Challenging The Trust Or Bust Rhetoric

When 140 Characters Just Won't Do

For any of you who have a Twitter account you will I’m sure by now know very well the limitations of trying to convey with depth and meaning what you want to say on a subject with a maximum limit of 140 characters allowed. Some of you may well have read my debate with Mike Hall on the aforementioned social media site earlier today and know why I’m writing this as promised to him, but if you missed the exchange or have stumbled across this blog via a medium other than Twitter then you should probably be glad you missed it anyway; those who did read it were apparently struggling to keep up.

The basis of what I am about to write however came as a request from Mike to convey to him my feelings on the statement that had been made by the Portsmouth Supporters Trust the night before and I suppose for want of an expression what I didn’t like about how it had been phrased and the issues that I had leading from the statements comments. I would like to mention two things at this juncture which you may or may not already know. The first is that before the Portsmouth Supporters Trust began their bid to buy Portsmouth FC way back when it was more involved in community projects, that I helped to attempt to bring to people’s attention the good work I felt they were doing and to try help rebuild the profile of the Trust which had taken a real knocking in some quarters. I even went as far as to start to re-design the Trust logo though the designs were never used in the end. The second point is my involvement in the foundation and running of one of Facebook’s most notorious Portsmouth pages ‘Portsmouth’s Blue Army’ more commonly known as now as The PBA. At the peak of our popularity (or should that read notoriety) our best page views for a month stood at a little over 753,000 and we had over 3,000 members so as a fan page we had the chance of reaching a fair demographic in terms of Portsmouth supporters in an attempt to help the Trust. I would like to state for the record that at this juncture in time The PST had my support unequivocally in the direction they were telling me that they were trying to undertake. I would also like to point out that the views held within this blog are my own for the benefit of anyone reading.

For those of you who are Twitter users and follow fellow Pompey supporters the chances are that you may have come across comments from fans who feel that Twitter has become a domain where the notion of ‘Trust or Bust’ is King and that if you don’t support the Trust then you are automatically judged as being a supporter of Balram Chanrai and Portpin. This is a view I’ve read on many fans tweets and isn’t just a view held by myself. I’ve also had the opinion expressed to me a few times in private and for the fairness of those who’ve said it I won’t mention any names but there has been a general consensus that users don’t openly discuss certain matters via Twitter because they’re afraid that they might be jumped upon. Being me and typically blunt I think I used the expression yesterday that it was like watching the Waffen SS Panzer Division rolling over the hill as I read down some of the comments being made on Twitter or responses being made to other peoples tweets. Twitter it’s fair to say is fast becoming like Eastenders by which I mean it doesn’t matter how many episodes you miss on the trot you can easily pick up the storyline when you log back in and when any piece of news appears that Trust followers don’t like or similarly opinions are made with which they don’t agree, you can bet with some certainty to see the same faces appear to protect what they see at The Supporters Trusts interests. This isn’t a name calling exercise by the way, it’s my reply to a question I’ve been asked and I want to put an accurate description across on my thoughts and feelings as best I can and the reasons behind them. I don’t want to be seen to be starting a war I’ve had enough of that in the past.

This blog will be an attempt for me to say what I feel about the Trust and the statement they’ve made and I will attempt to make no reference to anything from the Portpin side of bids because there are people far more eminently qualified on that score than I am and I will just end up getting slaughtered and to be quite frank I cannot deal with the hassle at the present stage.

The following is the statement made yesterday on the PST website and has been copied word for word, although it has been replicated without permission and if anyone from the Trust takes issue with this then please let me know and I will remove it forthwith.

Pompey Supporters' Trust can confirm its bid to buy Portsmouth FC is still live and on the table. 

Despite recent speculation that administrators PKF has selected Portpin as preferred bidders for Portsmouth Football Club, the Trust has not been informed of any decision to this effect officially.

Moreover, to be successful, Portpin's bid would need to be approved by the Football League.

PST has written to the league to question whether Portpin's bid is eligible under the Football League's own rule book and Owners And Directors' Test guidelines.

PST Chairman Ashley Brown commented: 'Pompey fans have experienced a huge amount of uncertainty in the last ten months. This has been heightened by more speculation in the last 48 hours. We want to update our members and supporters on our position. We want to assure our supporters that we are still ready, willing and able to proceed with the purchase of the club if we are chosen to do so.

