Portsmouth

[CJ]

the telling figure is the wages and overheads where 109% of turnover or something like that.

[Shanks]

Skip to page 33 for full details..

http://www.uhy-uk.com/media/news/PFC...0Adobe%207.pdf



Harley Street practice still owed £1..

[Chazza]

How the hell could they get themselves into this situation?

It has been revealed cash-strapped Portsmouth owe Tottenham £1million for the sale of Asmir Begovic even though he has never played for the club.

Portsmouth have released their debt report to creditors, spelling out the entirety of the club's debts to be £119million.

Among the debts is the staggering revelation that Portsmouth owe money to Spurs over former goalkeeper Begovic.

During the final days of the January transfer window it is thought that, when Portsmouth sold Younes Kaboul to Tottenham in January, the club negotiated a double deal which included Begovic.

Begovic snubbed a move to White Hart Lane, preferring a transfer to Stoke, but the £1million sell-on clause included in the deal remained despite the fact the Bosnian has no connection with the North London outfit.

The report also revealed the club owe in the region of £9million to agents, including just over £2million to Pini Zahavi, and a further £2million to a company called 'PECO AG'.

A total of £38million is owed to assorted owners, including Sacha Gaydamak and Sulaiman al Fahim.

They also owe another £17.3million in transfer fees to clubs including Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

Players are also owed £3.04million in image rights and £1.86million in unpaid wages to illustrate the club's dire financial problems.

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,195...107028,00.html

Mental

[The Birdman]

So Pompey owe £17m to us and Tottenham in unpaid transfer fees??? that must be after adjustments for the Johnson transfer

[Vermilion]

So Pompey owe £17m to us and Tottenham in unpaid transfer fees??? that must be after adjustments for the Johnson transfer

No, they owe 17mill in transfer fees to clubs 'including' us and Spurs, not 'just' to us an Spurs.

[Dhav]

That is a ridiculous amount to owe agents. Makes you wonder how much of an impact those sorts of fees have on the real cost of transfers more generally.

I'm not surprised they owe agents, although the amount has caused a raised eyebrow or two given that they paid Zahavi a few million just a couple of months back. It seemed curious to me that they would prioritise such a payment at the time when they were fighting a winding up order issued by HMRC

[Mattshark]

Well they lost there appeal and 7th place now has Europa League football.

[Bender]

The letter from administrators says Portsmouth's actual debt is close to double what was reported in February, although they are still owed money from the transfers of Jermain Defoe to Tottenham, Glen Johnson to Liverpool and Sulley Muntari to Inter Milan.

[dww]

Portsmouth save their money for millionaires while paupers go unpaid

The 'football creditors' rule is again exposed as an outrage as players and agents are paid in full while charities lose out

Posted by David Conn Thursday 22 April 2010 07.00 BST The Guardian


Creditors include the South Central ambulance service, the Portsmouth Students' Union and even their own supporters' club. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

With 54 clubs having collapsed into insolvency since English football's boom began with the Premier League breakaway in 1992, the eye becomes practised at picking out the most shameful of a club's bad debts. There it was, as ever, on page 45 of the administrator's report issued yesterday itemising bust Portsmouth's £122.8m debts: St John Ambulance, of Worthy Lane in Hampshire, owed £2,702.

St John, along with schools, hospitals, the local ambulance service, HM Revenue and Customs and scores of small businesses in a total of £92.7m creditors left high and dry, will receive a fraction of what they are owed in any deal the administrator, Andrew Andronikou of Hacker Young, strikes with a new buyer. By hideous contrast, clubs owed transfer fees, and players due millionaires' pay packets, must be paid in full, according to Premier League and Football League rules, if Portsmouth are to continue as a club in either league.

That is the nature of the "football creditors" rule, whose self-regarding rationale is that it would represent unfair competition if clubs signed players they could not afford, achieved success like Pompey did, and were then allowed not to pay them.

But while Portsmouth were overspending on players, making losses of £23.5m in the year to May 2007, £17m in the following FA Cup winning season, and, now revealed by Andronikou, £13m in 2009, they were also taking on commitments to the tax authorities, the Scout Association of Guernsey (listed as owed £697), even Pompey's own supporters' club (owed £300), which they will now not need to pay in full.

Andronikou, who said he agrees with Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs' vehement objection to this rule, said in his report: "The Premier League has developed an insolvency policy. This policy protects football related creditors as they are required to be paid in full but may allow non-football related creditors to be compromised."

The list of "ordinary" creditors whose debts a new Portsmouth buyer can "compromise" runs to 15 closely typed pages. HMRC's £17.1m is the largest debt; the tax authorities are particularly bitter about the football creditors' rule because theirs is largely unpaid PAYE tax due on the millionaire players' wages which have to be paid in full.

