“The problem for Portsmouth is that they may face a difficult task trying to find an investor willing to buy the club from Gaydamak”

- Nope it wasn’t difficult, sold one week after the season ended, with negotiations hinging presumably on the fact that they stayed up. Question to answer would be why Pompey and not West Ham/Newcastle etc?- there were many clubs also up for sale at the same time – would be interesting to know what attracted Al Fahim to a club on the verge of bankruptcy, with an outdated stadium, aged stars, caretaker manager, very poor training provision and only 20,000 supporters.

The only reason I can think of is that he and his investors think the club can be taken to a higher level and are prepared to invest (with little hope of a return) hundreds of millions of pounds in order to do it. The new ground is costed at approx £60M and Al Fahim would (conservatively) need to spend that much again to improve the squad. Some funds would be income from the sale of Fratton Park and residential development at Hornsea but this is less than investment than pure spend.

Al Fahim would not buy into a club where future success was not seen to be viable in the short term and presumably he looked into other available clubs and that bodes ill for West Ham and Newcastle if such an investor chose not to take them on.

“…this looks like an extreme case of poor management by Gaydamak, which spells disaster for Portsmouth if a wealthy investor doesn’t bail them out soon.”

What does it look now? Gaydamak walks away having recovered his investment – perhaps more, and Pompey’s future looks golden, more than any time in its history.

Fingers crossed that they don’t do a Man City though!

As for Pompey, they've splashed out some big transfer fees and likely some big wages to get Crouch, Defoe, etc. looks like it's catching up with them sooner than they might have expected.

Alexandre Gaydamak claims he owns the club, but where did he get his money? Probably from his dad. His father is running for Mayor of Jerusalem, and had to list his assets, which included Portsmouth FC. Not sure why he did that, except that maybe he believes he owns it.

The next couple of months will be interesting to watch. The stadium is on hold, which it has been for years. They have already started construction on the new training ground.

It's obvious that things are going on behind the scenes and have affected the club. At least that's my excuse for giving up 10 goals and looking very poor in doing it last week.

PLAY UP POMPEY!!!

When I was growing up in the UK, the News Of The World was a joke. But most of the big scandals and storylines the past 12 months have been broken by the News Of The World. They're definitely a different paper than they used to be and have some great writers including Chris Bascombe.

Cheers,
The Gaffer

Arkadi is wanted in France for gun running.

The joke of this all is the FA demand owners be “fit and proper persons”. That didn't work out so well in Manchester City now did it. or some might even say at CFC.

As for the money crisis at Pompy, I have my doubts. First the investigation was done by News of the World. Do I really need to say anything at all about that paper. Second, this could well be a ploy by Gaydamek's to get the stadium built.
Or it could be that Gaydamek has simply grown bored of the Premier League…

I really think that the League needs to get a bit more teeth into the financial deals at clubs. Given the current state of the global economy, borrowing cash will be difficult, if not impossible. So we will see more foreign owners who are flush in cash.

and the crazy thing about the Gaydamek's is that to this day no one knows how he made million is Russia before moving to Israel. I think that's telling.