sidthesquid

Rather boringly it wasn't for feed for the squirrel farm, new guy-ropes or a puncture repair kit, but would be staged payments on old player purchases.

A few points for clarification from my uneducated perspective, please.... 1 The football creditors will fall outside of the CVA and will be satisfied by the purchaser Does this mean Chinny is expecting to have to pay this from the PPs or is this the bit he is refusing to pay up for? 2 Unpaid salaries for 11/12 is presumably Dec/Jan wages? 3 Unpaid deferrals alone as a debt are actually over £400k/month and rising, never mind paying the actual wages. How can this be sustainable by Birch? If Chinny has to find that £9mill, plus £1mill a month in wages, never mind other running costs, what the hell is in it for him? No wonder he won't touch it until the high earners are off the book. The more you look at it, this is a last throw of the dice by Birch. I don't imagine he wanted to end up cosied up with Chinny, but this really is last desperate act of brinkmanship. He has to try and force the high earners out, or force the football league or PFA to concede that 'for the good of football's 'pluckiest little sleeping giant,' either they will cough up the difference or let them make the players redundant without full re-imbursement. Unless Chinny takes on the full footballing debt, here is no other way to make the sums up. The Poopey trust being able to fund it is just laughable. Tje interesting question is now whether the players crack, whether the FL/PFA will either cough up or allow their own rules to be breached, and if so, at what punishment to the club. We are into the end-game, and like all good thrillers, it could still go several ways. When's the next episode?

Oh dear - one of the only two players they wanted to keep and he has jumped ship. Do you think they'll notice if they swap him for Kanu as the taxi heads north?

Because even for what was a relatively large initial debt, the amount they will get now is sod-all. I would vote against it if my £40000 was reduced to £160. Why would you not? In a bit of an OldNick moment it occurred to me that if Chinny gets a debt free club for £500000 without the big earners etc, it is clearly worth a few million quid, possibly on another HP arrangement, where if it all goes t1ts-up we can have admin 3. Unless the FL intervene this is still an endlessly repeateable process. In fact, what is to stop him, as owner, buying a big yacht and a house and a Ferrari on the company books (maybe he has already, or was that Peter Storrie?) through the club's books and then wiping it out again, as a football club, unlike any other business 'must' be kept alive. Amin 4 here we come.

That's TBH paid till Wednesday then http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-past/pompey-fan-power-set-to-land-windfall-1-3929188

Don't forget Accrington Stanley.

Everything Lampitt says is entirely plausible until you remember that it took a matter of minutes on here for people to find information in the public domain to suggest that Antonov was as dodgy as feck. Perhaps he really was naive enough to dismiss it as mere rumours, or perhaps he thought 'What the hell? It's £600k/pa and I get to play with other people's money.' But anyone taking on Benjani on £15/week makes Storrie look like a football genius. Personally, I think he is just a bullsh!tter who was totally out of his depth at Pompey, and probably took the job in the first place because he'd been rumbled at the FA. I've known a few like him, and they wing it for so long until their history becomes impossible to ignore. In five years time he'll be CEO of Gosport Borough or Fareham Town on £30k a year.

But not as much fun

The way I see it is that, one way or another, we are approaching the end-game. Birch is sat in the middle of a poker table, trying desperately to save his reputation along with the Skates, staring blankly ahead as he tries to call everyone's bluff. And there are a lot of players around the table to persuade. Chinny has to accept TBH & Kanu's wages if he is ever going to get his hands on Nottarf Krap. The FL has to give the Skates the golden share, even though they are clearly broke, or be held responsible for kicking the 'bestest, pluckiest little sleeping giant in the country' into oblivion. TBH and Kanu and the like have to volunteer to walk away from millions, even though they have children and (in some cases) grandchildren to support. The PFA might have to encourage them, too, or have to find £10million or more in guaranteed wages for the Skate players. Those pesky creditors have to willingly accept less than F-all. And all the while that Birch has to stare unblinkingly at his opponents, he knows that the potential costs to PKF are racking up with less and less likelihood of recouping them. The question is, which one blinks first.

Yet another non-story from Skate-Pravda. Their newspaper winds me up nearly as much as their football club. The two relevant lines are There were fears that if Pompey were not able to get out of administration by the time the meeting was held, the Football League could decide to dock as many as 17 points from Pompey next season. But while the Football League is publicly staying silent on the issue, Mr Birch and his team have been told that they will begin their season in League One without any deductions. http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-past/pompey-to-avoid-points-deduction-by-football-league-1-3892697 It has never been an offence to start a season in admin. Their problems will start as they try to exit it.

