Former owners’ parting message

So, another era of a PFC ownership has come to an end, Balram Chainrai and his partners have sold the club to CSI.

The parting words that they had for us were issued on a statement on The Pompey Site today, in this statement: ‘A Message From The Former Owners

‘We are delighted to hand over Portsmouth Football Club to Convers Sports Group headed by Vladimir Antonov, Roman Dubov and Chris Akers. We believe that Convers Sports Group will lead Portsmouth Football Club into a bright future.

‘As we committed to do, we have taken this club during the worst times and brought it to safe grounds from near extinction. The club was going through a very difficult period and now is being handed over to a strong, able and willing group.

‘We would like to thank Steve Cotterill, the manager, and his team, David Lampitt, the chief executive, and his management team and all the club’s staff for the hard work and sleepless nights in bringing the club to where it is now.

‘We would also like to thank all the club`s supporters including its commercial partners – without their incredible support we would not have reached this point.

‘We wish the club and its new owners the best of luck and great success on and off the pitch.

‘Play up Pompey!

‘Balu Chainrai, Levi Kushnir and Deepak Chainrai.‘

I cannot now claim to be their ‘biggest fan’, because quite clearly I was not, although that said I would like to think that I was ‘fair’ towards them and often made a point of saying, even if we did not like it, the way that they went about things with the running of the club last season was basically how it should have been done really!

In their defence they made it clear from the off that they only wanted to put in minimal investment, and given our situation you can understand why really.

We were not, nor should we have been, in a position where we started throwing money at the club left right and centre, nor should we now even under new ownership…

‘Word on the street’ is that they have merely recovered what they wanted to recover, I guess what they put into the club, they asked for nothing more and nothing less – so if this is true then you have to say ‘hat off’ to them, right?

Whatever, one thing we cannot dispute – whatever the motives were – had these guys not come in when they did do we really think we would have a club that would have today been sold to CSI, let alone made it through last season…

PLAY UP POMPEY!