Pompey in admin

Will they escape again? It sounds quite bleak.

Well the mantra is that one day some (biggish) club will go to the wall. Me, I'll believe it when I see it.

I will too. Wouldn't wish it on any team but presumably if they did go completely to the wall only one team would be relegated from the Football League this year.

Yes they will survive they will just shaft all the local businesses with 0.7p in the pound, take a ten point loss and it will be business as usual

To my untrained eye, it looks like Rangers have the bigger problems. Money from Ticketus that's been advanced to the club against the next four years Season Ticket sales seems to have gone, er, missing:

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When this little local difficulty is added to the amounts apparently owed to HMRC, I think Rangers are deeper in the brown stuff than their fans would like to believe, and certainly in a far worse state than Pompey - not that Pompey will take much consolation from that.

Really hope they don't go under. AFC portsmouth just doesnt sound right.

Proper football club with a quality bunch of fans.

And the season ticket loan was not secured! This whole thing will have a massive effect on the Scottish economy in general. God knows how much Ticketus will be offered, but it won't be anything like £24 million. The local economy will be decimated if the worst case scenario is realised, but it will affect a much larger area than Glasgow, as both Rangers and Celtic have a massive chunk of support in other areas of Scotland.

Rangers won't go belly up, but they will be severely restricted for years, which should mean Celtic will only have to turn up every week to win everything. And it's all very well Celtic being outraged with comments made by Alex Salmond about Celtic needing Rangers, but it's true. Scottish football is bad enough with Rangers, so an even weaker League will be another nail in the coffin.

Hearts are also in trouble, and they would have been the next challengers after Rangers, so the short term benefit to Celtic is obvious. The long term effect of a weakened SPL will be huge, with sponsors not being interested in a foregone conclusion.

What could save Rangers, and would be of more benefit to the Scottish game on the whole, would be for Rangers and Celtic to somehow get invited into the English Premier League. This would leave a Scottish Premier League that would be competative for a change, and several teams each year would be competing for silverware. The main problems with this would be who is going to make way for them? The Premier League isn't going to be made bigger. And both teams would struggle to stay up, so they would need some kind of relegation immunity.

I don't support either of the Old Firm teams, but I do support the Scottish National side, and I just hope this doesn't affect an already poor national team. I don't think either of the big two teams do a lot for the Scottish national team anyway. Most Celtic fans carry Irish flags and Rangers have been buying second rate foreign players for years rather than develop young Scottish talent.

Milan Mandaric has said he might be interested in taking over at Rangers. Good Luck Milan.

Frank Bullitt wrote:

Will they escape again? It sounds quite bleak.

I notice that the Judge is looking to appoint the administrator and that he doesn't want the previous admin guy (greek name from memory) in control of the process. If true then that is bad news for Pompey.

A Pompey supporting mate of mine reckons it is 60/40 that the club will not survive.

GJ wrote..................What could save Rangers, and would be of more benefit to the Scottish game on the whole, would be for Rangers and Celtic to somehow get invited into the English Premier League. This would leave a Scottish Premier League that would be competative for a change, and several teams each year would be competing for silverware. The main problems with this would be who is going to make way for them? The Premier League isn't going to be made bigger. And both teams would struggle to stay up, so they would need some kind of relegation immunity.


I think that would be wishful thinking, particularly with all the talk of Scotland breaking away form the UK.

I take it back, I think they'll be fine.

The court has appointed Trevor Birch of KPF, who I met once at Fulham. They have a football division which advises many clubs, including Fulham and Celtic. He will not want to be the one who presides over the biggest liquidation in football history.

The court had the opportunity to appoint a more HRMC sympathetic administrator and it didn't.

Interesting that Ticketus were not secured on £24 Million of loans. Aren't they a secured creditor for us? Who was responsible for that genius piece of negotiating?

Tringreen wrote:

GJ wrote..................What could save Rangers, and would be of more benefit to the Scottish game on the whole, would be for Rangers and Celtic to somehow get invited into the English Premier League. This would leave a Scottish Premier League that would be competative for a change, and several teams each year would be competing for silverware. The main problems with this would be who is going to make way for them? The Premier League isn't going to be made bigger. And both teams would struggle to stay up, so they would need some kind of relegation immunity.