Though of course those few players still cost more than double any other squad in their new division....

Sorry to keep on about it - but it's the ground (or the ground under the ground), that is all he is interested in. Whatever might still remain of the Parachute payments won't even cover the running costs. If they are liquidated, he loses everything. As long as they cling on he retains his sole saleable asset. It's like playing Monopoly - you are getting thrashed by your kid or your granny, but you still have Old Kent Road and Whitechapel Road with one house on each, and though you are one bad throw from landing on Mayfair with a hotel, you are still just in with a chance until your property is gone. And that is where Chinny is about now.

Makes you realise what a long drawn out death they have had (and are still having). Three years and counting. God, in that time we had gone broke, been resurrected, got to Wembley and played our way back into the Prem ..... Almost makes me believe in karma.

I thought under the new Fratton Tesco's myself. On a more serious note, it is not the PPs that Chinny is desperate to preserve - it is his ownership of Nottarf Krap. As Birch has publicly stated, if the DFCSBs are liquidated, then he can sell the ground to whoever he chooses and possibly for a pittance (ie Portsmouth City Council).

The inability to sell players must be crippling them at present - by my reckoning they have Halford, Mokoena, Ben Haim, Norris, Varney, Kitson, Huseklepp, Lawrewnce & Mullins (+Kanu?) on an average of £20k/week, and that may be being conservative. With tax and add-ons that is probably £250k/week just for them. They all have at least a year on their contracts & all of them would struggle to get £10k/week elsewhere, so if an offer comes in to take them for free, it will still cost a min of £500K per player just to get them off the wage bill (ie making up the difference on the last year of their contracts). So it is no surprise that the only two decent & cheap players are the only two worth a penny. Basically, even if they survive, there is every likelihood that just those eight players in their quality over quantity squad will cost them £2 mill to pay them till the end of July, then another £4mill just to move them on. It is no wonder they are fooked. Liquidation really does seem the only way out. (Just added them up and it's 9 excluding Kanu - even worse than I thought)

It is noticeable that their two best young players are on the lowest salaries and are the only two to attract any interest. They are worth paying for to secure, but the rest of them quite literally can't even be given away. Every day that goes by without anything happening really does make liquidation seem the only outcome. We've all seen enough westerns - It's quiet, too damned quiet out there.........

Chainrai is desperate to keep hold of it, because if the club is liquidated he gets buggerall. If he can keep control of the corpse he can shake a little more loose change out of the pockets. Simple as that.

Sadly for you it is uninformed people from oputside who see plucky little Pompey fans being brave in adversity, and the British inclination to back the underdog. What you don't get is they are patronising you, going 'Ahh bless' at the toothless Portsea granny boasting that she is up for a lap-dance. I'd cringe if we were getting those comments.

I think they will start with minus something next season - there are rules about not agreeing a CVA, but more seriously, isn't there a rule about not being in admin for two seasons? League One and -17 is probably the most optimistic outcome.

This is actually quite interesting. The players will be saying, 'I'm a football creditor, guaranteed 100% of my due. Pay up or I'm not budging.' The club says, 'We can't keep paying you and if you force the issue we will be liquidated and you will get nothing.' So, if the club forces a player out with that threat - and especially if a player like the legend TBH goes public with it - do the FL stand idly by, thereby completely undermining the principal of football debt must be paid to keep the golden share, or do they back him and effectively push the Skates over the precipice, with all the mithering recrimination that goes with it? TBH and the other overpaid 'stars' (they must be desperate for Cardiff & Brum to make the play-offs and keep paying Lawrence & Huseklepp for another month) actually hold the key to te club's survival. If they can shift them at minimal outlay, the club just might survive. If they can't liquidation and reforming in Conference South is the only way out of it. Peter Storrie, I salute you.

I think the FL were always going to make sure they survived the season, whatever we may have hoped. And at least they had the decency to get relegated as their part of the deal. Now is when the real sh!tstorm starts. They have five weeks to sort their finances, come up with a workable business plan, and, oh yes, find a new owner. We ain't seen nothing yet.

Well it is on the official site. Proof will be next season when grim reality kicks in.

The owl of derision

Now you are getting there. It won't be that easy getting out - there are a fair few half decent teams in League One. But it will be fun, the quality of football is surprisingly good and you just might make a clean start with Appy and a bunch of decent young pros & do okay. I almost envy you.