More detailed report from the Grauniad (including a link to a pdf of the entire report).

The detail really is staggering. More than 2 million quid to the agent that did the Lass Diarra deal; more than 3 million in image rights payments; over 3 million still owed to Udinese for Muntari; not to mentione the usual deplorable stiffing of small trade creditors (St. John's Ambulance, youth teams, schools, florists, the milkman, and (it appears) the firm that built their trophy case after they won the Cup.

They owe £1700 to this company for some reason. It's all very odd.

Nice linking by the Graun.

So, the following they have no way of avoiding or reducing through a CVA:

Employee holiday pay*: £100k
Chelsea (for Johnson): £1m (Should have been paid when Johnson left for Liverpool)
Tottenham Hotspur (for Boateng): £3m (although not due until August at the earliest)
Tottenham Hotspur (for Begovic!): £1m
Tottenham Hotspur (for O'Hara): £500k
Watford (for Smith): £900k
Watford (for Williamson): £1.5m (should have been paid when he left for Newcastle)
West Bromwich Albion (for James Hurst): £65k
Player liabilities: £1.9
Secured creditors: £13m
===============
TOTAL: £9.9m

Unprotected creditors:
HMRC: £17.1m
Unsecured Loans: £38.2m
Trade Creditors: £4.4m
Finance companies: £1m
Image rights for nine players**: £3m
Agents: £9.7m
Benfica (for Yebda): £434k
Den Haag (for Nadir Ciftci): £82k (over a year late)
Le Havre (for Gauthier Mahoto): £91k (almost a year late)
Olympique Lyonnais (for Piquonne): £226k
Racing Club Lens (for Belhadj): £1.8m
Racing Club Lens (for Dindane): £816k
Stade Rennais (for Utaka): £2.5m
Udinese (for Muntari): £3.3m (including £259k in interest on late fees, should have been paid when Muntari left for Inter)
==========================
Total: £82.6m

If a CVA of 1p in the £ could be obtained would reduce the unsecured creditors to £10.7m (payable over the length of the CVA - usually five years) - but very few clubs have managed that. That doesn't include the £13m secured credit, and the potential extra £14, so Portsmouth could end up with a minimum of £23.7m debt after administration.

The taxman (ie us) will get stiffed for most of that £17.1m (20.7% of the unprotected credit, so not enough to block a CVA on their own) The FA have to look at including the Taxman in the list of Football Creditors.

Lens and Stade Rennais are already aware that they will have to vote on the CVA, and not get 100%, and have requested to be in the creditors meeting. I wonder what knock on effect this will have on their future deals with British clubs.

Just under half the Trade Creditors firure is owed to Cantebury their kit suppliers who are also in financial difficulty. No wonder Cantebury "couldn't" supply a one-off semi-final kit.

Of the transfer fees owed, £3.5 isn't due until next season. Everything else is due by the end of this season, or already overdue.

*All staff, not just players and coaches are covered by the Football Creditors rule.
**Image rights are a funny one, they're not implicitly stated in the FA's Football Creditors, and as they are paid to third parties, I'm including them as unprotected.

It's a bit hard to determine exactly what amount of debt one would need to hold in order to have the 25% needed to block a CVA on one's own, but Gaydamak looks to be quite close, doesn't he? And that's without factoring in any of his much rumoured connections to the two jokers who followed his son into the chairman's office.

The taxman (ie us) will get stiffed for most of that £17.1m (20.7% of the unprotected credit, so not enough to block a CVA on their own)

How convenient.

Mark M is looking going through this with a fine comb and will have something for me shortly, with any luck. It's wretched reading, and it leaves me with the feeling that everybody that has been connected with Portsmouth FC (well, the running of it) over the time that this has been allowed to build up should be fired from a cannon into the sun.

Actually, just noticed Ocadia Investments (Gaydamak) are owed £22.6m over two different loans. 27.3%. Enough to block a CVA on it's own.

