Portsmouth slide into administration - where did it go wrong?

Portsmouth will now be 17 points adrift from safety (Sky Sports images)



Portsmouth FC have today confirmed that it will be going into administration after totalling debts to the tune of around £70m.

For a club that is already 8-points away from safety, it is a further kick in the shin for the club and its fans. Some could say they have nobody to blame but themselves. In the past 24 months, which included their FA Cup success in 2008, Portsmouth sold over £90m worth of players including Peter Crouch, Lassana Diarra, Jermain Defoe, and Glen Johnson. To still be around £70m in debt is still giving the fans a real headache.

At least the club cannot be liquidated, as the meeting with the High Court over its winding-up order has now been suspended. The club still lives, for now.

So who is to blame? Well the Premier League as a brand is the most watched league in the world. In the height of a growing economy, and revenue increases, businessmen would only be a fool not to purchase a majority share of a club. That's what Malcolm Glazer did at Man Utd, Tom Hicks and George Gillett with Liverpool, and Sasha Gaydamak with Portsmouth.

But one has to wonder why Gaydamak significantly gambled on the club's future in exchange for virtually instantaneous success? The club's infrastructure was not there to generate the level of revenue of the Man Utd's or Liverpool's, but continuous spent to the level of those football giants. They did not have European football to fall back on for further income.

It was good while it lasted. Crouch and Defoe were a great pairing at Pompey, and still are at Tottenham, while the marauding full-back Johnson and the midfield tenacity of Diarra gave fans always something to shout about at Fratton Park. But paying players a high level of wages was never going to be sustainable for a club that can only attract a maximum of 17,000 fans at the Fratton Park turnstiles, while Old Trafford is 75,000.

So what about the recent owners? Have they deceived the club, and more notably the Premier League through its 'Fit and Proper Person's' test that it had the finances to been the club out of trouble? Sulaiman Al Fahim owned the club for just over 40 days before relinquishing his shareholding to Ali Al-Faraj. The Arabian never attended to any of Pompey's games, and defaulted a £15m loan pyment to one of the club's major creditors, Balram Chairai. He currently owns the club, but has reiterated that he won't be there for the long-term, making sure his major investment in the club is safe. There are other rumours circulating that gaydamak has still yet to receive his £9m installment of a £30m debt the Russian is still due.

With the club at the hands of administrator, it is difficult to be optimistic of the club's position. The club is still riddled with debt, and as it looks to pay off its creditors and pay its staff, more players may need to be sold to avoid a collapse of one of England's most historic clubs.