rallyboy

I think that is correct, the process started when they issued the petition, their activity since then should have been seriously restricted - but it hasn't been! Taking on new staff and missing further payments can't go down well with the court. the arms dealer's land isn't relevant to the winding up, it's a done deal and just a complication for a new owner with aspirations to blow £100M on redevelopment - though they might want to sweep for landmines if it's been used for storage. There isn't an access issue either as the stadium has a towbar at one end and apart from knocking a few horse brass off the walls, the whole thing can be hitched up and moved a bit. I guess we will discover on Wednesday how lucky that heather really is.

are they going to let potential new owners consider the Luton Town scenario before they look through the books or after?... Let's presume a good result for them at the court and creditors accepting restructured payments over the next two or three years. So all of the debt is sorted, but new running costs would have to be in the region of £5/6M a month to cover repayments, which would be - In the Champions League - break even? In the Prem - Unsustainable. In the Championship - Insane. Even at a squeeze these costs might only come down to £4M a month - and that's without buying players or any progress on stadium or training facility. They really need either Chanrai or Landmine boy to write off their debts to make the club viable - good luck with that one. The main players may have swapped seats but the figures still don't add up. They are trying to sell a business that even in the best case scenario appears to be losing money. And that's without the mention of financial irregularities - whoops, I mentioned it.

interesting slip by Jacobs on that South Today piece when he said that Gaydamak senior used to be the owner, then corrected himself. Whoops. And nice to see that someone has obviously read all the detail on this thread and then gone and put that proper report together, I hope the Prem and HMRC have viewed it and are now up to speed on the obvious criminality that has surrounded the business. If you want to know how Pompey fell apart there is only one thread to read. I think four Pompey stories in the Sun was enough yesterday - brothel, debts, Chav Botaeng and one other....oh yeah, another defeat. This is a golden era - and still it goes on!

let's try and cut through all the delaying spin and rumour and look at facts (and some guesses!). Chanrai has claimed the security of his loan today - and I would wager that he has no intention of paying anything else unless it buys him time to an even bigger payday, and that is months and another £20M investment away. He wants control of the club but not the debt responsibility that goes with that. Is his claim to the whole club legal? Possibly not if the later assets were secured after the petition was launched. Is a petty internal dispute over ownership a reason for the taxman to be lenient? No. Is it legal under the winding up order for him to assume control and deny responsibility for the debt? No. Will he pay it? No. Will he deliver a new owner by Wednesday? No. Will the taxman give him more time? Only if he demonstrates some ability or enthusiasm for paying them. Will he do that? No. Has anything changed today? It's become more complex and made it more unlikely that they can avoid the chop next week. Does the taxman care about anything other than payment? In a word, no. Have they changed deckchairs on the Titanic? Yes.

if Tony Soprano went round to my local pizza shop to collect debts, shot the bloke in the legs before chucking him out on the street I wouldn't think, 'mmm, new owner, that's the rosy future of the place secured'. 1.Chanrai needs to prove his legal claim to the whole set up. 2.He then needs to start clearing debts. 3.He also has to satisfy HMRC that he can clear their debt, by paying a significant sum next week. If he fails to do any of these then he will look not like an owner but a loan shark who just wants his money back as soon as possible. His priorities are obviously - his money, satisfying the other creditors (purely to make the club attractive), the welfare of the club - in that order. If we follow that line of vague ifs and buts, one could suggest that rather than securing their future, he may have just taken the first step in pulling the plug on Pompey.

if the arms dealer and Chanrai are in it together there isn't enough money to go round, if they are against each other Chanria has left himself exposed to a massive legal battle. how do we define 'seized' control? Has he taken the security (the ground, and if he can persuade the court that his later claim is valid, all of the assets) against his debt that they have defaulted on? Or passed a fit and proper person test and taken ownership of the club with the full approval of the Prem? He can't just stand up one day and declare himself the new owner. He is either the mother of all baillifs OR a new owner.

if Carlsberg did local rivals they would come to your place when ten points from safety and insolvent, in the very week that you book your Wembley tickets! - but let's not get ahead of ourselves...it's a long shot, they might be only eight points adrift by then.

those in charge seem to have given up even pretending to run a legal business - no attempt at clearing debt, delayed wages, one big sneeze and the whole farce will fall over. Someone needs to ask them if they are still trading - that could be the first question in court next week. Ridiculous and criminal. The thread covering the legal cases and convictions that MUST follow might even threaten the length of this one.....and yet they continue to bring in players who will never get paid, but could still relegate rivals who are not running their clubs illegally.