"Our bid is sensible, financially sustainable and viable. We firmly believe our bid is the best for the future of the football club, and offers a fair return to all creditors including the small creditors who have still not been paid from the previous period of administration. We believe Portpin is the wrong choice for PFC.

"Let's not forget the actions of Portpin have led to Portsmouth FC suffering two relegations, lose 19 points, with another ten on the cards, and go into administration twice. Local businesses and charities have suffered the consequences of their actions, as well as the players and staff, not to mention the fans.

"Portpin's comments in the media about our bid not being financially viable are simply untrue. Our bid is fully funded and the business plan is robust, both of which have been accepted by the league and PKF. Our forecasts, as they involve new money, are significantly better than Portpin's, which will introduce significant debt from day one. Our proposals also result in the re-uniting of the club and the ground on a debt-free basis.

"We have a united, professional bid team, the support of our local MP and council, and of Pompey fans who have funded our bid. We have a very good bid on the table, and it will stay there until we receive formal notification that another bidder has been selected and approved by the football governing bodies."

Ends

Now since this statement was made the Trust have held their AGM and have announced that the Portpin bid has been named as the preferred bidder for the club. At this juncture I re-iterate the fact that I agreed to write this before the announcement was made and this isn’t an attempt to go over it in hindsight with that in mind. I am writing it because I was asked for my opinions on the matter and this is my response to that request. To make it easier to reference I shall break down the parts into smaller chunks for discussion and they come from comments made by the PST Chairman;

"Our bid is sensible, financially sustainable and viable. We firmly believe our bid is the best for the future of the football club, and offers a fair return to all creditors including the small creditors who have still not been paid from the previous period of administration. We believe Portpin is the wrong choice for PFC.

Nothing generally wrong with that statement as he is stating what he firmly believes to be the case as he is very much entitled to do. So why do I take contention with anything said within the statement? Well it centres around the words ‘offers a fair return to all creditors including the small creditors,’ which without the actuall financial details alongside to back them up could be fair enough as a generalised statement. I’m not a creditor owed money by the club but if I was and that could be anyone of them from a charity, to a small business owed under £2,500 or a larger business I personally wouldn’t say that the offer from Portpin of 2 pence in the pound offers me a fair return on the money that I’ve lost. I use the Portpin example because that’s the figure that’s most well known and the most widely reported. Somewhere along the line though and I’ve read this a few times in the past week or so there’s a common misconception held amongst some fans that the offer to the creditors from the Trust side is as high as 8 pence in the pound. It’s not. The pot to pay creditors totals £800,000 which equates to 2 pence in the pound. So in the example of St John’s Ambulance who were owed £2,701.91 from CVA10 in the first administration, they can expect to receive just £54.04 in total or the Scouts who were owed £697 will see just £13.94. I could go through many examples but the point will remain the same. To me 2 pence in the pound doesn’t represent what I would call a fair return to all creditors. None of these debts were incurred by The Supporters Trust and there’s no blame attached to them whatsoever of which there can be no shadow of a doubt. But oddly you can also use that argument on the flip side.

"Let's not forget the actions of Portpin have led to Portsmouth FC suffering two relegations, lose 19 points, with another ten on the cards, and go into administration twice. Local businesses and charities have suffered the consequences of their actions, as well as the players and staff, not to mention the fans.

