As a supporter of Portsmouth FC for four decades the last year or so has been quite a bumpy ride. When, managed by Harry Redknapp, the club suddenly stopped finishing 5th bottom in the 2nd Division, and won it instead, it seemed like a return to the halcyon days of Alan Ball. A year in the Premiership beckoned.
But here we are 7 years later and, even if only for another week, Portsmouth remain a top division side. With the club having had a winding-up order deferred for seven days yesterday that afternoon's front page of the Portsmouth News (right) puts it pretty well.
With a week to go, the club are still insisting that a benefactor is just round the corner, waiting to dip into his pocket and sort it all out. But already there's talk of a team being formed, along the lines of AFC Wimbledon, so that if Pompey is liquidated there is a Portsmouth side of some kind that could gradually work its way up the leagues. There's also a Portsmouth Supporters' Trust established and gradually picking up new members, though it's purpose remains to be settled: http://pompeytrust.com/
If the choice is to go all the way to the wire with HMRC, and see if they will back off and accept part-payment, then the club is in for a rude awakening. Having worked as a debt counsellor some years ago I know that they do not mess about, especially when it comes to unpaid VAT (approximately £7m is owed, apparently). Several offers of part-payment have already been rejected. If the club does choose to fight to the bitter end who actually stands to gain?
Clearly not the club because it won't win the case. Emphatically not the city of Portsmouth which has been kicked in the teeth far too many times already. Certainly not the latest of the owners, Balram Chainrai. We must assume not the owner-before-that, the quite possibly fictional Ali Al-Faraj. (Or did he pocket all the January transfer money?) The owner as of last year this time was Alexandre Gaydama
HMRC will have made a very prominent example of a non-payer, and the Premier League will have finally rid itself of an embarassing little club that spoils the glamorous image of the league. Newcastle will be able to come back up (they will anyway) and next season the spotlight can fall away from the cannon fodder at the bottom of the table and go back to the 6 or maybe 8 teams that really matter. Setting aside for the moment the fact that several of them are skirting on the edge of bankruptcy themselves.
The fellow relegation strugglers such as West Ham, Wolves, Bolton, Burnley, Wigan may see Portsmouth's demise as a plus because it means that definitely only two of them will go down. But then again if all games played against Pompey's are declared void, and the Premiership table is adjusted accordingly, the only one of them to gain much relative to the others will probably be Wigan, thrashed 4-1 in the club's best result, bar one, this season.
The even better result was of course the most amusing and humiliating visit to Fratton Park of Liverpool FC. The 2-0 scoreline was really very flattering to them. Liverpool fans seem to be banking on those lost 3 points being annulled when Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United et al have their tallies adjusted. When their moment of financial reckoning comes, and it certainly will, I will spare no tears for Liverpool.
Assuming the latest savior is as much of a mirage as all the others have been, the club's only realistic option is to seek protection from its creditors and go into administration. Pompey will lose 9 points, get relegated at the end of the season - highly likely anyway - and can then try to rebuild on a more modest scale. The Premiership adventure was never expected to last, and it has only been prolonged at an unacceptable cost. Let's bow out of that three-ring circus with some dignity though.
Mind you, that F A Cup win was so very sweet....
As a postscript: about the only consistently informed and balanced coverage of Portsmouth's plight has come from When Saturday Comes magazine, see for example http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/4542/38/
