Source: Telegraph
Portsmouth's flicker of hope will be extinguished if fire sale goes ahead
Should the club's fire sale go as planned, of the 44 players currently contracted to Fratton Park, only eight youth-team hopefuls will remain at the end of the summer. Welcome to Year Zero at Portsmouth. In their stead, according to documents obtained by Telegraph Sport, will be £35 million to help alleviate the spiralling debts of £138 million that have engulfed a club teetering on the brink of the abyss, and a new £10 million wage cap to mark the start of Portsmouth's age of austerity. Related ArticlesPortsmouth set to sell entire first-team squadMandaric: don't blame me for Pompey problemsEverton v Portsmouth: match previewPortsmouth debts rise to £138mPortsmouth confident over debt plansSport on televisionIf charity, sympathy and generosity combine to help Andrew Andronikou, the club's administrator, meet his stated target, some £7 million will immediately be paid to those sides Portsmouth still owe for outstanding transfer fees. In addition, the first £17 million parachute payment that Portsmouth will receive, as they adjust to life in the Championship, will also be paid out directly to creditors. Even that, though, is a mere drop in the ocean of the club's troubles. The publication of the club's administration document last month showed outstanding debts to former owners of £38.2 million, unpaid transfer fees of £17.3 million, agents' fees worth almost £10 million and unpaid tax and VAT of £17.1 million. When Her Majesty Revenue and Customs' bill doubled last week to £35 million after a review of possible tax from players' salaries still a staggering £34.2 million a year, even with the club more than 12 months into a financial downward spiral the total debt soared to £138 million. Portsmouth are not likely to return to fiscal health for years. This summer's exodus is just the start. It is a bleak picture. Examining where Portsmouth believe they can raise money to help reduce it suggests reality may be harsher still. The impression, reading down the squad list Andronikou was forced to fax to the club's Premier League rivals, inviting the vultures to pick clean Portsmouth's carcase, is not that he is holding an auction. This is a car-boot sale. Marc Wilson, a reliable utility man once called up by the Republic of Ireland for a friendly he did not play in, is expected to raise £5 million. In the current market, with Portsmouth hardly in a position to adopt a tough negotiating stance, such a figure seems a pipe dream. So, too, the £4 million for John Utaka, the Nigerian winger forced to deny reports he was on £80,000-a-week earlier this year, his insistence borne out by the evidence that he earns an eminently more sensible £30,350 every seven days. Or £4 million for Tal Ben-Haim, or £2 million for Aaron Mokoena or Papa Bouba Diop, among others. It is tempting to suggest that Portsmouth have priced up their players according to the overblown, exaggerated rules they played by when they were chasing their dream, lavishing Alexander Gaydamak's money on Jermain Defoe, Peter Crouch, Glen Johnson and the rest. There are assets likely to meet their asking prices, too. Nadir Belhadj has impressed this season and a good World Cup, in which his Algeria side face England, may see others join CSKA Moscow as his suitors. Kevin-Prince Boateng has fleetingly shown the form that once made him one of Europe's brightest prospects. There are a handful of clubs likely to be willing to meet the £5 million placed on his head. The nightmare scenario, of course, is that Portsmouth cannot enter the era of frugality Andronikou insists they must if he is to save the club and find a new proprietor because they cannot rid themselves of these lingering memories of their age of excess. If Andronikou is to cut two-thirds of the club's wage bill to meet his target of £10 million, at a time when the club's revenue is expected to stand at around £25 million, he simply cannot afford to pay Richard Hughes or Hayden Mullins £1.14 million a year. Even the salary of £130,000 a season paid to one youth team player, who has yet to feature in a senior game for the club, seems excessive. To do that, he must accept realistic figures for those players he can look to sell. He must also hope that many of them are prepared to cut their wages to sign for whichever clubs choose to rescue them from Fratton Park. The admission by Peter Storrie in a BBC documentary on Portsmouth's descent, Fit and Proper Persons to be broadcast on Sunday, offers some hope. The former chief executive stated the club was forced to pay 'a sum of money to everybody to keep them happy' rather than their full salaries, so deep was their financial malaise. It is financial common sense to prefer being paid less in full than more in part, after all. Such thinking must prevail if Portsmouth are to survive the aftershocks of those years when it was conspicuous by its absence.