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Pompey Takeover Saga

Fitzhugh Fella

By Fitzhugh Fella,
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EastleighSoulBoy

EastleighSoulBoy

Posted
Posted
This trust bid is never going to fly. There are too many fingers in the cookie jar.

 

They are so f**ked. I do not understand why they are not withdrawing and regrouping using the PST funds, ready for next season wherever they are placed in the Leauge heriarchy....

 

I'm now coming round to the thought that if they actually are liquidated and with the ensuing, forced, hiatus of one year away from ANY football they may not have the impetus to regroup. Sure, the HNIs in PST may still have the cash but the rest will find more needful priorities for their money and will start to withdraw their commitments to the trust. Then it will not be long before the balance totally tips and the rest see no point in continuing with the game.

 

The trust need to get this done now.

 

Meanwhile we're not bothered as it's win, win, win for us in the hilarity stakes.

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Lord Duckhunter

Lord Duckhunter

Posted
Posted

 

"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"

 

 

:lol:

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eurosaint

eurosaint

Posted
Posted

Having had to play catch up on here (busy the last few days!) I have only 'skim read' the last 10 or so pages but cannot see the answer to this question :

What has made the FL change it's stance on the minus 10 points ?

They gave a clear reason in the first place (default of CVA 1) but only a statement without clarity yesterday when they recinded it !

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dubai_phil

dubai_phil

Posted
Posted
Having had to play catch up on here (busy the last few days!) I have only 'skim read' the last 10 or so pages but cannot see the answer to this question :

What has made the FL change it's stance on the minus 10 points ?

They gave a clear reason in the first place (default of CVA 1) but only a statement without clarity yesterday when they recinded it !

 

Nothing has changed at all.

 

The Points Penalty ONLY applies when they STOP being in Admin. ie when someone new owns them

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pedg

pedg

Posted
Posted
Having had to play catch up on here (busy the last few days!) I have only 'skim read' the last 10 or so pages but cannot see the answer to this question :

What has made the FL change it's stance on the minus 10 points ?

They gave a clear reason in the first place (default of CVA 1) but only a statement without clarity yesterday when they recinded it !

 

They have not changed their stance. Certain people have tried to spin the 'no 10 points at start of season' as something positive but all it means is they should really have been out of admin by now and had their punishment. Birch may claim publicly that he will appeal the 10 points but that just playing to the gallery.

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eurosaint

eurosaint

Posted
Posted
They have not changed their stance. Certain people have tried to spin the 'no 10 points at start of season' as something positive but all it means is they should really have been out of admin by now and had their punishment. Birch may claim publicly that he will appeal the 10 points but that just playing to the gallery.

 

Thanks for clearing that up, I thought that I'd missed something and was getting even more p!ssed off with the FL !

Having said that, how they have sanctioned the signing of a whole new team of players is nothing short of disgraceful !!

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Wibble

Wibble

Posted
Posted
From twitter

BBC Solent Sport (solentsport):

#pompey have not added to squad ahead of noon deadline- squad for #afcb game will come from current signings & youngsters

:):):):):)

 

Unfortunately, I think that means the 7 more that they wanted to sign today and not the 10 they already signed yesterday

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Chez

Chez

Posted
Posted

the minus ten points can't come into effect until a final CVA2 has been agreed (and concluded) that dilutes CVA1 (s the Charai and PST trust offer does). Highly unlikely, but a new owner could emerge and pay the OldCo creditors off at their 20p in the pound over 5 years (as agreed) and new creditors off at whatever amount they agree to. If that happened they wouldn't have diluted the first CVA (CVA1) and the 10 points penalty would be inappropriate. The FL effectively jumped the gun by taking the ten away as the Chanrai/PST CVA2 had been agreed to but not concluded.

