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Well Done Portsmouth


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HMRC were one of the main creditors in our case where as they weren't in there's. Even though they did try and put a stop to pompey's as well but didn't have a big enough claim compared to the other creditors in pompey's case.

There's also HMRC's policy of not agreeing a CVA if they think there's shenanigans going on in the background. I don't know the details of what went on at Portsmouth but there's no doubt that Whyte's behaviour seriously counted against us in trying to get a CVA agreed.

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I live just outside Portsmouth and their story isn't all that different to ours.

HMRC voted against CVA,.... Pompey took them to court and judge told HMRC they had to accept it.

The money Pompey got from the league was the 2nd payment for once being in the EPL

The English FA have not helped Pompey in any way.

As for Southampton, one or two comments, but nothing like the vile vitriol we are getting.

The corrupt SFA. SPL, Government have a lot to answer for.

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Except all of the SPL.

I'd happily see Aberdeen, Hibs, Dundee etc all plunge into the fucking abyss.

Fair enough. I'm not exactly happy with the blood lust being displayed by other fans, but, within those supports there'll be decent fans and I dont wish that on them.

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Congratulations Portsmouth

It just goes to show the difference between the people in England and their reaction to a Club in trouble and the rabid mob mentality we are subjected to up here .

I never thought I would say 'I am ashamed to be Scottish' but after the way the rest of Scottish football has treated us its the way I feel now.

We should never forget this day , keep it close to your heart and store your anger until we meet these pricks in the not too distant future.

Fuck them all

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Portsmouth’s storm-tossed creditors will trudge wearily into the Victory Lounge at Fratton Park on Monday with a sinking feeling all too familiar to them.

It was in exactly the same venue, two years and a week before, that creditors last heard proposals from an administrator restructuring the club after insolvency.

Then, Pompey had become the only Premier League side ever to be declared insolvent while still playing in the top flight; now they do so while preparing for a season in League One.

This ignominious spiral has had big repercussions in the local community. When Portsmouth last emerged from administration creditors like the local carpet cleaner were promised payment in full on all claims of less than £2,500; everyone else was promised 20p in the pound on the club’s debt to them.

“I’ve never been paid,” said Mike Aldridge, whose Carpet & General Cleaning was owed £792.66 when the club called in receivers in 2010.

“It’s very disappointing. They owed us money and we’re a small local firm. We were promised that all claims under £2,500 would be paid but we’ve never seen a penny.”

It is a measure of the power of the local football club that some small creditors refused to identify themselves. But every one of those Telegraph Sport spoke to said the same thing: in the two years since Portsmouth last came out of administration they have received nothing.

Aqua Cars, owed £5,623.04 from unpaid invoices, made it plain. “They owed us money and because it’s Pompey Football Club we let it go six or seven months without them paying us,” said Bruce Hall, Aqua’s general manager.

“By the time Christmas came, with all their staff parties, even though they knew they were going down the tubes, they were trying to get taxis on account.

“I just stopped the work. The amount of times I went in personally and spoke to the accounts department with invoices in my hand. They lied all the time, for six or seven months.

“And there’s a knock-on effect. Another company owes me and he can’t pay me because Portsmouth took him for more than 100 grand.”

Creditors have seen what they were owed slashed almost to nothing by the latest insolvency process. Whether they will even bother to go through the same dispiriting circus in the Victory Lounge, only two years since the last time, remains to be seen.

What is clear is that many of Portsmouth’s current problems can be traced back to what was discussed at the creditors’ meeting on 17 June 2010.

Andrew Andronikou, the administrator of Pompey’s insolvent UK parent company, Portsmouth City Football Club, informed creditors that the total unsecured claims against the club amounted to almost £132.8 million.

For the purposes of the creditor voluntary arrangement (CVA) agreed at that meeting there were £83.3 million of verifiable claims. In addition there were £22.4 million of football creditors.

The latter would be paid in full, and directly from the Premier League’s parachute payments following Portsmouth’s 2010 relegation from the top flight.

In common with every other football insolvency, it meant millionaire players were given their full dues (Kanu, Tal Ben Haim and Papa Bouba Diop could share £9.2 million; Sol Campbell, David James and Peter Crouch almost £2.3 million more).

Others were not so lucky: while the football creditors filled their ladles from the insolvency soup, the rest had to make do with the meagre pickings left over.