I think that would be wishful thinking, particularly with all the talk of Scotland breaking away form the UK.

Definitely Tring. Neither team are good enough to survive, but with the huge sums of cash splashed by Sky they would soon get better players, and Scotland only wants independance when theres something in it for them. All I'm saying is it would save Rangers and benefit Scottish football in the long run. Won't ever happen.

It would be quite tricky for a company such as Ticketus to be a truly secured creditor & their business model is one based upon risk. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that they ate insured against this eventuality.

The more pressing matter at hand for the authorities is 'what happened to the Ticketus money'? The administrator states that they can't access it as it was paid to a company separate to the football club....

Jon

JonB wrote:

It would be quite tricky for a company such as Ticketus to be a truly secured creditor & their business model is one based upon risk. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that they ate insured against this eventuality.
The more pressing matter at hand for the authorities is 'what happened to the Ticketus money'? The administrator states that they can't access it as it was paid to a company separate to the football club....

Jon

I'm not so sure Jon, that would be called a trading risk and is uninsurable. You cannot insure against pure business failure. Ticketus should have secured their loan against something. Their business is based on risk but no more than a bank lending you some money - £5k for a car they'll risk it being unsecured, £150k and they might want some collateral.

Anyways as you say the more pressing matter is that neither Ticketus or Rangers seem to have the money.

Glad it's not us.

It's tricky this time round, on one hand it's Pompey but on the other hand having been through it ourselves I suppose I should feel more sympathy.............

............nah f**k 'em, old habits die hard, i'll save my sympathy for Darlo.

If I was a Pompey fan I wouldn't be the least bit worried. Now they're in admin a buyer will be found. 10 point deduction - so what? They'll still stay up. At least when they're saved it will actually mean saved! Unlike our version of 'saved' which means a temporary reprieval from extinction before we're ejected from the football league in May and liquidated in a years time.

WE HAVE NOT BEEN SAVED!!!!!!!!

It's a long time since Ferguson and Aberdeen showed the Glasgow clubs a clean pair of heels.......no one can ever do that again.

knecht wrote:

An interesting read.

Only in as much as the writer is a total knobhead. The column was good once but it has grated on my nerves for a while now. I used to try to work out who it was but I'm not sure if it is one footballer now, or a hack with several contacts in the game who rehashes their thoughts on whatever is in the news at the time.

Could there be a possibility that we could benefit from Rangers' misery ? If Ticketus were to go bust having lost so much money then our obligations to them, which if I remember correctly are the Football League payments for years to come (hopefully, fingers crossed) would cease. Probably wrong but just a thought.

This is an interesting piece about the role of the press in not highlighting the goings on at Rangers over the years.

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The parallels, if not the scale, are there with our own sorry plight

Ffarquhar wrote:

Could there be a possibility that we could benefit from Rangers' misery ? If Ticketus were to go bust having lost so much money then our obligations to them, which if I remember correctly are the Football League payments for years to come (hopefully, fingers crossed) would cease. Probably wrong but just a thought.

I think that Ticketus arrangement was part of Heaney's bid. I suspect that Brent negotiated something more favourable for us. Does anybody know?

The top four in the SPL tonight, from 4th to 1st: Hearts, Motherwell, Rangers, Celtic. HMRC

Superb article in The Grauniad by Proper Journalist David Conn:

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Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Ffarquhar wrote:

Could there be a possibility that we could benefit from Rangers' misery ? If Ticketus were to go bust having lost so much money then our obligations to them, which if I remember correctly are the Football League payments for years to come (hopefully, fingers crossed) would cease. Probably wrong but just a thought.

I think that Ticketus arrangement was part of Heaney's bid. I suspect that Brent negotiated something more favourable for us. Does anybody know?

Who knows ? They certainly aren't telling the rank and file that they so desperately want to feel part of this wonderfully sustainable new era, which by the way, WE need to pay for.

There are more questions than answers but the trick is to make the riff raff feel they are involved, when in reality they are not................. except for a few chosen Aviva Rousers.

I've just bought 300 quids worth of tickets from Ticketus so if they go bump i'll not be a happy chappy!

Is it 20 million that Rangers owe Ticketus?