Nutmeg Radio

The unending saga of Portsmouth Football Club’s ownership merry-go-round has taken on a life of its own.  The club has had a staggering four owners since the start of the 2009-10 Premiership season. Some clubs haven’t had that many owners in the past decade, let alone a year.  Talk about poor financial management.  The club’s finances are in such a poor state that it recently requested permission from the Premier League to sell players outside the January transfer window.

Portsmouth made this audacious request in an effort to raise funds to pay player wages and to pay Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC).  It has been reported that the club has over $100 million in debt and part of that debt includes the $12 million tax bill owed to HMRC.  This unmanageable debt level has put heavy pressure on the club to find another owner by this Friday or risk being wound-up (dissolved).

Such a scenario would have dire consequences for the fans, the players, some local businesses, and the league.  I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure that a club ceasing to exist all together, let alone in mid-season, would rank up there as one of the worst things to happen to the league.  Predictably, the fans are up in arms, and rightfully so.  It’s hard to cheer your team on when you are unsure of the club’s viability going forward.  The club has not been able to perform basic services such as paying player wages on time and has twice had to raise funds mid-season in order to do so.  Aside from the embarrassment and heartache that the possible winding-up of the club would cause, it would also create a situation where all of the results from past fixtures would have to be wiped from the record books, something that has never happened in the history of the Premier League.  Not only would Portsmouth suffer, but the point reshuffling would adversely impact several Premiership clubs.

In a league saddled with debt-laden teams, the Fratton Park saga shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.  Their inability to plug the proverbial hole in their boat is a shocking indictment of their financial ineptitude.  Then again, this is the same club that in the 2007-08 season had a 78% wages (salaries) to turnover (income) ratio, which conceivably only got worse in the following seasons.  But to be fair, Portsmouth isn’t the only Premiership club to to be on shaky financial footing.  A majority of clubs, including members of the “Big Four”, are clearly not living within their means.

The club is now hoping for a fifth opportunity to stave off registration (bankruptcy) by finding a willing buyer before the end of the business week.  From the looks of things, no one in their right mind would want to be the known as the infamous “Owner #5″.  Can you blame them?

All paths at this point seem to lead to registration, something quite familiar to Portsmouth fans as they have gone down this road once before in 1998.  To add insult to injury, registration is accompanied with a hefty dose of football purgatory, which comes in the form of an automatic nine point deduction in the league table.  As if the faithful at Fratton Park haven’t suffered enough, all hope of staying up has to be buried alive.  The Premier League and the English FA need to take the travails at Fratton Park to heart.  It is time for sensible leadership because English football’s position as one of football’s shining examples of good business management is in peril — as a soon to be released UEFA study, which was first reported in the Guardian, will attest to.  We are often told that sports is big business.  Well, it is time club executives at Portsmouth and elsewhere start acting like it.