknapp's departure from Fratton Park and...

As Portsmouth slid into administration, the grim reality of their predicament could be seen from a cursory glance at the bottom of the Premier League table. The club is, of course, bottom of the table, but they have been there much of the season. The unpleasant added...

A million miles removed from the opulent lives of the millionaire players and the neatly coiffured executives, the reality of Portsmouth’s financial desperation came home to roost. It didn’t, however, come home to roost for those that can afford it or those that are to blame for this whole sorry mess in which they find themselves.

Portsmouth beat Birmingham City 2-0 at Fratton Park yesterday afternoon to reach the FA Cup finals for the second time in three years. This in itself is a remarkable achievement considering the absolute chaos that is unfolding behind the scenes at the club, but it seems likely that any financial benefits from this will be the equivalent of applying a sticking plaster to a gaping wound.

It is, as if you hadn’t already noticed, open season on Portsmouth. There had been precious little sympathy for the supporters in the club in the media, but when it was confirmed that the club were back in court over a challenge by HMRC over the legitmacy of them placing themselves into adminstration, the gloves came off.

The mask now seems likely to slip. After seventeen years of wearing a mask of opulence and limitless wealth, the Premier League self-made reputation as The Richest League In The World will face its most severe test yet, as Portsmouth face the inevitable and collapse into administration.