nPower Football League Thread 2012/13

[Summers]

Shame for him, he was highly rated but he's failed at Bolton.

[Lineker]

Coyle to Dean Court!!

[Adam]

Ugh, when did they change the football league shows opening? Horrible music, West Ham and Kevin Keegan in a Liverpool shirt? I don't get it.

It's miles better than the original opening that wasn't even a song. So much better now.

Coyle has had a bad start, following on from a relegation so it's not surprising to see him go. I think Bolton are one of these teams who has come down expecting the Championship to be easier than it actually is, though.

[Emperor DC]

Eddie Howe is actually coming back.

This is mental.

[Lineker]

Holy shit that would be amazing if it happened. Compensation would cost a fortune, though.

Coyle back to Burnley next!!

[EddieG]

And Boa Morte has signed for Chesterfield.

[Lineker]

Francis Jeffers may be signing for a club in Malta!

[Jimmy]

I'd love to have Coyle at Ipswich. Well, nearly anyone's an improvement on Jewell.

[Adam]

I'd love to have Coyle at Ipswich. Well, nearly anyone's an improvement on Jewell.

You could always get Roy Keane back

[Lineker]

Pretty sure that Sir Bobby himself could do a better job at this point.

[Big Red Fury]

Maybe the craziest piece of news to top them all this week...Edgar Davids to Barnet as Player/Joint Head Coach. As a Barnet fan I am interested to see how it works but it's pretty freaking bizarre.

[Colly]

Definitely not just a David Edgar typo? If not, amazing.

[Jimmy]

Still can't wrap my head around it. Such good news.

[Adam]

It still won't stop them going down. Nothing can this season...they have John Oster.

[Lineker]

Howe is home!!

[Lineker]

The Portsmouth Supporters' Trust are favourites to take control of the club after the Football League failed to agree on Balram Chainrai's bid.

A League meeting on Thursday failed to decide whether Chanrai's Portpin would pass the 'owners and directors' test.

Portpin were thought to have been administrator PKF's preferred bidder for the League One outfit.

Portsmouth have been in administration since February and are around £61m in debt.

One of the stipulations of the test is that an owner or director cannot have been involved with a club that has twice gone into administration.

Chainrai was in control of Pompey when they went into administration in 2010, and may have had some involvement as a shadow director when they were placed into administration for a second time in February 2012.

Portpin have always denied that this is the case.

The Hong Kong businessman is owed £17m by the club and holds Fratton Park as security.

The League have refused to publicly comment on Thursday's meeting but it is understood PKF will now resume talks with the PST to present their bid to the Football League.

Although this is good news for the Trust, there is still a long way to go before any deal is finalised.

The PST are led by local businessman Iain McInnes, and they have offered Chainrai £2.75m for Fratton Park.

It is understood PKF could also consider another bid, although this is unlikely.

UK investors Portco, led by Scottish businessman Harry Kerr, are also interested in buying the club.

They are also one of three parties interested in buying land around Fratton Park that is up for sale to the highest bidder after owners Miland Developments 2004 Ltd went into administration.

Portpin and the property developer working with the PST - Stuart Robinson - are thought to be the other two suitors for that land.

Administrators of Miland Developments David Reuben & Partners confirmed to BBC Sport an announcement on the sale of that land will be made next week.

If the PST did take control of the club they would try and force a court to release Chainrai's charge on Fratton Park and sell them the stadium at the 'market rate'.

Another possibility is that PKF could ask Portpin and the PST to reach an amicable solution for the sale of Fratton Park.

If not that could lead to a costly legal fight that would ultimately plunge the club into more debt.

Wolves have signed Jermaine Pennant from Stoke City on an emergency three-month

[Lineker]

Eddie Mitchell has confirmed that Shaun Brooks and Paul Groves will be returning to the club 'in some capacity'.

Minus Bradbury, everyone is back!

