pedg

More story telling: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=740052&sec=england&cc=5739 Storrie told Soccernet: "The Revenue want £4.7m for the last two months PAYE. We have told them that we would willingly pay them that right now, but they are refusing, unless we also pay them the £7m plus VAT. Right, you would pay the 4.7M at the drop of a hat but could only come up with 1.8M when trying to negotiate with HMRC?

Think someone should point out their mistake as they appear to think one of the solutions for pompey is to pay off HMRC whereas if we believe Dubai Phil, (which obviously we always do ) then that is no longer an option. -- Have sent them an email asking they correct it!

I think she resigned when the fraudster started running things but I assume she was reinstated when Chainrai came riding into town?

Is this definitely out the hand of HMRC now then? i.e. that the current legal situation means they can no longer withdraw their winding up order?

You would suspect than anyone with the right mix of wealth and stupidity would have stopped being wealthy a long time ago.

Will he be stadium announcer as well?

I think given their tendency for not dying when they should that a stake might be more useful than a nail.

Times article is very informative.. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article7021577.ece They have appealed the VAT apparently but it would not be heard til June and surprise surprise they wanted it postponed till then. More surprisingly is that pompey prepared one of these statements for the PL last month but did not send a copy to HMRC. + lots of other interesting bits -- If they did prepare such a statement for the PL then one guesses it must have shown they were not trading while insolvent otherwise the PL would have had to act?? Question is then was it a correct statement or one that had been manipulated to show them in a better position than was the case?

From todays Guardian Fiver... FOR WHOM THAT ANNOYING BELL TOLLS Fans of rich-again Southampton were overcome by relief this afternoon after a high court judge granted their south-coast neighbours Portsmouth a stay of execution, meaning Pompey will remain in existence long enough to be mercilessly taunted by them, waving wads of Monopoly money and fake-sheikh headgarb during Saturday's impendingly-boisterous FA Cup tie at St Mary's.

I think the problem is the judge is not interested in the 'will be' future but in the 'is' of now. plus Sorry, but you had the opportunity to appeal against the VAT and you didn't so it is no longer disputed.

As I have said before I wonder if unpaid players image rights will be another nail in their coffin? Fairly sure that Sol Campbell will not be the only member of their squad over the last few years to both be contracted to receive a considerable sum from image rights and to have not received them. After all at the time he sued the papers said: It claims Portsmouth agreed to pay Campbell £20,000 a week for the first year and £30,000 for the last two years of his contract, to use his image in commercial, sponsorship and endorsement deals. Given that I should think you could easily end up with a bill of 100,000 a week just for the image rights. Not pay those for a year and you are talking somewhere in the region of £5M owed? Not too implausible a scenario I should think?

If say it rained really heavily on Friday and someone say left a sprinkler on and accidentally stopped the drainage system working so the match was called off would they get their share of the gate then or would it have to wait till the rearranged fixture?

Yes it is a silly argument as they need that money to pay their on going costs such as the wage bill (and the electricity bill haha). If they give all that money to HMRC what are they going to use to pay those. The look at all the money coming in and please ignore all the money going out argument is silly.

I expect that the statement is to cover the judge so if in 9 days they are still insolvent, even if some money came in, she would wind them up then and there. That's if they get to that stage as if they get new enough money they could pay of HMRC and the order would be cancelled or if they don't get new money they will know there can be no more adjournments so would go into receivership if they could.

So who writes this report? Is it someone neutral they have to bring in to do it or do they produce it in-house?

Oui! I thought nothing was happening to 2pm...

oh good. I can go and wander off and do some shopping without thinking I am missing anything..... (They will probably go into admin in about 5 minutes then...)

Mass protest at the High court http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newsextra/Lone-Pompey-fan-makes-protest.6058953.jp Lone Pompey fan makes protest

As pointed out before I think pompey have previously renegaded on a payment scheme to HMRC so they can't be directly compared with Notts County.

HMRC: Like the other clubs we have dealt with we want half now please. Pompey: Here is 1.8M, its all we have. Judge: Pompey are unable to even pay half their VAT bill so obviously do not have enough money to continue trading.

Either what is happening to them is the result of some cunning subterfuge between interested parties. or its a combination of greed, c*ckup, mismanagement, ignorance and stupidity on a grand scale. Can't decide which at the moment.

Surely they have to press the big red button marked 'administration' now??

Yes they bought a list of email addresses of rich people off someone on the web and have emailed all of them so one must buy them mustn't they??

So are pompey: 1) Bit time gamblers relying on hope that something will come up? 2) Confident that they have something up their sleeve to avoid being wound up? 3) So paranoid about what administrators will find out that they are determined to avoid it at all costs?

So as they have their scheduled slot at some point after 11:30 when is their appeal for adjournment likely to be heard? Will it be far enough in advance for them to go into admin if it fails or will it be heard seconds before their fate is pronounced on?