Survival Instincs

Winding-Up orders. Administration. Points deductions. Players being sold. HMRC. Non-existence. Kelvin Etuhu.

Just a number of things Portsmouth Football club has been threatened with over the past few weeks. It's been a frustrating, confusing and difficult time for anybody associated with the club, and I think everyone has been embittered so many times that they're starting to wonder if a fresh start would be the best option. Even if it meant a throw down to the lower divisions and a long steady rise back up, perhaps this would be Portsmouth most desirable ticket out of the dirge.

I have tried hard to gather my thoughts on this. I've begun following a myriad of excellent Portsmouth blogs that keep track of the situation tremendously well. I could never offer a summation as good as those that I have seen, but my pure feeling on the matter resides with my survival instincts. I want us to survive, by any means possible, and for that I defend my club when the case is perhaps indefensible.

As a business, there's little denying that Portsmouth Football Club is lucky to still be running, and seems to be heading inevitably towards a timely demise. They owe HMRC another £1.6m, and there are suggestions that the club are not running profitably enough to pay off their existing CVA. Any other company operating under such circumstances would be seen as a complete black hole and promptly shut down.

However, I want to call back to my recent article 'Death of a Football Club' (referring to Darlington). In it, I argued that football clubs aren't businesses. If you think they are, you aren't a football fan - sorry (I hope I didn't break that news to you harshly). A football club the size of Portsmouth is a necessity to the sport. You have a sizable fanbase of paying customers that will be totally disillusioned with the game if the club ceases to exist. You have an institute of footballing history that, should it be destroyed, would pose a permanent and serious question about the state of English football (consider that a club which won the FA Cup in 2008 should not exist four years later - what sort of thing would that suggest).

It could also capture the intrigue of investors. If they see a club with the potential profitability of Portsmouth Football Club going out of business, they may begin to think twice about plugging millions into the game. I think it will take a bigger domino to tumble in order for the big investors to pull out of football, but I'm certain Pompey's death will be worth more than just a glance from the men with the money.

All this is really saying is that there's many entities, some simply supporters and others major organisations in the sport, that will take a heavy blow from Pompey ceasing to be. You can argue that Portsmouth have to be taught a lesson and an example should be set for other clubs, but I must stress that these 'retribution' arguments get aimed at the wrong people. If Portsmouth Football Club dies, it's not the owners who turned Pompey into a financial catastrophe that will suffer. It's the fans. It's not the chief executives that allowed gross overspending who will bear the brunt of Pompey's demise. It'll be the employees of the club.

Of course FIFA and the FA need to make it as clear as a greenhouse that clubs have to operate in a financially stable manner. This is presumably what points deductions are for. However, I don't think a club folding teaches anyone anything, other than if you end up with the wrong owners, hard luck, that's the end of your football team.

This will all probably look self-centred and unreasonable to anyone who isn't a Portsmouth fan, but you must consider your own ties and passions to a football club. You will defend to the death that they are worthy of a place in existence, regardless of their previous actions and financial woes. I'm no different. There may even be some ridiculous people claiming that it's the fans fault in the first place. I'm not even joking there, I've been on websites where people have retorted "Well, you never protested when you were winning the FA Cup, so I have no sympathy for the fans. Let the club die."

Right. Two problems with that. 1. Nobody asked for your sympathy. 2. What the hell kind of fanbase would be protesting having just won the FA Cup? Nobody could have possibly known that Pompey were travelling headlong into disaster at that point. After all, practically every Premier League club was living beyond its means. The only difference with us was that Gaydamak's debts got called in, and that's when everything turned sour. I don't think you can blame fans purely on the fact that they aren't Nostradamuses and weren't able to fortell that there was a tremendous mismanagement occurring.

That's just a minor section of fans who have never had to worry about so much as a relegation fight though. When you go through these motions, not only do you appreciate the football itself more, but you realise that the strength and loyalty of a fanbase makes little difference in these situations. The problem is, and always has been, that fans have little control over the owners of their club. The only protection they have from their club being taken over by a nutcase is the FA's Fit and Proper Persons' Test. I'll allow you to consider whether or not you think this has been effective, but if you aren't sure here's a hint: We've had four sets of owners in a row who have allowed the financial chaos at Portsmouth Football Club to grow.

But yeah, I guess that's the fans' fault.

Stop! We Want To Get Off!

Ahh, for a moment I thought we’d reached stability. Reassuringly, it’s today been revealed that Portsmouth’s parent company CSI has been declared insolvent and has gone into administration. Thank Christ, I thought we’d found someone who was fit to provide boring financial security.

The implications for this afternoon’s revelation are unclear. Whilst Portsmouth themselves are ‘not in administration’, the only funds we can be definite about are for the very non-specific ‘short-term’. That could be the next three days for all we know, so the situation could again be absolutely dire. This seems especially likely when you consider the very downbeat tone of the club's official statement.

On top of that, the FA may well be docking Portsmouth points, as their rules indicate that the insolvency of parent companies can lead to the penalties of the club. Already in a relegation fight, this would be a sturdy iron blow to an already depleted and somewhat deflated squad, and one that our money troubles will only exacerbate.

Supporters can only ask how this has happened again. Since their FA Cup triumph in 2008, Portsmouth have been passing through fiscal travesties relentlessly, and every ‘new horizon’ has proved to be further murky waters ready and willing to suck the club into the mire and drown it.

Sacha Gaydamak, Sulaiman Al-Fahim, Ali Al-Faraj and now Vladimir Antonov have all proven to be walking (yet sometimes invisible) disasters for the club. It beggars belief really. The FA’s ‘Fit and Proper Persons’ test seems to be a completely phantom process. If it had any sort of effectiveness, at least one of the above names would have been prevented from running the club.

It truly is a disgrace. Sorry, but I’m going to keep this point going. The FA has the balls to threaten clubs with the deduction of points if their owners or parent companies go into administration, and yet can’t be arsed when it comes to actually preventing these people from being involved in football in the first place. The consequences of that are now subject of a beautiful summation at Portsmouth.

Worst could come to worst here. With the club statement itself projecting a gloomy outlook on the future, a grim pessimism is possibly the wisest prediction. If Portsmouth Football Club - champions of England in 1949 and 1950, and winners of the FA Cup in 1939 and 2008 – go out of business, then the FA have tragically failed at maintaining an iconic part of the English football picture.

Being a Pompey fan has been a difficult experience over the past three seasons. It’s been a stream of terms that no football supporter likes to hear: ‘insolvency’, ‘administration’, ‘the end is nigh’, ‘Carl Dickinson’. Really, all I want is to get out of this tedious and potentially fatal roundabout, and it’s clear we need help with that from a governing body. We need someone to put us directly in the hands of someone who is interested in the team and wants to provide financial composure.

I hold out hope things will get better, as I always do, but Pompey fans have been punched into the ground so often that it’s no longer easy to conjure up the spirit that embodied our terrific fanbase. One possible subdued ray of light could come in the form of Balram Chainrai. Perhaps the only man in the last five years who offered any degree of steadiness in his time as owner, Balram will presumably be owed money by Portsmouth still, and may be able to assume control of the club. He was never particularly bothered by the club, but he did keep us alive and we have to give him credit for that.

Again though, it’s complicated and we can’t know for sure that he’ll come to our rescue again. All we can be certain of is that, once more, we need a miracle.