the fog is lifting and the plot is a little clearer. So they don't intend to pay off debt (didn't fool us on that one), they will go into admin (ditto), but the club and ground will be protected as one item, IF the latest agreement isn't thrown out by the winding up order. The only thing to decide will be the size of penalties for the offences that will be committed - there will be tax and football creditors unsatisfied, so no cva. For a Pompey fan who just wants survival, I think (!) this is good news, in fact it might make everyone happy because if they do survive and Chanrai actually wants a football club and not a leisure/industrial development, they will be starting next season with little chance of promotion from whatever division they are shuffled down to. Best scenario - Championship with minus 15? More likely - Championship with minus 30/League One with minus 10....which would be an interesting place to start a rebuild.

interesting confirmation from the council statement is that as suspected there is nothing left to secure loans against. This suggests that all of the club's current assets are now at the mercy of creditors. No more loans, no more significant income - I can't see how they will still be trading in 4-6 weeks, even with our generous fa cup fundraiser. (then again I can't believe they are still technically a going concern today!)

the natural thought is, someone will invest last minute and they will be saved, something will come up.... But let's look at the facts, we are in a new era of banking discipline and impatient taxmen - they need a new owner who is happy to risk maybe £150M on turning the club round, a man who doesn't want to buy Newcastle cheaper, and ideally they need him to complete in the next seven days! They have been hunting this madman for a year without success, people that rich don't get that rich by risking huge sums on lunatic schemes. A business proposition like that is only useful if you want to launder huge amounts of dirty money but the authorities are all over this club now, it so obviously isn't a real business anymore. And if it comes to post-admin - the complex web of debt, loans, and vague ownership, along with the asset-stripped structure are likely to leave a club without a cva or a ground, heavily penalised, and not worth even a cheap punt. The blue few paradise scenario of a fresh new vibrant club created the next day free of debt, is like most of what we have heard from the Fratton management clowns in the last six months, fantasy. Nothing has changed in six months - spin and rumour hasn't cleared a single debt. Cash was the only answer, and they still need lots of it, and now. And for the odd sensible Pompey poster on here, yes we would enjoy the highs as you did, but if Pardew had just put in an offer of £10M for a player I think most on here would be quietly horrified unless our owner announced he had put aside huge money and a longterm budget to move the club forward. As post-apocalypse fans I think we are more aware of wages and fees and I would rather lose some games than see our management team gamble the future of the club on some short term dreaming. Don't get me wrong, I won't be demanding that we buy poor players and pay low wages but it all needs to be sustainable and thankfully that appears to be the way we are operating. Meanwhile, as Pompey have refused to address their debts and made no effort to offload players they cannot afford to pay, we will be facing a team in the fa cup that has been criminally-assembled by a club that is clearly trading illegally, and as such brings the game into disrepute.

I thought it was bad that a company with a £75M turnover couldn't pay the £2M wages, I then thought it was ludicrous they couldn't pay the web company £2000. We now know they couldn't pay the match announcer £60, but tonight I have been told of a bloke who sold them goods for £35 and they didn't have enough to pay him! Any advance on the cost of one match ticket? Have we found the creditor on the end of the very long queue, or have they shafted someone for even less?... Meanwhile the loanee wages keep stacking up. They have given up on paying debts, it's just blatant theft now.

In the next 110mins they need to raise £25M. I don't think they are serious about selling players today to cover debt, the creditors must wonder why little is happening when they should be offloading 7/8 players for the wages at least. Are they hoping it all just goes away and they win a few games by retaining most of their illegally-assembled squad? It's a suicidal strategy in the last chance saloon - the taxman won't blink first and will nail them to a tree. And on the upcoming milestone for the thread, the peleton should wave the thread-starter to the front - so I await a historic and poetic post that may even inspire the book title when it is published.....

I hope their new signings like Pot Noodle and crisps, you can get them in bulk from the Eastleigh CashNCarry. Anyone at Fratton asked why they can afford to do lots of expensive things but paying ordinary people and local businesses seems beyond them?... The club's reputation is shot to bits, they look like a dirty club run by crooks. (in case anyone hadn't noticed!)

I thought the parachute payments were something like £9M x2? Either way, this future TV money and the ground are already security for existing loans? They can't pay £60 but they are still trading - WAKEY WAKEY PREMIER LEAGUE!!!! It's over, they have technically been in admin for four months but no one will admit it. But on a personal note, the longer they hang on the better, the debt is rising, the recovery less likely, but the slowest train crash in financal history cannot survive the upcoming court appearance, can it?

generally speaking, Prem footballers are simpletons who covet shiny tat - I can only assume their brains work in different ways to 'normal' people. There are exceptions, but there does seem to be a pattern of cheap neck tattooes, thick and easily-impressed women, cars they can't handle, oversized hats, poor judgement on drinking, appalling judgement on relationships and an inability to construct sentences. Chuck in £100K a week and we have created monsters. If Terry delivers on the pitch and behaves off it we will be fine, but as Cole discovered, your supporters will accept you when you are peforming but boy will they turn on you the first time you fail. So, chavvy scum! - with apologies to the 10% - meaning the likes of David James if we put rivalries aside, Ryan Giggs, and anyone else who managed to complete secondary school. And putting aside Ferguson's many obvious character defects, he has a good record with discipline and keeping players feet on the ground, as a pensioner he must look at the likes of Terry and want to give him national service.