[Crybaby Bunting]

For the record, I found a stunning article about Portsmouth the other day which seems to explain every inconsistency over the past 5 or so years better than any article published in any major newspaper.

Part 1

Ever since the name Ali Al Faraj was first revealed as a potential billionaire owner to an expectant Pompey public, the questions about who he is, what his motives were and even whether he exists have abounded. Today, pompey-fans.com can reveal the truth behind Ali al Faraj. <br clear="all">He does exist. His passport was passed to the Premier League in August 2009. The league checked with the Saudi-Arabian embassy and the Saudis investigated and confirmed that Ali al Faraj did exist and lived in Riyadh. He has since been used as the straw man in several small London property deals with Yoram Yossifoff and allegedly been sued by his lawyers in Saudi Arabia for non-payment of fees.

However, there is not one shred of evidence that at any point he exercised control over Pompey.

So who did? Our story begins in 2007 when Arkadi Gaydamak (father of Sacha Gaydamak) purchased a property company, Ameris Holdings, from Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir in a deal brokered by Ron Mana and Yoram Yossifoff.

By 2008, Arkadi Gaydamak was under pressure with the French courts investigating his involvement in the Angolan civil war and a crash in Israel's property market. The Israeli property market was under assault from two directions: the crash in asset value and the man who had loaned money to several Israeli property CEOs - Shelley Narkis, the King of the Grey Market and Israel's biggest loan shark. Narkis is a convicted extortionist, jury tamperer and is feared throughout Israel. One of his non-motorbike riding, machine gun-toting employees is our old friend Daniel Azougy, debt collector extraordinaire.

In the financial whirlwind which followed, various CEOs fled Israel. Boaz Yona of Heftsiba to a hideout in Italy and Arkadi Gaydamak, who owned Ocif investments, to Moscow.

The domino effect destroyed Heftsiba and OCIF investments, and left Gaydamak unable to finish paying for Ameris Holdings. Arkadi's many many creditors from his Israeli businesses included Ron Mana, Yoram Yossifoff, Daniel Azougy and Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir. Azougy was a long time friend of Mana and Yossifoff.

Mana, Chainrai and Kushnir were awarded a lien on the assets of Betar Jerusalem, but Israeli insolvency law being very different to UK law, they had trouble extracting any money. In January 2009, Daniel Azougy attempted to convince the Betar general manager to transfer all the club's money out of the club claiming to be working for Gaydamak. A swift phone call to Moscow later, and this attempt to extort money from Betar was quickly and very publicly rebuffed. Azougy got a flea in his ear and no money.

The following month, Azougy and Narkis, visited Arkadi Gaydamak in Moscow to try and get their money back.

As with Azougy's visit to Betar, he came back from Arkadi empty handed.

In September 2008, when his creditors were wrangling over the remains of Ocif, Arkadi Gaydamak had listed Portsmouth FC in a court submission as one of his assets claiming it was worth £300m. It was the Gaydamak family's last known tangible asset. It was deep in trouble, for sale very cheaply and he had just told his creditors that it belonged to him. It was a tempting prize, with tens of millions of TV money due to come into the club and a forthcoming transfer window in which quick cash might be realised.

Just five months after the abortive Moscow trip by Azougy and Narkis, Chainrai, Kushnir, Mana, Yossifoff and Azougy were involved in an attempt to take over Pompey using the unfortunate Ali al Faraj as a smokescreen.

Balram Chainrai admitted to being a close friend of Yoram Yossifoff and transferring £2.5m, 50% of the proposed purchase fee, to Yossifoff in London in July 2009. Although Chainrai claims this was just a loan, his and Levi Kushnir's names were passed to the Premier League as prospective owners by directors of Portsmouth FC. However, Sacha discovered the involvement of his father's creditors, as Peter Storrie later lamented in public, and decided to sell to Sulaiman Al Fahim instead - for £5m and a promise to pay £9m in January 2010 and a further £20m by 2011.

