FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS...

It is with some reluctance that I again feature the bizarre image of Mr. John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood, along with one of his minders.   But once again his football club are in the news and once again for all the wrong reasons.

Now liquidation is not a very nice word.   Sounds as if it belongs more in Star Wars than in the dark recesses of the Football League but the Administrator appointed by the Court to sort out the basket case that is Portsmouth Football Club has today issued the stark warning that the club may not survive beyond April.   That is unless a buyer comes along with more money than sense to purchase the club and all its millions of debts.   This seems unlikely but in this mad world there might just be someone so myopically devoted to the Pompey cause that he or she would come to its rescue.   I can`t see it happening to be fair.

Today we learn that the parachute payments from the Premier League - amounting to over £2million - will not go to the club but instead will go to a former owner who is apparently owed this tidy sum.   And so another avenue of salvation turns into a dead end.

Now of course the Administrator might just be crying wolf but the outlook does indeed look grim and it seems the only hope is for either the Football Association, the Premier League or the Football League to cough up enough cash to see the club through to the end of the season, thereby avoiding the embarrassment of having a club go into liquidation during the season. 

If liquidation does happen during the season, however, then the effects on the rest of the Football League Championship will be intriguing, as all of Portsmouth`s results for the season will be expunged - another Star Wars word.   Now this will have the effect of West Ham losing six points, as they have beaten Portsmouth twice, whereas Southampton will lose just one point from the draw at Fratton Park in December (the return game at St. Mary`s has yet to take place.)    This should sort out the promotion battle between West Ham and Southampton very nicely indeed, thank you very much.   But I`m not sure I can see that happening either, given the wolf crying invoked today by the Administrator.

But whatever the next few weeks bring for Pompey and the blue few who, like Mr. Westwood, frequent Nottarf Krap, the future is at best uncertain and at worst short lived.   It seems that, at last, after years of mismanagement, ducking, weaving, creative accountancy and downright deception, the end might well be nigh.  So don`t ask for whom the bell tolls, Mr. Westwood - it tolls for thee.   Such a shame.