Maradona is going to go ape when he sees a convicted fraudster dismantling his squad, though of course it's just paving the way to bring in all those Galacticos. Man City v Pompey at the weekend is set to be the first of many battles between the two newest richest clubs in Europe, as Utd fade, Pompey will take their place, and no doubt billionaire mover and shaker Al Fahim will be selling ice creams in the front row again. Any news on 2018 world cup final tickets in the harbour stadium yet, I tried to look on their website but there were obviously too many people trying to buy champions league hospitality or U2 tickets.

Grosvenor is an international property development company - so what interest do they have?... Wild Guess no.226. if the arms dealer has in some way used them as a vehicle or agent to look after his land - it's all over for the blue few. It would mean the £9M has just gone on the winding up order and needs settling now. Also the Prem can clearly see that the club is now being run by people as shadow directors, a clear breach of league rules. Get the ref to stop it, they have taken too much punishment, stop the fight, get the administrator in.

Mr Fry, cancel all holiday and fire up the Bentley! There's a gargling fat lass riding south with the other three horseman of the apocaplypse and they are Fratton bound. On second thoughts, forget cancelling the holiday, you will need about an hour to establish that there's nothing left to sell.

putting aside any mischievous rumours it does seem that a few local companies have had enough and withdrawn their 'support', as well as their stuff! And if a company with a turnover in excess of £75Million can't find a couple of hundred quid for a local business then the end must be nigh. Correct me if I'm wrong but historically EVERY other club with serious money issues has gone into admin before reaching this sort of level. Palace, Notts County and Bournemouth haven't slumped this low yet. They are trying to take on additional wages with loanees - £10K,£20K a week? Yet they can't pay their local suppliers a few quid? Criminal, despicable, unethical = bringing the game and the league into disrepute. Surely the Prem are sat poised for another missed wages day and then they will act?! They accepted promises this week about the ability of the club to fund the future, if that proves incorrect immediately, they must sort it out.

be afraid of the 757 crew - they are just as hard but they don't like missing breakfast. That aside, anyone coughed up the £10M they need yet? I hear lots of spin but I haven't seen any actual.....how can I put it....cash....

That's them all sorted then, time to close this thread, it's been fun, we must all meet up again in ten years and relive the hilarity. But just before the mods lock it all down and put the cat out, there was another little niggling query....now what was it?....oh yes, do they have the £15M required to continue trading beyond this weekend yet?....

Gaddafi may struggle to raise the cash since his main investor was executed yesterday for genocide, he'll have to go back to the bucket collector's on the Falls Rd. Arms dealers that supplied Angola, a family who funded the IRA and Lockerbie - where is Storrie looking for investors - at war crimes tribunals? They bring shame on football.

if a company is wound up, any sale of the company's property, any transfer of shares, or any alteration in the status of the company's shareholders, made after the commencement of the winding-up is void, unless otherwise ordered by the court. Assuming that legally the winding up process was started when the order was issued, forget any league embargo, surely they can't legally sell players? This means that it is very difficult for a company to continue to trade after a winding up petition is issued. Not arf! I still chuckle at their great response when it was first issued - 'we havent had it, it's illegal, we want to completely restructure the way VAT is calculated, etc'. Clowns and liars.

rant alert! - the idiot who introduces on ITV - He can't say more than.....three words....at a time....without pausing....for no....reason. Mark 'that wasn't handball, it was his chest' Bright - he thought Pompey were robbed in the cup - idiot. Shearer - great goalscorer, sorry mate, bit boring on the box, and do I care what striking legend Robbie Earle thinks about anything? Commentators everywhere - 'that wasn't malicious, he's not that type of player' - sorry guys you are in for a shock here - he IS that type of player as he just stamped on/elbowed another player and anyone who has played the game at any level knows that he DID mean it. Example yesterday - Stoke player was fouled but left his trailing foot in to catch the sliding defender with his studs, we've all done it - accident? Yeah right. When will commentators get some basic understanding of the game and the laws? 'That was a late offside flag' - yes, that'll be because he wasn't offside until he went to the ball. 'But he got the ball' - mmm, he tackled from behind, caught both legs, scissored him to the ground and at some point near the end of the assault the ball happened to clip his knee-high studs. Idiots - most of them, but I let Stuart Hall off because he's entertaining and just a bit mad. Where is football's answer to Bill McLaren? - a proper legend. Rant over.