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Chez

Chez

Posted
Posted
You have spectacularly missed pretty much the entire 'moral' arguement of this thread. I remember being told all about 'Karma' re gloating at predicaments etc etc. Wow, we really could be going full circle (again). Better get protesting fellas, you are spending WAY too much, especially on wages, though the fee dwarfs anything Pompey have paid. Enjoy, as the truth is, just like us, unless you start protesting now, its completely out of your hands what the club do with the finances you truelly arent 100% party too. :)

 

Welcome back PES, surprised you have bothered to come back on this thread as it's not one for debate these days.

 

I'm not sure the comparison is quite fair seeing as our current owners just wiped off all our debt (monies to buy the club and then to finance transfers and high wages) so they have thankfully shown themselves to be responsible people looking to take the club forward not use the club as a play thing all the time doing at the fans expense. Don't worry fans will be keeping a close eye on our accounts and if I ever get an invitation to dine with Cortese I'll raise this issue with him.

 

Not quote sure where the idea that we are paying way too much comes from though. Certainly our wages were huge for league 1, sizeable for the championship, but now in the top flight, I expect they will be relatively modest *****il we sign 10 more Ramirez's of course). I don't think we've got Scumball/Defoe/James size wages just yet to pull us into the mire.

 

Personally I've questioned our spending throughout our rise, especially the uncertainty surrounding the debt figure on our accounts, but with that being cleared off I am not sure what there is to question just yet. With ST prices pretty high now, is £30k a week too much for our board to be paying our top players? If we've got a relegation reduction clause (I hope so) then this will not be an issue. We don't have a huge bank loan that can be called in at any point (like PFc did) so even relegation wouldn't take us to the brink, would it?

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Baldsaint

Baldsaint

Posted
Posted
What was our attendance in our first home game in L1 and what did we average in our two season in that league?

 

We averaged about 21,500 over both seasons, nearly 21,000 the first season and just over 22,000 in the second (and hopefully last ever) season. Don't know what the attendance was for our first game down there.

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Chez

Chez

Posted
Posted
A local derby and potentially their last ever home game as a league club, shameful they can't sell it out.

 

money no longer going in Chanrai's pocket either.

 

I assume B'mouth have sold their 3000 allocation.

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Chez

Chez

Posted
Posted
We averaged about 21,500 over both seasons, nearly 21,000 the first season and just over 22,000 in the second (and hopefully last ever) season. Don't know what the attendance was for our first game down there.

20,103

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Baldsaint

Baldsaint

Posted
Posted
20,103

 

Thanks for that. I think the most pertinent statistic though is the average attendance for the relegation season of each club, both clubs in admin, Sh!t City's average last season was 15,044, our average was 17,849 for relegation from the Championship. Although, IIRC, they had a shed load of offers to "Pack the Shack", where we didn't bother that much.

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saint si

saint si

Posted
Posted

I happen to think that there is no issue with our ownership or financial health whatsoever, but if, in a couple of years time, I find that the club has:

 

- not been paying taxes

- not been paying charities

- not been paying local businesses

- not been paying transfer installments owed to other clubs

- brought in a load of players on high wages in order to outbid other clubs, and then reneged on those contracts

 

Then sure, I will absolutely hold my hands up and say that it is ENTIRELY the CLUB'S own fault, and that we have nobody to blame but ourselves. In fact, just like it was entirely our own fault in 2009 when we went in to admin as a result of chasing promotion.

 

Now, how many PFC fans have done the same?

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dubai_phil

dubai_phil

Posted
Posted
Welcome back PES, surprised you have bothered to come back on this thread as it's not one for debate these days.

 

I'm not sure the comparison is quite fair seeing as our current owners just wiped off all our debt (monies to buy the club and then to finance transfers and high wages) so they have thankfully shown themselves to be responsible people looking to take the club forward not use the club as a play thing all the time doing at the fans expense. Don't worry fans will be keeping a close eye on our accounts and if I ever get an invitation to dine with Cortese I'll raise this issue with him.

