Source: FOOTYMAD
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
If Chainrai wants to get the fans on his side... Balram Chainrai is set to become the owner of Portsmouth Football Club alongside Levi Kushnir in the very near future whether we like it or not.In a frank interview with the local news (which can be read here), Chainrai and Kushnir outline their ambitions for the club, stating how they've grown to "love" Pompey after becoming its accidental owners, having taken the club out of the hands of the Al-Faraj regime by default.Of course, we've all heard this before with previous owners and after the Al-Fahim/Al-Faraj saga, it seems like the majority of fans simply won't believe what anyone says any more when talking about ownership of the club, especially someone who has links with the men who have ruined Pompey over the last few years.After all, this is a man who placed the club into administration and the cynics will say he did this just to reduce the amount of debt he would have to pay to creditors.However, for every cynic there is someone who will say that he placed the club in administration for the greater good as it arguably saved Pompey from being wound up by HMRC at the time.Another positive to take from Chainrai's ownership is that he loaned the club money and eventually took it out of the hands of someone/a group of people who was/were incapable of running a football club for various reasons. Of course, the dissenters will say that he didn't even want to become the owner in the first place, and is therefore looking for a quick sale.My personal feeling on Chainrai is that it's hard to trust a man who stumbled into ownership of the club and has previous connections with the previous regime, but we have no choice but to wait and see if he can at least repair the damage that the likes of Gaydamak and Storrie have done.But maybe the Hong Kong businessman and his associate are actually telling the truth in the interview and really do want to rebuild the club. If that's the case, then there is something they can do that will silence the vast majority of the doubters. They should build us something tangible, something to show that Portsmouth Football Club really is moving in the right direction, something like a new training facility or a new stadium. Let's face it, many of our former owners have promised to deliver one or the other (or both) and yet all have failed.Outlining plans is simply not good enough any more. Pompey fans have been let down far too often having seen blueprints of training grounds and artist's impressions of new stadia, only to never see them become reality. Until the players are happy with modern, state-of-the-art training facilities and us fans are sitting our bums down on in a brand new stadium, whether it be at Fratton Park or elsewhere, then nobody is going to believe anything any owner says about future plans for the club.Of course, I'm not expecting anything to happen in the near future or even the more distant future, but the only way I feel that Chainrai and Kushnir will get the vast majority of the Pompey fans' backing is by giving the club what it has needed for so many years and fulfil the empty promises that previous owners have broken.You can fill our heads with empty words Mr. Chainrai, but your actions will be what win you the respect of the Pompey fans.