Sacha's suspicions had been raised when the 'billionaire' Arabs Ahmed and Ali al Faraj were able to produce proof of funds of less than £750k, and the answers to questions about what their business interests and 'connections to royalty' were turned out to be 'negligible' and 'none' respectively. Clearly, Ali and Ahmed weren't football takeover material.

However, Ahmed knew Yossifoff from their minor property letting businesses in London, and for the purposes of being the untraceable, uncheckable, unreachable straw-man figurehead, his brother Ali was perfect. A hermit in a country which refuses to allow Israelis in, or even those with an Israeli stamp in their passport. No wonder none of them ever met him.

As all Pompey fans remember, al Fahim's disastrous regime lasted just 40 days before the club ran out of money and was forced into the hands of the five creditors, still hiding behind the "billionaire brothers" Ali and Ahmed al Faraj.

Azougy, Mana and Yossifoff had placed their interest in a company called Falcondrone, while Chainrai and Kushnir, according to sources, formed Portpin Ltd through their solicitor Mark Jacob.

Jacob was an old friend of Yossifoff, having worked in a London law firm of his as far back as 1998.

On October 6th 2009, Chainrai and Kushnir loaned Pompey £6m, and according to the evidence given in the High Court in August 2010, were to be repaid £7m in two months, an interest rate that is in excess of 130% APR.

In return they took a fixed charge over the club's major asset, Fratton Park and proxy control over the 90% shareholding in Pompey held by Falcondrone. There was already an unpublicised winding up order in place from HMRC which stemmed from a failure to pay any tax for the last two months, in breach of an instalment plan offered by al Fahim.

A winding up petition automatically freezes the company bank account, so all the initial transactions went via Portpin's client account at Fuglers. Normal practice is for a company to seek a validation order at the High Court to unfreeze the account and allow the company to trade if it can, with the consent of the petitioner, in this case HMRC. That gives the petitioner the right to see all transactions in and out of the account. Normally, the account balance is monitored by the Premier League to ensure football debts can be paid. So using the client account had the effect of limiting scrutiny by HMRC and the Premier League. In this case, HMRC agreed a new instalment plan and withdrew their winding up order.

Although the club now had access to its own account once again, the regime continued to do business via the Portpin client account. Mark Jacob had been added to the board on October 5th and Daniel Azougy was given complete control of the finances at what seems to have been the first and last board meeting of the al Faraj era - with Ali al Faraj not present.

Peter Storrie was informed by the regime that he was to deal only with the football side of the business and Tanya Robins was informed, apparently much to her disgust, that she now effectively reported to Azougy.

However, Azougy could obviously not access the Fuglers client account. Only one man could order the accounts team at Fuglers London HQ to transfer money and that was Mark Jacob. And although he had the title of Executive Director of Portsmouth FC, Portsmouth FC were not paying him. Nor were Falcondrone. Only Portpin Ltd paid Jacob, via their fees to Fuglers.

This arrangement meant that Portpin had control over the shares, fixed asset, bank account and executive director of the business. In August 2010, during HMRC challenge to the CVA, Gregory Mitchell QC argued that this amounted to control of Portsmouth FC as shadow directors. The term 'shadow director' is defined in the Companies Act 2006 as a person 'in accordance with whose directions or instructions the directors of the company are accustomed to act'.

So did Portpin ever tell Jacob what to do, and, if so, did he do it?

Well, as was revealed in the HMRC challenge, Portpin wrote to Jacob in December 2009 and demanded a solicitors' undertaking that he send the next Premier League TV payment, which the Premier League were insisting went to football creditors, to them instead. He agreed. However, the Premier League contacted Jacob and, when he revealed the undertaking to them, they directed the money straight to football creditors. The Premier League also placed a transfer embargo on Pompey.