 

Not quote sure where the idea that we are paying way too much comes from though. Certainly our wages were huge for league 1, sizeable for the championship, but now in the top flight, I expect they will be relatively modest *****il we sign 10 more Ramirez's of course). I don't think we've got Scumball/Defoe/James size wages just yet to pull us into the mire.

 

Personally I've questioned our spending throughout our rise, especially the uncertainty surrounding the debt figure on our accounts, but with that being cleared off I am not sure what there is to question just yet. With ST prices pretty high now, is £30k a week too much for our board to be paying our top players? If we've got a relegation reduction clause (I hope so) then this will not be an issue. We don't have a huge bank loan that can be called in at any point (like PFc did) so even relegation wouldn't take us to the brink, would it?

 

As has also been mentioned in a lot of the more serious Twitter comments, the deal with Bologna is staged payments including a sell on clause.

 

Saints will earn 60mil over the course of this season from the PL with TV & advertising revenues.

 

We also have sold approaching 23,000 ST's (I think) at an average of around 400 quid a pop. THAT cash is already in the bank.

 

So, you take regular TV payment income and you take some of the up front cash from ST sales then as I have posted before, the maths does add up.

 

The CRUCIAL questions have to be "What is the fall-back plan IF we get relegated?" One thing we have seen is that The Don doesn't faff around in negotiations so pretty sure the new contracts will all have relegation clauses.

 

The signings we have made so far do NOT need us to take out bank loans. As we have seen from all the FCR data, even the skates weren't stupid enough to pay for their signings in cash up front.

 

JRod, Clyne & Ramirez 21 mil we have already got 9mil cash in the bank account and have no idea what the system is for money coming in from ALL the TV rights (not just Sky but the International ones as well)

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hutch

hutch

Posted
Posted
Was this posted here before?

 

http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=20187

 

Also I think we shouldn't so hastily dismiss the point PES is making. What are our options of evaluting the economical situation of SFC? Not for this thread, I know, but I'd love to discuss it and perhaps learn a little more...

In normal "how player's wages are quoted" terms, our offer to Ramirez is less than they were paying Ben Haim

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Colinjb

Colinjb

Posted
Posted (edited)

Our interest in Ramirez has just put this most dramatic of stories into new focus.

 

Three years ago, at the foot of league one we began to rebuild. Right now the skates at the foot of league one are now scraping around for players to sign on in a vain atempt to try to be competitive.

 

Three years ago, the skates doing everything they could to keep on the high earners they couldn't afford and sign mercenaries to stay in the top flight. Right now Saints spending money we seemingly can afford (after scruitiny.... we need to be sure we don't go too far) to build a young hungry team to survive and grow into premier league football.

 

The counterpoint of our destinies is incredible. The turnaround couldn't be more pronounced. And while we ask the pertinent questions some of the few have the temerity to point the finger and say we have now sacrificed the high ground, not at all.

 

I quote Nigel Adkins:

 

"We were in administration a few years ago, that will never happen again. We must cut our cloth accordingly."

 

And no, that wasn't said when he joined the club. That was his reaction when asked about Ramirez in the last hour.

Edited by Colinjb
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PompeyInReading

PompeyInReading

Posted
Posted
Thanks for that. I think the most pertinent statistic though is the average attendance for the relegation season of each club, both clubs in admin, Sh!t City's average last season was 15,044, our average was 17,849 for relegation from the Championship. Although, IIRC, they had a shed load of offers to "Pack the Shack", where we didn't bother that much.

 

Agreed, best comparison. Although for true comparison we would need a new shiny stadium, rather than a shack (average increase for new stadia is currently 20%). Puts it about even, which I actually think is about right.

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Matthew Le God

Matthew Le God

Posted
Posted
Agreed, best comparison. Although for true comparison we would need a new shiny stadium, rather than a shack (average increase for new stadia is currently 20%). Puts it about even, which I actually think is about right.