The obvious part not mentioned in the above statement is that Portsmouth have also twice staved off the threat of liquidation from having to go into administration. During the first relegation and points deduction the club was trying to survive from the excesses and overspending from the Gaydamak era of ownership. If the HMRC claims you are insolvent as a business you have to pray for a stroke of luck in order to survive an appearance in the High Courts and the club got exactly that. So for all rights and purposes we should have been liquidated the outcome of which would have been that the creditors wouldn’t have seen a penny. Then there’s the part about being sympathetic towards the players. Now I’m sorry but I don’t remember a lot of sympathy being displayed a couple of months ago towards the players so why anyone would choose to start to be sympathetic towards them now I have no idea. Let’s also face it if the club survives being liquidated and comes out of administration the player’s are in line to their part of £8.6 million struck under the compromised deals. None of them as far as I know have lost the roofs over their heads from no longer playing for Pompey and all of them have been re-employed by other clubs. Now the staff alongside the local businesses and charities have suffered immensely but at the end of the day they’ve suffered the most because the club previous owners of the club lived beyond their means and failed to pay their bills. It wasn’t Portpin paying the Chief Executive Peter Storrie £1 milllion a year for example. It wasn’t Portpin who took the decision to pay the players 120% of the clubs turnover as a percentage of wages. These are the types of excesses that lead to the club facing liquidation firmly in the face which in turn lead to the club being placed into administration. Without that administration there would have been no club to support. So yes whilst being placed into administration will have affected the aforementioned without it there would have been no club, no payment for unsecured creditors (although technically they still remain unpaid), no jobs for the staff and no club for the fans to support. The players however all managed to find other clubs so they’d have been out of pocket but still have found gainful employment quicker than the staff who lost their jobs.

"Portpin's comments in the media about our bid not being financially viable are simply untrue. Our bid is fully funded and the business plan is robust, both of which have been accepted by the league and PKF. Our forecasts, as they involve new money, are significantly better than Portpin's, which will introduce significant debt from day one. Our proposals also result in the re-uniting of the club and the ground on a debt-free basis.

Now to make comments to the media you have to place your basis you’d think on some sort of facts because otherwise you would open yourself to being sued in a court of law. There was no mention in the above statement that The Trust indeed to take Portpin to court over such claims. The following figures have been passed to me and I replicate them in good faith for the benefit of discussing the above statement. In interviews given on Express FM that I’m sure many have heard the PST hope to convert above 75% of pledges that have been made to the them. The FA on the overhand do not share this view and have only taken into account that a total of 50% of all pledges made will be converted. The Football League have asked from The Trust the following; A £5 million bond, £8.6 million for the deals reached on the compromises made with the players who’ve left on their remaining contracts, £3.5 million in costs and the £800,000 for creditors. That figure in total with pounds and pennies all included sits around the £18 million mark in total. The Football League I’m lead to believe values the Supporters Trust bid as totalling £6.5 million in total which is some way off their figure of £18 million. On top of those figures the PFA have requested that a substantial part of the compromise deal be paid up front and that figure is in excess of 25% of the £8.6 million agreed. I re-iterate these figures are replicated in good faith as I have had them passed onto me and I have no reason to doubt their validity in any way shape or form given the sources they have come from.

The Trusts pot is I’m lead to believe made up in the form of a £3 million loan from property developer Stuart Robinson and another £3 million from 18 ‘High Worth Net Individuals’  as the Trust coined the phrase, who’ve put in between £20,000 and £500,000 each. I mention this for transparency purposes before I go onto my next point which is the choice of the Supporters Trust to have named Iain McInnes at their ‘Potential Portsmouth FC Chairman.’ Now forgive me if I’m wrong but one of the main things I would expect from being a member of a trust would be the right to be able to vote on a selection of choices as to who I would want to represent me. The Trust board have all been elected so we’ve seen democracy at work and perhaps I might be being a tad naïve here and missing the point but my choice of Chairman for the club wouldn’t be a business man who’s business record has seen 14 dissolved companies and 1 end up in liquidation. I will point out that in fairness he is listed as having 14 companies still showing an active status but you cannot hide behind the first set of numbers yet this is the choice that has been bestowed upon us by the elected board members of the Trust as being the man they want to lead the club should they ever take over it’s running. I think it’s a given that he wouldn’t have been my first choice if you needed me to spell that out.

Now I have seen the name Swansea being used as an example of Trust’s in relation to football clubs. The use of their example seems to have been misguided and perhaps misinterpreted somewhat so for the benefit of anyone reading I will clear up the role of the Trust at The Swans. The Trust holds a 20% share in the club for reference purposes. Swansea were owned by a guy called Tony Petty who had purchased the club and its debts for the princely sum of £1. He in turn sold the club for a total of £20,000 and he did so to a consortium made up of OTH Limited, Redi Plastics Ltd, Five Thirty Ltd, Swansea Jacks Ltd and Olliedo Ltd. These groups comprised the shareholders in the new Swansea City FC. The Swansea Trust were allowed additional time by the aforementioned to obtain a £50,000 investment on the basis that the other consortium members were corporate bodies. The trust then paid a further £50,000 which entitled them to a further seat on the Board of Directors. The supporters Director helps form part of a management team which see’s the club run as a committee. The success and rise of Swansea to the English Premier League will be down to the investments made by the corporate bodies and haven’t been funded by their trust just to clarify any misgivings that anyone may have on the subject.

