Who’d Buy Portsmouth Football Club?
Portsmouth are over £50million in debt and they are seven points adrift of the bottom of the Premiership. They also have no training ground, a small dilapidated stadium surrounded by land owned by one of the major creditors.
And yet, according to reports on the BBC, there are four or five interested parties, who want to take over the club. One South African group will provide proof of funds by Monday.
Now let’s suppose you are rich as Croesus. You also like football and feel that buying a football club would be good for your image, business interests and ultimately your bank balances.
There are quite a few clubs with rickety finances and some of these have brand new stadia and very good training facilities. As an example, Southampton has just been bought by a sensible Swiss millionaire, who appears to be enjoying his new role.
So would you buy Portsmouth if you were sane and had no other business with the owners?
No! Especially as you’re be buying a Championship Club.
Policing at QPR
As I walked away from Loftus Road last Tuesday, I was surprised at how many police were on duty.
Obviously, it was because there was a large and angry crowd with a history of violence between the two teams, it was necessary to have this sort of presence of the boys in blue.
But the crowd was 10,000 or so, the Ipswich supporters were their usual well-behaved bunch, everybody seemed to be talking to each other as they walked towards the Tube, I didn’t see anybody who was the least bit drunk and it was all rather cold. Would you really want aggro on a very cold day? Possibly, it would be a way of warming up.
So do the Met just treat all matches the same and send it everything including the kitchen sink and the cavalry, when quite frankly they should be used for something more important than a peaceful football match. Should I for instance report the police to the RSPCA for getting the horses out unnecessarily on a cold night?
The was one unsavoury incident though. The QPR supporters did slag off their club’s owner.
Ipswich at QPR
Last night was the first time this season, that I’d seen Ipswich win. I must admit I was there when they beat Coventry, but I left immediately Coventry equalised, so didn’t actually see the win. I was also at Shrewsbury, when they won in the Carling Cup, but that was on penalties.
I’d never been to Loftus Road before, but I certainly enjoyed the visit. It is a compact ground with good views tucked away behind Shepherd’s Bush. I think though now that the crowd are better behaved than they were years ago, when someone chucked a dummy hand grenade being the opposing goalkeeper. Apparently, he ran very fast.
But as supposedly one of the richest clubs in England, if not the world, the ungrateful crowd really didn’t appreciate the match, giving Flavio Briatore some typical football humour. I’ve just read Briatore’s bio on Wikipedia. I can’t be all true! Can it? Wikipedia doesn’t always get it right.
Note in the pictures, one shows the immaculate minute’s silence for someone who did a lot for QPR.
Going Down?
The latest in the Portsmouth saga seems to make matters worse. According to the BBC, Peter Storrie and Avram Grant are not happy that players have been sold behind their backs.
I just think that Pompey are now at the end of the road. They face a winding up petition in the Courts on February 10th and I suspect that unless serious money turns up, they will end up in administration at best.
The point that no-one seems to say is that Pompey are favourites to go down and so the owners will lose a lot of money anyway. So would you put any more money into this type of sinking ship? Perhaps if you were a fool with money to burn. But no-one is that stupid are they? I suppose they could be if they bought a football club in the first place!
So it looks like there’ll be an extra place in Division 2 next year.
Will that be AFC Wimbledon? Now there’s a resurrection for you.
The Premier League Without Portsmouth
I was musing what would happen if Portsmouth should go bust and be unable to fulfil all of their fixtures in the Premier League. That is not to say they will, but HMRC are after a scalp and Portsmouth are an obvious target.
Arsenal and Aston Villa would be the biggest losers at the top, as they have already got six points out of the doomed team from the South Coast. West Ham however would end up bottom, as they lose four valuable points.
So perhaps, there are three clubs, in whose interest it is that Portsmouth don’t fail.
Crystal Palace Goes into Administration
Crystal Palace have now gone into administration with debts of about thirty million pounds. Several clubs, including Portsmouth, Notts County, Accrington Stanley and others, have been hovering around this for some months in these most tricky of financial times. It is a big step for a football club, as they are immediately docked ten points and in most cases, such as Leeds and Southampton, it has meant relegation.
But just as Southampton have shown, there can be life after administration.
But there are differences between Southampton and Crystal Palace. Southampton have a modern stadium, which I believe they own, and are in an area without too many other football clubs. Crystal Palace are close to Charlton and it is easy to get to the other clubs over London. Crucially, I don’t think they own their ground. It’s a dump anyway and probably needs to be redeveloped.
So whereas someone looking to invest in a football club might well choose Southampton, they would be unlikely to choose Crystal Palace.
The future looks grim for Palace and especially with HMRC getting a lot tougher, I have a feeling that they would love to see to see a football club cease to exist. As Dan Snow pointed out in his excellent television programme, Empire of the Seas, the shooting of Admiral Byng for cowardice, did wonders for the Royal Navy. As it says in Wikipedia.
Byng’s execution was satirised by Voltaire in his novel Candide. In Portsmouth, Candide witnesses the execution of an officer by firing squad; and is told that “in this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others”
I suspect that if they fail to get the scalp of Crystal Palace, they will get another before the end of the season.
Southampton and Football
I went to Southampton on Saturday to see Ipswich play them in the FA Cup.
I’ve always had rather a low opinion of Southampton. Not that I’ve been there very often, but I had great difficulty once getting a gluten-free meal and that clouded my view of the place.
I was surprised that the city had medieval walls, which contain the longest stretch in England, and you can walk along the top of them in places. Like many English cities, it has a ruined church, Holyrood, that was bombed by the Luftwaffe in the Second World Wat and has been left as a memorial sailors of the Merchant Navy.
Let’s not talk about the football.
Football in Welsh
This note is in the latest Popbitch.
The December 14th edition of S4C’s Welsh language football show Sgorio picked up a grand total of zero viewers, according to official audience figures.
This can’t be correct, as the presenter’s family would have watched.
Kiss My Badge
Footballers have a reputation for kissing the badge after they score. Tonight one of the West Brom footballers did something similar, except it was the sponsor’s logo. And who was the sponsor?
The Disasters Emergency Committee advertising the Haiti Appeal.
I have no problem with that. And I suspect no-one does!
Timekeeping
There have been a lot of complaints recently about referees in football. There always have been, but some, including Alex Ferguson, have been extremely vocal lately.
We had another incident on Saturday at Ipswich. Town were leading 2-1, when four minutes were indicated by the fourth official. I was nervy about Ipswich conceding another goal to Coventry, so I judged the extra minutes on my watch.
Inevitably Coventry scored. The BBC shows it on their match report as being scored at five minutes and two seconds after the ninety minutes.
I left moaning about the referee’s timekeeping, as I felt he should have blown earlier.
But then Pablo Counago scored for Ipswich another seventy seconds later, to restore their lead.
The most extraordinary thing was that the BBC timed the match as ending just one second short of nine minutes after the ninety minutes.
I know two goals were scored, someone was booked and there was a substitution, but that surely doesn’t add up to five minutes. The only thing that you might say, is that the mini-match at the end, didn’t alter who won or the goal difference.
Surely, we should go to an independent timekeeper and a clock that everybody could see start and stop. Then there would be no arguments. Except I suspect from one high-profile manager. To be fair to both managers on Saturday; Roy Keane and Chris Coleman, they took it all with fairly good grace.
But then with Haiti in the news, football is almost irrelevant and a welcome distraction.
The Anonymous Widower 