By Andrew Warshaw
February 26 – Football history was made for all the wrong reasons today when Portsmouth, with debts of about £60 millon, became the first English Premier League club to enter administration.
The south-coast club, already bottom of the table, will be docked nine points, meaning almost certain relegation to the Championship.
Portsmouth have had no fewer than four owners this season and were due to face a winding-up order on March 1.
Administration gives them a last-ditch chance to survive but costs will have to be slashed including chief executive Peter Storrie who says he will tender his resignation when the administrators have sold the club.
The announcement follows weeks of speculation over the survival of the cash-strapped side and is a massive blow to the reputation of the Premier League, widely admired throughout the world.
Only two years ago Portsmouth reached the FA Cup final but have been responsible for dire overspending amid a string of false promises. As well as struggling at the bottom of the Premier League, Portsmouth have suffered a catalogue of ongoing financial problems with players paid late on four occasions this season.
Their plight raises immediate questions about the so-called fit and proper persons test applied to the Premier League and will do nothing to enhance England’s bid to stage the 2018 World Cup - based, in part, on how globally respected and well-run English football is.
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