On December 23rd 2009, HMRC once again issued a winding up order to Portsmouth FC. The club had immediately failed to fulfil any part of their new instalment plan, with the tax and national insurance on wages not being paid in October, November and December, let alone arrears of tax, VAT etc. This had the effect of once again freezing the club's bank account. Money can be paid into a frozen bank account, and indeed this is where the club's ticket revenues and merchandise sales continued to go. However, it couldn't be accessed by the club. Had a validation order been sought, the approximately £2m in the club's account could have been paid to creditors, and repaid the small creditors and charities many times over. However, it sat there, unused.

The reality is that while visibly the Premier League appeared to be doing nothing, behind the scenes they were playing a blinder. Their refusal to allow TV money or transfer revenue into the club meant there was no quick way for the five creditors to get the money they were owed by Arkadi back. This is the main reason no players were sold until the end of January, because at any other time the revenue would have gone straight to creditors.

In early January 2010, when they realised it was going to be near impossible to recoup any money they had put into Pompey from the TV rights payments or transfers that had brought them here, Portpin asked Jacob to supplement their fixed charge with a floating charge over all the assets, enterprise and monies of Portsmouth FC. This was retrospective, as any money from Portpin had already been and gone. Therefore, this charge is invalid. The reason can be found in the maxim; "past consideration (for a debenture) is no consideration".

To obtain a valid security you need to provide a new consideration (ie you need to lend new money). However, Jacob issued the charge retrospectively, giving them absolute control over everything of value at Pompey. (Jacob's actions were above board here, he issued the charge, but it's not up to him to determine its validity). So when Portpin put Pompey into administration in February 2010, there was a valid fixed charge, but the floating charge was never valid, and has never subsequently been tested in court. The fixed charge should have been released when Pompey came out if administration, as Portpin were given the asset on which it was secured.

However, the rest of their secured debt is a myth, and the January 2011 transfer of the whole £17m charge was plainly invalid and should never have occurred without £17m of new money being loaned to Pompey at the same time.

On February 2nd 2010, following the sale of Younes Kaboul and Asmir Begovic to Spurs and Stoke, Pompey were finally up to date on their currently owed instalments to Football creditors. Football rights (TV) payments and incoming transfer revenue channeled directly from the Premier League to football creditors had wiped out the arrears.

This meant that although the club had run up crippling debts during the period to non-football creditors, the club could finally receive the transfer money and the Premier League, bound by their own rule book, could do nothing about it. Portpin saw their chance and requested the money be sent to them by Jacob from the client account and £2m was wired, apparently to Switzerland.

Falcondrone, Azougy, Yossifoff and Mana were furious. Some of whatever sums of money had come into the club also belonged to Falcondrone. From their perspective, Portpin were no longer partners, but rivals for whatever could be salvaged from the wreck of Pompey.

The same day, Azougy sent a forged letter [click here to see a copy of it] claiming to be from Ali al Faraj demanding that Jacob in future only repay money to Portpin with the permission of Azougy. So did Jacob comply with this instruction from the nominal beneficial owner of Portsmouth FC? Of course not. He was a solicitor and his clients told him to transfer more money, so he did. A few days later, a further £2m was transferred to Portpin.

Section 127 of the Insolvency Act says that: 'In a winding-up by the court, any disposition of the company's property, and any transfer of shares, or alteration in the status of the company's members, made after the commencement of the winding-up is, unless the court otherwise orders, void'.

As the £4m was transferred to Portpin after the commencement of the winding up order it is highly likely to be unlawful. Baker Tilly are investigating transactions of PCFC Ltd and we await their report with interest. Certainly Andrew Andronikou confirmed publicly to the Pompey Virtual Alliance in 2010 that the transfer would probably have to be reversed as it appeared to fall foul of section 127.

One interesting feature of this controversial money transfer is the situation of Mr Jacob. As a solicitor, he had to be careful which legal persona he adopted, either acting as Portpin's solicitor or Portsmouth FC executive director. Jacob is no schmuck. He knew that if he transferred the money as Executive Director of Pompey, he was likely to be called to account later. But no one can hold him accountable if he transferred the money as Portpin's solicitor, acting purely for Portpin. This would mean that Jacob's higher loyalty to his client took precedence. But he could only transfer the money if a director or appropriate authority acting on behalf of the football club told him to. And an appropriate authority did: the people who really ran the club - Portpin. So it looks like Jacob is rightly free and clear.