There are in total 29 Trust owned football clubs in England of which 26 are Non League football clubs and 3 ply their trade in the NPower League Two; Exeter City, Wycombe Wanderers and AFC Wimbeldon. So if anyone wishes to use an example of an English based trust owned club then this will be your starting point as examples and not Swansea who as I have said paid £50,000 for a seat on their clubs board and haven’t underwritten the cost of transfer fee’s and neither did they help in terms of payment towards the new stadium which was paid for by the local council.

There are other things that wrangle me but in fairness they don’t come direct from the Trust but from certain followers; like calls for boycotts of Express FM because of how Mark Mudie read a Portpin press statement following the loss at home to Swindon Town. Mudie it should be fairly pointed out is a paid up member of the Portsmouth Supporters Trust and it’s also worth noting that Colin Farmery has gone on record from the Trust since to thank Express FM for the time they have given the PST on air to put across their point of views. One of which interestingly enough has been the statement that the Trust would seek to have talks with anyone that took over the football club which could possibly be Portpin if they pass the relevant checks made by the Football League. So despite the accusations levelled at Portpin in yesterday’s statement - on past statements we can ascertain that if Portpin take over the club that The Trust would seek talks to achieve a level of involvement with someone they don’t see as being fit to run the club.

No surprise that the mention of Portpin brings out the threat of boycotts at the club should they takeover on the basis that they’ll take all the money out from the club and walk off with all the parachute payments. Well sadly for Mr Chanrai he can’t actually take the parachute payments so he’ll take the money that’s in the coffers now then? Well given that half is ear marked to pay PKF what they’re owed and taking the other half would technically make us insolvent then let’s be fair he’s going to struggle on that front as well. He could wait around and try take all the season ticket money but as it’s paid after every home game and he would have to sit around a fair few years to make that work and I don’t think it would go down to well with the FL anyway do you? Sell the players? Oh no wait they’re on one month contracts. Sell the club? Oh wait there’s a thought; Another party interested in taking over the club. One of the conditions of buying any business would be revenues being generated on the bottom line and in the form of a football club like Portsmouth at present that would come via bums on seats. Now what if part of the said buyers plan was to offer say a 20% stake in the club to the Supporters Trust? To make that viable and worthwhile they’ll be looking at the fans as part of their long term strategy and especially when operating in the lower leagues. I don’t want to label anyone threatening to boycott Pompey as a hypocrite but what I will say is that if you’ve watched Pompey at home since the late 1970s you will have paid money into the pockets of one of the following; The Deacons, The Gregorys, Venables, Mandaric, Gaydamak, Al Fahim, Al Faraj, Chanrai and CSI already. If you escape that list then you’ve either been on the world’s longest boycott and kudos to you if true or in the past 30 years you haven’t actually been that worried in the past who your money went to and let’s be honest it doesn’t make a great reading list does it now? So why start now?

With performances on the pitch struggling and the club’s reliance on fan attendance for cash flow any boycott of the club if Portpin were to take over would ultimately have an effect on something we all hold dear to our hearts. No… not Balram Chanrai obviously, but ultimately the football club that we all support. I may be wrong but I’m going to suggest that the large majority of the 7,200 season ticket holders that brought their tickets before the season without knowing who the next owner would defiantly be did so to be able to watch the side that they love play at Fratton Park. Now if Portpin took over and then re-sold the club a month down the line how silly would you feel genuinely as a season ticket holder if you were able to claim a refund on your money which I find doubtful would be possible but you never know or ripped it up in disgust only to find that the club had been sold again. All totally hypothetical you understand but also a very real and given possibility all the same. Well it’s nearly 3am and I’ve definitely exhausted more than 140 characters to get to this point so I will draw a line under this piece. I have however answered what I was asked to do. I re-iterate that the views held in the above piece remain my own just for clarification purposes.