Now the Graun suggests that 20-25p in the £ will be offered, leaving Pompey with £39-58m of debt - now considering Chainrai's £14.2m and the £9.9m would come out of of parachute payments and forthcoming TV revenue - conveniently, that parachute payments would come to around £22m, and unless Sky owe them money (which the creditors report doesn't suggest), just £750k or so from Premiership prize money, and about £1.5m from next years TV deal would just about cover it.

But that still leaves a CVA of (according to the Guardian's figures) between £16.5m and £20.7m. To be paid over three to five years - on Championship income? Cloud cuckoo land. Although considering the administrators have yet to receive any offers, the point is moot. The creditors meeting (on 6th May), isn't necessarily the final offer - it's to enable the administrators to pursue a sale on behalf of the creditors, knowing what the creditors want, and what is achievable through a CVA.

This murky Begovic deal has got to highlight the need for a specific line of enquiry in to Portsmouth and Spurs' co-dependence in recent seasons. Players and cash seems to have sloshed between the clubs to an unprecedented level and given the general lack of financial checks at Pompey and Redknapp's presence at either end of the relationship it all seems highly dubious.

And now there's no chance of recouping any of that via Europe next season...bet Liverpool (and indeed Villa) are breathing a sigh of relief...www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/apr/22/...smouth-europa-league

Matt Slater of the BBC is tweeting from the Pompey creditors meeting ( twitter.com/bbc_matt ), and the total claims against Pompey are now at £138.6m

Fuck it, I'm going to stick an invoice in for a few grand. Might get a couple of hundred quid out of 'em, depending on what they settle on.

They clearly have no idea who they owe money to. Has there been a load of late-night shredding/computer hard disk pick-axing or something?

According to Matt Slater, CVA will be 5 years, minimum 20p in the £, small creditors and charities will be paid in full. Taxman claiming £17m more. The trade creditors don't want Gaydamak on the trade creditors committe. Oh, and the administrator Andronikou claimed that the Football Creditors rule is "unlawful". That's his place secured in the headlines tomorrow.

By my reckoning, the CVA would be at least £21m over five years, with £9.9m payable on players, and £13m of secured debt to be paid. (Ipswich's administration details were a lot tougher to come by, but they were paying an extra £2m a season than they were before they were promoted, and that plus the extra wages from players they couldn't offload, absolutely crippled them - but had less outstanding in terms of transfer fees, because the rules on fees were different.)

In the Championship, that is unfeasible without a sugar daddy. Everyone knows they are skint, and will offer them peanuts for their players (and with French and Italian clubs losing out financially, it won't be like Newcastle where foreign clubs will bid normally, unaware of their debt), some players won't be of interest to other clubs, so Pompey will still have a large wage bill next season.

Is it just me or do they have to have been doing some kind of money-laundering to run up that level of debt?

How is this not illeagal? Having cut running cost as much as possible but still running up the debt must surely be running a company while insolvent?

One caveat. I know nothing about the law.

That's why they're in administration.

Pompey are aiming for a £10 payroll and £4m CVA payments a season. Now, that's £6m more a year than Ipswich were forking out during their administration, and Ipswich were still posting losses of £3m per annum. Portsmouth either have a sugar daddy in the wings, aiming to soak up £9m per season, or Portsmouth will be back in administration when the parachute payments run out. That said, one condition of the CVA is that after nine months, the current company will close, having transferred everything across to a new company, so there is at least a chance for them to do what Vaughan did at Chester.

Obvious question, but to go into the Championship with such an amount of astounding debt would, I suppose, incur a points deduction. Would there be any more penalties incurred other than that?

If Portsmouth secure a CVA, there will be no points deduction or indeed any other sanction. The nine point penalty is all they'd get.

If they can't get a CVA, then at best, they'd get a 15 point deduction, at worst, they'd go bust.

This years least surprising managerial departure.
Avram jumps out of the frying pan and most likely into a slightly cooler frying pan at West Ham. They are a bit more financially secure now, but the down side is he'll have to work for Sullivan and the Golds.

Oh, and he'll have to travel further for a Thai "massage".

Or look in the back of his owner's magazines for an advert for a nearer one.