So what we have here is a company in Portpin that controlled all the shares, assets, money, bank account and Executive Director of Portsmouth FC. They repeatedly told him what to do and he did it, even when ordered not to by the 'owner' of Portsmouth FC, even when insolvency law seems to prohibit it.

Multiple sources have confirmed that in fact the operation of the bank account leaves little room for ambiguity. In accordance with the Solicitors Regulatory authority rules on the operation of client accounts, Jacob needed authorisation to transfer funds out of the account, from Portpin. What greater level of control could anyone have over a business than the shares, assets, director and payments? Ali al Faraj, controlled NOTHING.

In order for a creditor to be selected for payment during this period, department heads submitted lists of who needed to be paid to Tanya Robins. She was then required to hand this list to Daniel Azougy, who would forward it to Jacob and the directors of Falcondrone and Portpin. The list would come back from the shadow directors representing Portpin and Falcondrone to Jacob with asterisks next to those who should be paid. No asterisk, no payment. This lead to the club's website being shut down for non-payment in December 2009, as all the lobbying from the department heads and even nominal CEO Peter Storrie, to have the very small bill paid had fallen on deaf ears. Jacob reportedly said: "I can't authorise it". Storrie apparently paid the bill from his corporate credit card.

In early February 2010 Jacob and Fuglers were 'uninstructed' by Portpin following the discovery of £1.5m in unauthorised payments to individuals who are still unknown. Portpin removed their business to Balsara and Co and Jacob left Fuglers shortly afterwards.

Once again, this is a clear demonstration of control by Portpin over the business. When payments were made from Portpin's client account that they had NOT authorised, action immediately followed.

Sources close to the situation at the time claimed that Jacob was entirely blameless in this and that Azougy, a convicted forger, had created a fax which fooled the accounts team at Fuglers to send payments to a number of still undisclosed bank accounts.

Pompey were fined £1m by the Premier League following rule breaches concerning Daniel Azougy during this period. He was revealed as a fraudster and forger in a national newspaper during December 2009, and Jacob was forced to defend the situation in another national newspaper interview shortly afterwards.

Azougy was present in the directors box with representatives of Portpin and Falcondrone including Chainrai, Kushnir, Mana and Yossifoff on numerous occasions during this period and all were seen to arrive together and leave together by numerous sources. Azougy was also responsible for creating fake accounts, which were released to prospective buyers during December 2009 and leaked to The News. These accounts created £40m on Pompey's balance sheet and removed large tranches of debt. They showed a 'Premier League receivable facility £22m' on the balance sheet, to be paid in January and represented as an agreed advance payment of Premier League TV revenues. In fact, no such advance had ever even been asked for and the Premier League told interested journalists in no uncertain terms that they weren't trusting Pompey with any money, let alone advancing them any.

It was the creation and distribution of these faked accounts that apparently lead to Tanya Robins resigning from the board of Portsmouth FC, although she had always been very uncomfortable working with Azougy, who was harsh, abrasive and nakedly corrupt. An eye witness reported a stand up row between Robins and Azougy where Robins told the fraudster he could not do things like that here, and Azougy responded "that's the way we do things where I come from", which probably explains his multiple convictions.

On another occasion, an eye witness also reported that Jacob had to be summoned from his London office, where he was desperately trying to keep his legal property practice going, to Fratton Park to avoid Peter Storrie and Daniel Azougy resorting to a fist fight. Storrie was furious at the way Azougy was controlling the finances and the inability of any director to get a clear picture of the accounts. Jacob might have been processing payments and known what was in the bank account, but the real picture of what was due to be paid or received was kept from him.

