Dave_S139 looks at the latest news on our CVA and looks at Admin Andy’s role in this.
Andronikou : An error of judgement or has he simply been stringing the fans along?
Andrew Andronikou has been consistently confident in his assertions that the CVA would be agreed by Creditors at the all-important meeting on June 17th. And of course, such assertions would have been well received by fans in light of the implications should the CVA not be agreed to the required level of 75%.
A further points deduction of -17 points could be imposed for 2010/11 leaving the club with an uphill task to win around 70 points on the pitch, to even survive and avoid the drop into League 1. And this would be additional to the financial burden that would be placed to meet the requirements of the Creditors. Parachute payments, money from TV rights, Season Ticket funds and money obtained from the sales of players; most of this would be used more to eliminate the demons of the past rather than satisfying the financing of the future.
So has Mr. Andronikou genuinely considered everything before claiming that a successful result at the CVA is just around the corner or has he simply not anticipated that he could be challenged and indeed competed with by another? I’ll be honest; it didn’t cross my mind that this sort of thing could happen. In my ignorance I believed that an Administrator gets appointed and he has ultimate, exclusive and unchallenged authority to get the job done within the rules of the process concerned. If we believe the latest reports, it would appear that this is not the case.
Griffins, a professional insolvency firm, has emerged with what they feel is a better alternative to that being proposed by UHY Hacker Young, the firm that Andronikou works for. Griffin’s claim that Andronikou’s offer of 20 pence in the £ could in fact be nearer 99 pence in the £ which obviously, under the circumstances, would represent a major result for the Creditors involved. The 99 pence scenario would depend on Gaydamak dropping his £32M claim on the club and Griffin’s believe that there is a strong argument for him to do that and by doing so he could avoid losing an even larger sum of money if a liquidator became involved and investigated his part in the running of the club and subsequently found evidence of wrong-doing. But even without Gaydamak writing his £32M off, Griffin’s state that the offer to Creditors should be around 65 pence in the £. That’s more than three times the offer put forward by Andronikou and appears to be a no-brainer for those owed money by the Club. And as it’s the Creditors choice and not the Administrator’s how and when the club emerges from Administration, Andronikou’s power and role in the future of Pompey is now being severely tested.
Suddenly it’s a competition between two insolvency firms with one seeing an opportunity to wrestle clients away from another busily working at trying to retain them. It is certainly a healthy situation for the Creditors but once again the ultimate punishment will be applied to those that remain at the club and those that come in and attempt to rebuild it rather than those guilty of creating the mess in the first instance.
As for the points deduction system; what is that all about? How does it help anybody and how does it act as a deterrent in any way? A new owner will hopefully come in, a new management team and, for the most part, a squad of new players – yet they could start the season with a penalty, for doing what? And if it happens again, what will the perpetrators care? In the same way as Gaydamak, Al Faraj and others have flown the nest and left the debris behind them then so would anybody else. A deduction of points is nothing more than the football authorities beating those clubs that it chooses with a stick and for that they gain little respect.
On the other hand, the stick that Griffin’s are now waving at both Gaydamak and Andronikou should be taken seriously as it’s potential impact is direct and, few could argue, properly targeted. June 17th 2010 was always going to be a big day for Portsmouth Football Club – it may have just got bigger.
Written by Dave_S139.
The views within this article are the views of the individual who wrote and submitted this piece, sometimes solely theirs. They are not necessarily shared by the Vital Pompey Site Journalists.