 

That only makes sense if you are currently selling out Fratton Park, you even struggled to do that in the Premier League. Pompey didn't sell out in their Premier League relegation season and some games had attendances of 14,000 home fans, Southampton averaged over 30,000 in their relegation season from the Premier League.

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stevegrant

stevegrant

Posted
Posted
Agreed, best comparison. Although for true comparison we would need a new shiny stadium, rather than a shack (average increase for new stadia is currently 20%). Puts it about even, which I actually think is about right.

That's the biggest mistake anyone connected with Pompey has made in this whole sorry mess. Had the money spunked up the wall on player wages and transfer fees been invested in building a modern stadium, they could arguably have been in a position to recover in the same way as we have. It certainly would have made the club more attractive to a proper buyer rather than a speculator with the Plan B of knocking the place down.

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Gemmel

Gemmel

Posted
Posted

‘I said to Trevor “do me a favour, discard bonuses, NI, all those things you do in a normal budget and just tell me exactly what I can spend gross figure per week and I’ll get on with the rest by it

 

 

Old Appy really does fit in well done their

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The Majestic Channon

The Majestic Channon

Posted
Posted

From a carlisle fan..

 

long but so true, he sums up skate fans well at the end

 

 

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. Seemingly almost hell bent on ruining the match day experience of visiting fans while lapping up his own self-importance and pouting into any camera within 20 yards.

 

I’d never really viewed him as a symbol of the club as such, more an irritating anomaly, the type of fetid ‘colour’ that will always play well on TV to lowest common denominator audiences whilst irking the silent majority – an ‘England Band’ for the Portsmouth Peninsula.

 

But this week his attitude to life seems almost endemic of events at his club – larger than life, still there and not exactly shy about the fact.

 

I’ll spare you the detail, you know – Portsmouth are, or were, up Proverbial Creek without Tim Brabants after a catalogue of desperate ownership wrangles and a charge sheet of financial profligacy to make Allen Stanford wince.

 

This time last month their fans were reduced to pleading with Greg Halford and Dave Kitson to cut and run in order to save the club and one couldn’t help but feel for them.

 

The story was similar as a team of kids was soundly beaten in the club’s first fixture in the Capital One Cup by Plymouth earlier this week. The opposition fans, no strangers to the wiles of financial penury, went so far as shaking buckets to lend a hand – together in football.

 

The first cracks in the artifice appeared, though, as club manager Michael Appleton began to bemoan the slashing of his putative playing budget from £4.5m to £1.5m. A huge cut, but one to bring them in line with League 1 salary structures and surely entirely understandable in their current predicament. As a fan of a fellow League 1 club I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

 

Alongside this was suggestion that Portsmouth City Council had pledged to back a supporters group to the tune of £1.5m – a welcome fillip but endemic of the dire straits befalling the club, its fans and the community.

 

All this was spun on its head yesterday afternoon as Portsmouth announced the signing of ten new players. One can’t claim they weren’t necessary, and indeed many of them have spent the summer with the club to see whether the clouds blew over.

 

Notwithstanding that fact the list of names was rather impressive – Brian Howard, Izale McLeod and Mustapha Dumbuya are all players who would waltz into the first eleven of most League 1 teams. Howard the star of Barnsley’s infamous noughties cup run and McLeod having moved for fees well over £1million in a stuttering career.

 

But the real shock was the name of Lee Williamson, most recently of Sheffield United. Williamson was one of the players offered significantly reduced terms as part of a book balancing process at Bramall Lane – as part of their efforts to live with League 1. Suggestions in Sheffield are that the figure he turned down was anything between £3-5,000 per week. He chose to chance his arm for a better deal or football at a higher level.

 

Well, he certainly hasn’t got the latter. And whilst it’d be unwise to surmise he’ll get the former as a makeweight it’s an easy conclusion to reach.