In fact, whilst history will have much to say about the running of Pompey before October 2009, the picture that emerges from numerous conversations with those closely involved is that Peter Storrie, Tanya Robins, Mark Jacob, Paul Weld and Lucius Peart did their absolute level best to try and ensure the club was run the right way. But they weren't running the club. They had no real say at all.

On 10th March 2010, the Pompey Virtual Alliance and other supporters groups met with Administrators from UHY Hacker Young. Hacker Young said that the amount of debt the club owed was, as yet, impossible to determine because "there was a black hole in the accounts". Administrators demanded this be excised from the minutes or there would be no further meetings, and after much debate it was removed. UHY ended the meetings subsequently in any case. However, it's important that fans know that there are serious question marks over all the financial transactions at Pompey between October 6th, 2009and March 2010, and that this is almost certainly why the Baker Tilly investigation is taking so long.

Despite their history of related business transactions, their close friendships with other members of the group, their close proximity at matches, national newspaper articles and the presence of their own solicitor in the same building, staying in the same hotel and being forced to work closely with Azougy, it remains Portpin's claim that they had no idea what he was doing or what his role was. Their contention that they had sleepless nights worrying about how they would get their money back in 2009 and not knowing who ran the finances just leads to the obvious question: why didn't you ask your solicitor who ran the finances? Why didn't you ask your friend Yossifoff? Why didn't you ask Azougy when you were sat next to him? Are you really saying that his role and status as a fraudster was confirmed in two national newspapers in December 2009 but your solicitor didn't inform you of it?

Pompey-fans.com has asked Portpin to comment on the entirety of this article but Portpin "decline to comment".

Ali al Faraj never did have anything to do with Pompey. The people who ran Pompey during this period were Balram Chainrai, Levi Kushnir, Yoram Yossifoff and Daniel Azougy, with Ron Mana more distantly interested. None of them joined the board, but all acted as shadow directors.

The Premier League have always been adamant that anyone who acted as a Shadow Director during Azougy's tenure at Fratton Park would not be a fit and proper person. At every stage, Portpin's man on the board obeyed their instructions on key financial matters. There is no room for doubt that they were shadow directors.

Ali al Faraj has as much to do with Pompey now as he did in 2009-10. The reality was that lurking underneath the Arab khefiyeh of Ali al Faraj were Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir; creditors of Arkadi Gaydamak, who came looking for his assets and have since refused to leave.

Part 2

When the five creditors of Arkadi Gaydamak, that is to say Ron Mana, Yoram Yossifoff, Balram Chainrai, Levi Kushnir and Daniel Azougy, arrived at Pompey they were quite simply looking for a way to get their money back. They created a delicate power sharing agreement between the alleged shadow directors to ensure that parity was maintained. This was an alliance of partners, not a marriage. They were all owed by the same man - Arkadi - but that didn't mean they trusted each other. <br clear="all">Azougy would be in charge of the finances, and would try to make sure everyone got their money out. None of the actual owners would join the board because otherwise they would be directly linked to Azougy's actions. Instead, the board would be full of people who were denied any control, Peter Storrie and Tanya Robins for example, and someone over whom they had total control and both groups had faith in - Mark Jacob. Jacob was Portpin's solicitor and directly controlled by them, but had also known and been in business with Yossifoff for years.

So Jacob and Azougy were the twin operational pillars of Pompey, representing Portpin and Falcondrone respectively.

The five had apparently lined up a refinancing deal in August, a bank (a small private Swiss bank, that I'm sure have no wish to appear in this article) that had sent a letter of intent to provide a £35m overdraft facility.

Once the immediate HMRC bill and player wages were settled, the club would, to the outside world, look like it was on a solid footing. That way, all the TV rights payments and transfer fees in January could be harvested while the club lived off the overdraft. All payments would be renegotiated to be due in February or March, and either left for a new owner or an administrator to sort out. Then it could be sold on to an incoming schmuck or placed into administration, and all the assets retained whilst the debt of others would disappear. Ron Mana and Yoram Yossifoff had already performed a similar manoeuvre at Maccabi Tel Aviv, selling after six months.

