World Soccer Presents - The Prem Era #2 (2022)

52 THE PREM ERA

FEBRUARY 2010:

Portsmouth are set

to become the first

Premier League

club to go into

administration,

just two years

after winning the

FA Cup trophy.

Brian Glanville

and David Conn

reflect on what

this says about the

English top flight

introuble

Pompey

THE STORIES

By the time you read this, Portsmouth may

well be in administration, with its concomitant

points problem.

Or, given their colossal £60 million debt,

in worse plight still. With their patience

evidently exhausted, the Inland Revenue

threatened to wind the club up – and that

was for a mere £3.5m. French club Lens

have pursued them, exasperated, for payment

for two players: Aruna Dindane and Nadir

Belhadj. Their previous owner, Alexandre

Gaydamak, says he is owed £28m. And

all too few clubs seem interested in buying

those players Pompey have left after the

fire sales of last summer.

Supposed Arab benefactors have been

unable to save them. Indeed, the first of them,

Sulaiman Al Fahim, was dismally incapable of

putting his money where his mouth was, while

successor Ali Al Faraj had desperately to

borrow to raise funds.

Pompey haven’t exactly helped themselves

in terms of image by taking on, as an unofficial

administrator, a lawyer who is reported to have

been banned for years in his native Israel for

serious malfeasance. And yet they won the

FA Cup as recently as 2008. How sad it

would be to see them disappear.

GLANVILLE ON PORTSMOUTH...

With their patience evidently exhausted, the

InlandRevenuethreatenedtowindtheclubup