Among the players owed lump sums by Portsmouth – leaving aside the ongoing wage bill of around £1.2m a month, which Andronikou is paying the current squad – are several who have not worn a Pompey shirt for some time. Peter Crouch, now at Spurs under his former Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp, is owed £250,000. Glen Johnson, a Liverpool player since last July, must be paid £235,000; Silvain Distin, who left for Everton last summer, is due £300,000.

Nine current and former players are also owed a total £3m for image rights, some to companies registered in tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands (Niko Kranjcar), and Delaware, USA (Lassana Diarra). Altogether 29 current and former players are owed £4.7m, which must be paid in full if Portsmouth are to compete in the Football League, while ordinary creditors' debts can be slashed to a proportion Andronikou has not yet specified.

Other clubs are still owed a total of £17.3m in transfer fee instalments, which again must be settled in full, some for originally signing players who have long since left. Chelsea are still owed £1m from when Portsmouth signed the now departed Johnson in 2007, Udinese £3.3m for Sulley Muntari, whom Pompey bought in May 2007 and sold to Internazionale a year later. The list, running alphabetically from Belhadj to Yebda, goes on, through 15 players with instalments still to be paid.

Compared with those galactic figures for football trading and wages, the list of unsecured "ordinary" creditors, who must take a hit, is a painful litany of the inexcusably unpaid. Here is the South Central ambulance service, owed £19,535.39, Portsmouth city council, £28,690 down in rates, Portsmouth Students' Union, owed £2,955. A number of schools are owed significant sums, apparently for the hire of sports facilities, including Cowplain Community School in Waterlooville, with £14,743.54 outstanding, the Priory Community Sports Centre in Southsea, owed £11,000, and King Edward School in Southampton, who will have to accept a fraction of a £41,714.01 bill the Premier League club ran up with them.

Andronikou's report confirms that Pompey's owner, Balram Chainrai, has mortgages over Fratton Park and other club assets for £14.2m in loans still outstanding to his company, Portpin, which gives him priority. The Premier and Football League rules require 75% of the unsecured, "ordinary" creditors, to whom Portsmouth owe £92.7m in total, including £9.8m to 27 football agents, to vote in favour of a settlement via a company voluntary arrangement.

HMRC can be expected, as ever, to vote against any which demands of them a cut in what they are owed and, if no CVA is agreed, as happened at Leeds, the League is likely to impose a further 15-point penalty.

Lord Mawhinney, who retired as the Football League's chairman last month, presided over this "football creditors" rule during his seven years in charge, but when he left, he wrote to all 72 clubs asking them to consider its morality.

"Talking about the moral strength of the [Football League] brand," he wrote, "are we all comfortable that, in financial and debt terms, we treat football clubs more favourably than we do our local communities and their businesses, other taxpayers (to whom we have a civic responsibility) or St John Ambulance? That is for you to decide."

So far there is no sign of clubs reconsidering. The Premier League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, has said the rule must be followed in Portsmouth's case and he argues that Pompey's collapse reflects no wider shame on his glittering league. There is, though, no sporting nobility in paying long departed players millions in full, while St John Ambulance must take another hit from this awful mismanagement of football's boom.

[dww]

Portsmouth told to forget about Europa League bid

• FA and Premier League will not consider late application
• Decision means seventh-placed Premier League team qualifies

* Press Association
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 April 2010 12.11 BST


Portsmouth faced Milan in the Uefa Cup in 2008, but there will be no European adventure for the club next season. Photograph: Lee Mills/Action Images

Portsmouth will not be permitted to play in the Europa League next season, the Football Association and Premier League have told the club.

Portsmouth would have qualified to play in Europe next season after reaching the FA Cup final against Chelsea – who will be in the Champions League – but the club's administrators have been told that any late application for a Uefa club licence will not be considered due to the club's financial problems.

A joint statement from the FA and Premier League said: "The FA and Premier League have confirmed to the administrators of Portsmouth Football Club that they shall not consider any late application for granting of a Uefa Club Licence for the 2010-11 season."

The decision means that the team who finish seventh in the Premier League – currently Liverpool – would play in the Europa League instead.

[Neil Young]

Portsmouth save their money for millionaires while paupers go unpaid

The 'football creditors' rule is again exposed as an outrage as players and agents are paid in full while charities lose out

Posted by David Conn Thursday 22 April 2010 07.00 BST The Guardian


Creditors include the South Central ambulance service, the Portsmouth Students' Union and even their own supporters' club. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

With 54 clubs having collapsed into insolvency since English football's boom began with the Premier League breakaway in 1992, the eye becomes practised at picking out the most shameful of a club's bad debts. There it was, as ever, on page 45 of the administrator's report issued yesterday itemising bust Portsmouth's £122.8m debts: St John Ambulance, of Worthy Lane in Hampshire, owed £2,702.

St John, along with schools, hospitals, the local ambulance service, HM Revenue and Customs and scores of small businesses in a total of £92.7m creditors left high and dry, will receive a fraction of what they are owed in any deal the administrator, Andrew Andronikou of Hacker Young, strikes with a new buyer. By hideous contrast, clubs owed transfer fees, and players due millionaires' pay packets, must be paid in full, according to Premier League and Football League rules, if Portsmouth are to continue as a club in either league.