Ali Al Faraj, or more accurately his brother Ahmed, inadvertently spilled the beans when he spoke to Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat in October 2009. "Our plan is to stay for a period of not less than six months, until the club stands again," Ahmed said. "This is based on the fact that purchasing the club was purely an investment ... It's not a secret to hide: we are investors and we have no relation to sports." He helpfully added he and his brother were no "billionaires" after all. In a chaotic panic, which was to become the norm as events unfolded, the 'Al Faraj' regime first denied speaking to the newspaper, threatening to sue over the "completely false" quotes, then quickly retracted. It was a patent, if somewhat inconvenient, truth published in a respectable journal after all. Pompey-fans.com contacted Ahmed Al Faraj to comment on his involvement with Portsmouth FC, but he said he was too busy to deal with the matter this week.

Obviously the Swiss bank would not provide such a facility to a company that had a winding up petition in place, so when the five creditors got into Pompey, the discovery that there was an unpublished (ie not advertised in the London Gazette), winding up petition from HMRC this put an almighty spanner in the works. The first loan of £6m was intended to provide the difference between what the club had in its bank account and the wage bill, approximately £750,000, and pay off the arrears to HMRC and discharge the petition.

Once this was done, the bank could provide their overdraft facility and they could recover their 'bridging facility'. Then the plan started to go seriously awry. The bank had five partners who were required to sign off such a substantial loan. In August they had appeared willing to do this. In the interim though, one of the partners had sent someone off to research Azougy. They didn't like what they found, and, in mid-October, the deal was off.

At the end of October there were major question marks over who would pay the wage bill. Eventually Portpin advanced another loan to pay the wages, which without tax were around £2.2m. The same farce was played out in November - when the payment of salaries was delayed until early December - and the friction between Portpin and Falcondrone was leading to a leadership vacuum of mammoth proportions. One source said: "It was chaos. No-one was in charge because everyone was in charge. You had people running round trying to get directors to sign a letter dismissing Storrie, others countermanding it, people trying to ban Jacob and Azougy from the premises after they played a prank on another member of the consortium, just utter chaos. Of course, Jacob and Azougy took no notice". Apparently the prank was making a phone call to a member of the executive team pretending to be Ali Al Faraj and demanding the sacking of a number of individuals.

Of course, the executive guessed it was a prank because the last person who would be calling Pompey was Ali Al Faraj.

Testament to the chaos engulfing the club and Portpin's power as the final arbiter over significant financial decisions was Azougy's inability to get his contract signed in November 2009. Mark Jacob was asked to draw up the contract, and it bears his reference beginning MSJ, for Mark Silas Jacob [click here to see the front page]. The contract was worth £76,000 per month and ran for three years [click here to see the relevant clause], meaning Azougy stood to make £2,736,000 it it was ever completed. Of course, Azougy wasn't going to be around for three years at Pompey. He was expecting to get the six months severance pay detailed in the contract on top of three or four months' payment. All in all, probably £760,000 tax free for four months' work - nice work if you can get it.

Azougy was demanding various directors sign his contract, but two signatures were required and none of the directors would - because, quite simply, Jacob had been told not to by Portpin, as they were growing ever more exasperated with Azougy and Falcondrone. Mana, Yossifoff and Azougy had managed to scrape together far less of the money initially required to discharge the winding up petition and pay the wages than Portpin. As each month went on, the situation became worse with Portpin being asked to put more money in and Falcondrone failing to do so. Any payment for Azougy would have come from Portpin, and they were already frustrated enough. They had come here with Falcondrone as partners in an asset/debt recovery operation, but that alliance was beginning to fracture.

