Godt eller skidt?

Trevor Birch har anmodet om en forlængelse på administrationen på 6 måneder, selv påpeger han at det ikke er nødvendigt med alle de 6 måneder, men at det er nødvendigt med forlængelsen.Ingen klub må være to år i administration, så reelt skal der være en afklaring når sæsonen slutter.

Dette var hvad en artikel i The News handelde om i dag, men det interessante er nogle af de kommentarer der var i The News, her er sakset et par stykker.

Prisen for Trevor Birchs arbejde sammen med hans firma er nu løbet op i £ 2.160.000.

– trading loss for the period Aug to Jan was £184k, before everyone jumps up and down about PFK this does not include the administrators fees
– the loss was despite the HNW’s putting in £244k as ‘contributions to ongoing trading’, making the real trading loss £428k
– £985,196 of parachute payment was received and used during th period Aug to Jan. The first progress report indicated that c.£8m payments were due to the club, effectively the total now due is closer to £7m.
– The business plan in the prospectus assumed 7 months trading in year one, this will now effectively be reduced to nothing as the takeover will likely only occur just before the start of the season.
– The business plan in the prospectus needs the PST to get the clubs annual expenditure down to £5.3m p/a, despite all the administrators cutting the overheads for 4 and half months were £3.2m – giving an annual expenditure of over £8m. 
– There is currently no rent/loan repayment commitments for Fratton Park – it is fair to assume on this basis that overheads will increase rather than go down under the Trust.
– The prospectus suggests that the ‘total’ investment under the 5 year business plan is £5.895M. If the courts agree to the sale to BC at the proposed $3m figure, and with HNW’s already releasing £244k the amount of working capital will be £2.6M or less, much less again once the CVA is taken into account.

So is the bid really fully funded or is there effectively enough money to conclude the deal, but the 5 year business plan goes out of the window. The contractual payments to the former players alone seems to exceed future parachute monies if the reported figures are correct. Liabilities will increase (loan repayments) and some £3m of additional savings need to be found. The business plan also assumes that income will grow!! 11 months from Feb 2012 to Jan 2013 showed total income of £5.3m (based on Championship/L1 revenues). The ongoing trust plan is based on annual revenues of £6.2m. It smacks of finger in the air guestimation, as revenues will surely drop further in L2 next year.

After 12 months in admin, the club is still running at a LOSS. 

Compare this to the many retailers that have struggled recently, and if they were still losing money after this time they’d have been liquidated/closed much earlier. 

Surely this is a major failing of the administrators, who are taking extortionate fees for supposedly putting the business into a viable position again. As it stands, how can the PST run the business?

Getting back to the story on the BBC web page that Portpin are threatening to take the FL to court if they do not allow the other Harris Bid to proceed. Question as Port Pin is only one of the creditors for the club, what happens if the other say we want the trust and he does not and if Port pin did decide to take the FL to court and this caused the club still to be in administration in June, who would be at fault, the club / Port Pin for still being in administration as the club / Port Pin had caused the delay in the take over or the FL?

According to the BBC Sport website the money now owed to football creditors includeing ex players stands at £11.4M and will have to be paid in full by the new owners……….given that this figure was originally £8m and was going to be covered by the PP’s still owed, and the fact that PKF have stated that this amount has already been eaten into, how can the PST afford to pay this increased amount? 

Full BBC report can be found here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/21574331

as an outsider to the details I dont understand the delay, we have the trust saying they are ready to go ahead, another bidder saying this and that be it fake or not.
administrators who cannot admin, and do we believe a busines that says ‘here is our charges and invoices but just pay us what you think you should…yea right.
theres more to this drama going on than we are told, and after it is pompey.
cannot help but sway to the pessimist side as march is just a few days away.

This entire affair is now becoming a farce. The footbal creditors bill has increased from £8m to £11.4m. The administration costs now seem to be less than previously announced. Still no guarantee that the Parachute Payments will be forthcoming but it now seems that the football creditors need to be paid on day one.

How on earth has Birch been allowed to run the club at a loss? Surely the role of any administrator is to ensure that the business DOES NOT run at a loss during administration? Has he heard of the Insolvency Act and how it is illegal to trade insolvently? How on earth was it allowed for the HNWs to fund the continuining losses ad infinitum?

The problem has been that nobody has been running the club for profit during this 12 month void period. Since the likes of Lucius Peart and David Lampitt left (please think it through before hurling abuse) there has been nobody running the club on a day to day basis. 

The hospitality lounges as an instance have been operating at levels 75% down on last season because nobody has had the nouse to pick up the phone and do some marketing. We recently had 3 home games within 8 days and did anybody think about offering say a deal of pay for 2 and have 3 hospitality packages? Likewise there have been no deals on ticket sales, in fact precious little marketing at all. Marketing is about placing your business in the market place and this has not been happening. 

Throughout this last 12 months the business operation has been allowed to fade away and during this period the PST has been keeping a watching brief and certain individuals, who are allegedly looking for work and hoping to have a role in the new set up, have done nothing. Not even the experiernced business people who make up the HNWs have seemingly done anything to stop the ship from sinking.

Time is now running out and if the PST are to have any chance they need to have an action plan to hit the tape running on day one! I am sorry to say that I do not believe that such a plan is in place. If we survive we will have no funding to take us through the summer months and then the task to take us into the new season will be massive.