That is the nature of the "football creditors" rule, whose self-regarding rationale is that it would represent unfair competition if clubs signed players they could not afford, achieved success like Pompey did, and were then allowed not to pay them.

But while Portsmouth were overspending on players, making losses of £23.5m in the year to May 2007, £17m in the following FA Cup winning season, and, now revealed by Andronikou, £13m in 2009, they were also taking on commitments to the tax authorities, the Scout Association of Guernsey (listed as owed £697), even Pompey's own supporters' club (owed £300), which they will now not need to pay in full.

Andronikou, who said he agrees with Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs' vehement objection to this rule, said in his report: "The Premier League has developed an insolvency policy. This policy protects football related creditors as they are required to be paid in full but may allow non-football related creditors to be compromised."

The list of "ordinary" creditors whose debts a new Portsmouth buyer can "compromise" runs to 15 closely typed pages. HMRC's £17.1m is the largest debt; the tax authorities are particularly bitter about the football creditors' rule because theirs is largely unpaid PAYE tax due on the millionaire players' wages which have to be paid in full.

Among the players owed lump sums by Portsmouth – leaving aside the ongoing wage bill of around £1.2m a month, which Andronikou is paying the current squad – are several who have not worn a Pompey shirt for some time. Peter Crouch, now at Spurs under his former Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp, is owed £250,000. Glen Johnson, a Liverpool player since last July, must be paid £235,000; Silvain Distin, who left for Everton last summer, is due £300,000.

Nine current and former players are also owed a total £3m for image rights, some to companies registered in tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands (Niko Kranjcar), and Delaware, USA (Lassana Diarra). Altogether 29 current and former players are owed £4.7m, which must be paid in full if Portsmouth are to compete in the Football League, while ordinary creditors' debts can be slashed to a proportion Andronikou has not yet specified.

Other clubs are still owed a total of £17.3m in transfer fee instalments, which again must be settled in full, some for originally signing players who have long since left. Chelsea are still owed £1m from when Portsmouth signed the now departed Johnson in 2007, Udinese £3.3m for Sulley Muntari, whom Pompey bought in May 2007 and sold to Internazionale a year later. The list, running alphabetically from Belhadj to Yebda, goes on, through 15 players with instalments still to be paid.

Compared with those galactic figures for football trading and wages, the list of unsecured "ordinary" creditors, who must take a hit, is a painful litany of the inexcusably unpaid. Here is the South Central ambulance service, owed £19,535.39, Portsmouth city council, £28,690 down in rates, Portsmouth Students' Union, owed £2,955. A number of schools are owed significant sums, apparently for the hire of sports facilities, including Cowplain Community School in Waterlooville, with £14,743.54 outstanding, the Priory Community Sports Centre in Southsea, owed £11,000, and King Edward School in Southampton, who will have to accept a fraction of a £41,714.01 bill the Premier League club ran up with them.

Andronikou's report confirms that Pompey's owner, Balram Chainrai, has mortgages over Fratton Park and other club assets for £14.2m in loans still outstanding to his company, Portpin, which gives him priority. The Premier and Football League rules require 75% of the unsecured, "ordinary" creditors, to whom Portsmouth owe £92.7m in total, including £9.8m to 27 football agents, to vote in favour of a settlement via a company voluntary arrangement.

HMRC can be expected, as ever, to vote against any which demands of them a cut in what they are owed and, if no CVA is agreed, as happened at Leeds, the League is likely to impose a further 15-point penalty.

Lord Mawhinney, who retired as the Football League's chairman last month, presided over this "football creditors" rule during his seven years in charge, but when he left, he wrote to all 72 clubs asking them to consider its morality.

"Talking about the moral strength of the [Football League] brand," he wrote, "are we all comfortable that, in financial and debt terms, we treat football clubs more favourably than we do our local communities and their businesses, other taxpayers (to whom we have a civic responsibility) or St John Ambulance? That is for you to decide."

So far there is no sign of clubs reconsidering. The Premier League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, has said the rule must be followed in Portsmouth's case and he argues that Pompey's collapse reflects no wider shame on his glittering league. There is, though, no sporting nobility in paying long departed players millions in full, while St John Ambulance must take another hit from this awful mismanagement of football's boom.

Disappointingly badly researched by Conn. Worthy Lane is a road in Winchester but this gives the impression it's a town or village in its own right. Not a glaring inaccuracy but it's misleading IMO.

[Dhav]

The letter from administrators says Portsmouth's actual debt is close to double what was reported in February, although they are still owed money from the transfers of Jermain Defoe to Tottenham, Glen Johnson to Liverpool and Sulley Muntari to Inter Milan.

My understanding is we've paid the Johnson fee in full