Portsmouth Need To Sell To Continue

Portsmouth FC are asking for special dispensation from the Premier League in order to try and fend off their impending winding up order from HM Revenue and Customs.  If they cannot mount some sort of funding over the next couple of weeks, they will almost certainly be placed into compulsory liquidation.

The Premier League, along with football governing body FIFA, have legislations in place regarding when clubs can and cannot register and de-register playing staff.  Premier League clubs can buy and sell players from 1 June until 31 August, and then once more throughout January. 

Portsmouth have written to the Premier League, requesting that they can sell their star players outside of these windows under exceptional circumstances in order to raise some much needed cash.  The Premier League has in turn forwarded the request onto FIFA and their answer will be heard shortly.

The clubs chief executive, Peter Storie believes that the immediate sale of player such as Algerian international Nadir Belhadj and the highly rated Kevin Prince-Boateng may be vital to securing their future.  Belhadj has reportedly been attracting the interest of European giant Barcelona.

Storie has said, “Of course we don’t want to sell any more players, but we have no choice.

Avram Grant still believes he can keep us up, so he doesn’t want to sell any more players.

But if it’s a question of survival or selling, there clearly is no choice.  We have some immediate cash flow issues to resolve.”

Mixed Feelings

Numerous figures throughout the Premier League have had their say on the current Portsmouth situation.

West Ham United co-owner David Gold has said that h would happily loan Portsmouth the necessary funds if they did come and ask him, so long as the deal was sanctioned by the Premier League and Pompey kept up the repayment.  Failure to do this however, is one of the main reasons they are in the predicament they are.

Brian Laws, the manager of fellow relegation strugglers Burnley has also had his say.  He says that all the clubs in the league have to work to the laws and legislations of the sport and, whilst he sympathises with the clubs current plight, no club should be granted special privileges that others aren’t.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has commented on the likely consequences for the Premier League if Portsmouth are to go out of business.  He believes they will lose integrity over the situation, and will no longer be able to claim it has the greatest league in the world if they are to allow a club to be unable to compete.

Meanwhile, Stoke manager Tony Pulis has slammed the Premier Leagues ‘fit and proper persons act.’  This was brought in due to the rise in investors taking over various clubs, they wanted to make sure that all takeovers were done with the best of intentions. Unfortunately however, Pulis believes the Premier League have overlooked the numerous owners Portsmouth have already had this season, who many hold responsible for their crippling debt.

The next few weeks promise to be pivotal in the clubs future.

Posted at 02:08PM Feb 19, 2010 by Marc Stenton in Insolvency  |  Comments[0]