 

Even if Pompey are planning to pay Williamson a wage equivalent to that offered by Danny Wilson (and I doubt Howard and McLeod are playing for peanuts either) it still feels like a giant nose thumbing at those who poured out their pity over the saga of Tal Ben Haim’s £36,000 a week pay check or who rattled buckets on their behalf.

 

£3,000 a week may be much less than £36,000 but at League 1 level is not an average wage. And even if it does end up being only for a month it still feels like Portsmouth Football Club are being given an opportunity to start with a clean slate they barely deserve.

 

There followed a quite extraordinary play by the club’s administrator, PKF’s Trevor Birch, to get Portsmouth’s 10 point administration penalty for the coming season overturned despite only vague assurances for the club’s future and this being contingent on the goodwill of fans and the local authority.

 

If signing top quality League 1 players was nose thumbing, this was arse bareing tomfoolery from someone who should know better.

 

The disgrace here isn’t the making of Portsmouth fans, but of football governance – the fact that it repeatedly allows the ‘bitten’ to play ‘shy’.

 

Only they aren’t even heeding that principle.

 

A little aggrieved at the circumstances I aired my own views on Twitter. What followed gave me a taste of how it must feel for football journos who dare to step off the fence on a given issue or columnists who choose to present a partisan or personal opinion on a contentious topic.

 

I was called, amongst other things, ill-informed, an ignorant poo, a heckwit, a ****, a silly billy, a jealous fan of a tinpot club. Others poured scorn, hoping my own club would go out of business and some just found the whole situation hilarious.

 

A small minority attempted to engage constructively but even they gave away extraordinary information – that Pompey are sitting on a £3million treasure trove to pay these players for instance.

 

How on Earth is it the case that a club can back out of commitments to local charities and businesses but retain such an astronomical sum to pay bloody footballers?

 

I can’t blame Portsmouth fans for citing this fact but their inability to grasp the desperate irony of the situation showed the blinkered nature of football fandom in all its glory.

 

The over-riding reaction though was to scoff and suggest I ‘(had) no idea what I was talking about’. But, having been caught in an ‘all mouth, no trousers’ situation far too many times in my life I choose my battles wisely…

 

Firstly, I spent six months of a legal training contract working on insolvency issues. I know the difference between a CVA and liquidation, so saying ‘yeah but there’s a CVA and there’s cash’ doesn’t really work.

 

But more pertinently as a Carlisle fan, I’ve been there – owner tries to sell club to penniless curry house barman, then a Gibraltar based investment vehicle which is eventually traced back to him, finally is rumbled for fraudulent accounting and disqualified as a director leaving the club potless and almost asset free before selling his story about alien abduction to the Sun.

 

Doesn’t sound too dissimilar to Portsmouth, does it?

 

The difference, though, is that Carlisle United paid all creditors in full – none of the infamous ‘1p in the £1’ statements so linked to Ken Bates and co. And the club lived within its means. To see our team in the post ’02 apocalypse was to see a rag bag of talentless try hards and thoroughbreds now only fit for the knackers yard. The same, coincidentally, is true of Portsmouth’s weekend opponents at Plymouth right now.

 

Only this summer Carlisle were forced to make several redundancies, including a good friend of mine. The reason? They needed to cut their cloth accordingly to meet standards set by the new FA Elite Player Performance Plan and employment of a full time coach and physio meant that media, stewarding, office and fitness staff paid the price.

 

And, as I laboured to my quarry, the Football League’s new salary cap rules were designed by – you guessed it – the Chief Executive of Carlisle United, FL board member John Nixon.

 

I’d say we know a fair bit about financial prudence in Cumbria.

 

All of which makes me feel well placed to pass a comment on how these things work or to ask questions about the moral and ethical dubiousness of similar situations.

 

By the time I placed my phone down for the evening the sniping continued but subsided amongst placatory statement and the odd apology – but the overriding sentiment had changed somewhat.

