Portsmouth have failed to persuade the Premier League to lift their transfer embargo despite two days of talks and confident announcements that the end of their ban on signing players was “imminent”.
Although the Barclays Premier League’s bottom club have had their domestic transfer debts settled by the League’s direct payment of television fees to creditor teams, some foreign clubs have had to settle for a rescheduling of their debts. The League is reported to need proof that the new arrangements for outstanding payments due to Udinese for the signing of Sulley Muntari for £7 million in the summer of 2007 are watertight before it will lift the embargo.
Whether Portsmouth will be able to fund any inward transfers other than loans and free-agent signings even if the ban is lifted before the transfer window closes is arguable. Club accounts seen by The Times project player sales of £11,750,000 for January, but as yet no players have been sold.
The same accounts show a projected player expenditure figure of £10,998,925 — which includes instalments on fees for players already at the club — but with no sales to help to raise that level of finance, the options available to Avram Grant, the manager, may be severely limited.
However, most of Grant’s frustration is directed at the League. “I don’t understand why the people at the Premier League are doing this,” he said “They need to think that there is a team here, there are supporters and all their life is about the team. There are players who give everything and even the manager is being disturbed from doing his job. I fully respect them, but they need to keep the spirit of the game, to give us a chance like the other teams.”
Advertisement
Nowhere on the club’s balance sheet was there any mention of claims for unpaid bonuses by Sol Campbell, the former captain who lifted the FA Cup at Wembley in 2008. Campbell, who left when his contract expired last summer, has issued a writ against Portsmouth for £1.7 million in image rights and bonus payments.
Portsmouth have yet to announce whether they will appeal against a High Court decision not to strike out a winding-up petition lodged by Revenue & Customs, but supporters are considering what action they might take if the club enter administration.
“We have to consider the worst,” Colin Farmery, of Pompey Supporters’ Trust, said. “The club is in a great deal of financial trouble and while it’s not our ambition to take it over — in fact we would rather not — people have to have an eye on a contingency plan. That includes a worst-case scenario in which we buy it out of administration or, at the absolute worst, to start a new team here in place of the old one.”
Peter Storrie, the chief executive, was bailed to appear at Southwark Crown Court on April 15 on charges of cheating the public revenue at a preliminary hearing yesterday.