The CVA meeting agreed that 20p in the pound on the £83.3 million owed to the unsecured creditors would be repaid after a deal was struck for Balram Chainrai to take over the club.

It reduced the debt to about £16.5 million, repayable in instalments over three years between April 2012 and June 2015.

Andronikou confidently told creditors they could “anticipate” in the coming months £3 million to be paid in to the CVA pot from player transfers. In reality, it did not turn out like that.

When in March 2011 Andronikou filed his CVA completion report to creditors, he acknowledged that £3 million had been generated in player sales as 11 players departed, the highest profile of whom was Kevin-Prince Boateng, in a move to Milan, via Genoa. But it did not accrue to the creditors as “anticipated”.

“Any player sale contribution to the CVA, whether £3 million or otherwise, was clearly only ‘anticipated’ and not in any way guaranteed or included as a condition of the CVA,” wrote Andronikou.

“Those monies could not be considered a guaranteed contribution towards the CVA. This is apparent within the wording of the CVA.”

Andronikou has told Telegraph Sport he lays the blame for this deprivation squarely at the feet of Convers Sport Initiatives, the investment company belonging to Vladimir Antonov that bought Portsmouth from Chainrai 12 months ago.

“We produced business cash flows and a plan for the Football League,” he said. “The League wouldn’t have allowed the exit from administration if we couldn’t pay the CVA.

“But the new board copied the mistakes of the previous company. They just played football without making any provision for the CVA debt. The money went to players and agents. The same, usual reasons. On what basis did they not have to pay their creditors?”

In fact the instalments to creditors were not due to be paid until 10 months after the CVA was agreed, giving ample time for the club to fail.

By passing Portsmouth over to CSI, Chainrai — who Andronikou says had been funding the club with “£200,000 to £300,000 a month” — got out before the first lump of almost £1.25 million was due on April Fool’s Day this year.

By then football’s reflex recklessness had long taken hold. The football creditors’ rule guaranteed players’ wage claims would be paid in full and so they were not significantly renegotiated. It saddled Pompey with Premier League salary liabilities on a much-reduced turnover.

Moreover, with relegation to the Championship, the historical football creditors would swallow the rump of the Premier League parachute payments, reducing incomes still further.

More damaging even than that was how the sale-and-purchase agreement struck by Andronikou with Balram Chainrai, and approved by the High Court, allowed Chainrai and his partner, Levi Kushnir, to transfer their £14.2 million debenture to a new parent company, Portsmouth Football Club (2010) Limited, which they would own.

It left the club’s UK parent company with an insolvent balance sheet even as it started life. No one should be surprised that the new company is also now in administration.

Although it was CSI’s management that tipped the club into insolvency, Chainrai and Kushnir’s lending might also be termed somewhat reckless.

In February 2010 the book value of Fratton Park, which those with knowledge of the situation say is in practice worthless if a football club is not playing there, was stated at £7.7 million.

If they did not already know, Chainrai and Kushnir were informed when the insolvent club’s statement of affairs was released to creditors in July 2010 that their loans to the club grossly exceeded the value of the assets they were secured against.

With the UK economy tanking, most football clubs were finding their lenders — high-street banks for the most part — were unwinding their loan facilities. Not Chainrai and Kushnir’s British Virgin Islands-registered vehicle, Portpin.

According to Portsmouth (2010)’s management accounts shortly before it plunged into administration in February this year, about £215,000 had been spent on “premises improvements” to Fratton Park since the last administration.

Yet the stadium’s net book value was now stated as being about £13.2 million.

Whether or not that massive rise in the asset price represented fair value is questionable. It is also pretty much irrelevant, since whatever the true value it was still outweighed by the size of Portpin’s debenture, which had by now grown to £18.6 million.

“The debt to Portpin is significantly greater than any valuation of the land under existing use or alternative use,” wrote Portsmouth (2010)’s administrator, Trevor Birch, in his statement of affairs to creditors in April.

that was the article on portsmouths admin

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Never been a fan of Portsmouth my English club is Arsenal,but their fans are going through a torrid tome as we are...so good luck to them, administration isn't a nice thing to see.

It will be up here when the sheep and others face it soon that's gonna be a joy to watch.

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Never been a fan of Portsmouth as my English club is Arsenal,but their fans are going through a torrid time as we are...so good luck to them, administration isn't a nice thing to see.

It will be up here when the sheep and others face it soon that's gonna be a joy to watch.

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