 

Now, Portsmouth should be allowed to sign these players because what happened to them ‘wasn’t fair’. Or, to quote the unbeatable epithet penned to a friend, ‘the FA had a duty to allow PFC to be competitive’.

 

From what happened yesterday, I can’t help wondering if someone on Wembley Way thinks that may be true.

 

But the over-riding sentiment of this whole sorry affair, of Portsmouth’s manoeuvres in this malignant pond, was that most of their fans didn’t care about the big picture; that the outcome didn’t, couldn’t ever, justify its means.

 

They were still there, bold as brass, clanging that hecking bell in the face of anyone who came near, entirely unawares of just how much, or even why, that makes everybody so damn angry.

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Frank's cousin

Frank's cousin

Posted
Posted
That's the biggest mistake anyone connected with Pompey has made in this whole sorry mess. Had the money spunked up the wall on player wages and transfer fees been invested in building a modern stadium, they could arguably have been in a position to recover in the same way as we have. It certainly would have made the club more attractive to a proper buyer rather than a speculator with the Plan B of knocking the place down.

 

This - 7 years in the prem + the 150mil of borrowed (not paid back cash) means pompey spunked approximately £600mil on the last 8 years!! - even 10% of that say 60mil on a new 20k seater would have made a huge difference to their saleability. The sad thing is there still appear to be many of their fans you beive 600mil including 150mil of other peoples money was worth it for an FA cup win, and having Thierry Henry saying they were great fans because their cheered him after he spanked them.... lets say that agin £600mil and at the end of it they are where they are now...

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rallyboy

rallyboy

Posted
Posted

what an informative day!

We've learned that -

1. if we try to sign an expensive player, that means we are exactly the same as pompey.

2. we have both been in identical administrations that ended the same.

and now I discover that

3. when seasonally-adjusted and Google-translated on a steam-driven 1982 Amstrad, our attendances are the same too!....

 

Perhaps the two cities should be twinned - only their mother can tell them apart.

 

 

 

And as a minor point, when you say that's the same as they WERE paying Ben Haim - they are STILL paying him!

 

Let's not forget, if we offer a player £30K a week, it's about the same money they are STILL giving Ben Haim, Kitson, Lawrence, Norris and Halford - to play for other people.

 

 

 

Oh no, hang on theyre not....

They are chucking THAT money at members of Appy's European Holiday Club instead - ****ing it down a black hole rather than saving it for it's original purpose, and the purpose agreed last week.

 

They don't really do 'earmarked' or 'ringfenced', if it isn't bolted down it's fair game.

 

But Birch knows what he's doing...

Yeah, sorting the VERY short term, and not worrying about whatever occurs once he's away and on his new yacht in Miami.

 

They need about the first 4,000 fans tomorrow to pay this week's admin fees!

Maybe Birch hasn't quite got rid of ALL the high earners has he? :lol:

 

 

So how do the former players get paid? :scared:

Who cares, worry about that another day, something will come up - and as it says in Latin above the entrance to Fortress Fraud - Play the game at whatever cost, and tell the creditors and charities to go **** themselves.

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teamsaint

teamsaint

Posted
Posted

so poopey could play all of this season in L1, spending any money coming in on wages, and avoid the 10 point penalty.(and relegation to L2) They come out of admin next summer, and take the -10 at a time of their choosing.

 

i bet the L1 clubs love this.

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badgerx16

badgerx16

Posted
Posted
so poopey could play all of this season in L1, spending any money coming in on wages, and avoid the 10 point penalty.(and relegation to L2) They come out of admin next summer, and take the -10 at a time of their choosing.

 

i bet the L1 clubs love this.

 

But not on NI or tax ?

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mack rill

mack rill

Posted
Posted
I believe that HMRC and the Football League have come to an agreement about prompt payment of these. I wonder if our neighbours have included this in their business plan?

 

er! Are we not an island?,,,,,,, Then perhaps its like going to the Canneries hear, Tax n Duty free,

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