As autumn wore on it became more and more obvious that no refinancing was achievable, and Daniel Azougy was proving to be a liability. In Israel, with the cachet offered by his underworld connections and political and legal connections via Mana and Yossifoff, he was a dangerous man to defy. In England, frankly no-one cared about his two-bit hard man act.

In October he rang Chelsea and tried to tell them that the payment Pompey owed for Glen Johnson and which was due now would be paid in February. Chelsea immediately complained to the Premier League and asked if Azougy were allowed to speak on behalf of Pompey. The Premier League placed a transfer embargo on Pompey and demanded assurances over Azougy's role. This also had the effect of giving the Premier League the right under their rule book to divert TV rights payments and incoming transfer fees to football creditors.

Azougy also tried to dictate to HMRC what they would expect and when they would expect it. He was sent packing. In Israel, Yossifoff had several times had the country's tax code changed retrospectively for his clients. In England, Yossifoff's feeble attempt to try and claim that there was no £7m VAT bill because the buying club should pay it didn't go down well with either HMRC or the High Court in January.

In addition, the nominal Chairman of the club Sulaiman Al Fahim, retained in the role as part of the deal which saw him sell 90% of his shareholding to 'Ali Al Faraj' in October, was already privately warning in early December that the club, in the absence of any refinancing, was likely to be put into administration by February 2010.

But first it was a question of looking at the TV payments and transfers. Both Falcondrone and Portpin had their eyes on a sizeable payment in December and a further one due in January. As revealed previously, Portpin wrote to Jacob and demanded he give a solicitors' undertaking to give the money to them. Meanwhile, the Premier League wrote to Jacob shortly afterwards under their new powers to withhold and redirect parachute payments to receive an assurance that the payment would go to football creditors. Jacob couldn't give such an assurance and the Premier League redirected the payment.

The palpable lack of unity at the club lead to a series of disputes between Portpin and Falcondrone. Both sides were manoeuvring for an 'each man for himself' outcome. On December 23rd 2009 a new winding up petition landed on the club's doormat from HMRC. The structure of Pompey at the time, as stated above, was that Falcondrone had a governance structure of two groups. One was Azougy and Jacob. The other was Ahmed Al Faraj and Yoram Yossifoff. A copy of another crudely forged Ali Al Faraj letter sets this out [click here to read it]. It is interesting to note each of the forgeries spells al Faraj's surname differently [click here to see the second letter]. However, while this was all well and good, in fact Portpin held all the levers, and now they began to pull them.

On Christmas Eve Pompey attempted to negotiate with the Premier League a special exception to open the transfer window early to allow the sales of Younes Kaboul, Aruna Dindane, Nadir Belhadj and David James. It was at this meeting that Azougy was ejected by the Premier League, after his fraud and forgery convictions were very inconveniently revealed by a national newspaper.

Jacob's refusal to play ball with Falcondrone led to a letter of 26th December in which Azougy tried to order Jacob to come back into line. However, Jacob seems to have revealed his agreement to create a floating charge over all the remaining assets at this time in favour of Portpin, although it was early January before the charge was filed with the courts owing to the Christmas holidays.

It all proved immaterial anyway. The Premier League refused to agree to any early sales and revealed that they would be paying any domestic transfer fees direct to football creditors. As January hoved into view so Sacha's debt appeared over the horizon. Yossifoff, who had repeatedly denied being involved in Pompey, now happily answered the phone to any journalist to promise a rock solid legal strategy to avoid paying Gaydamak a penny.

For instance Yossifoff, 'advisor' to owner Ali Al Faraj, told The Sun at the time: "Ali bought 90 per cent of the shares in Portsmouth from Sulaiman Al Fahim not Gaydamak. That £28m is not a Portsmouth debt."

So as a puzzled world watched and waited for the fire sale to begin at bankrupt Pompey, the SOS Pompey demonstrations swelled outside. Jacob found himself staring into the eyes of people who wanted his guts for garters on behalf of a regime that was steadily ruining a football club; not at all what he had signed up for as anyone who has read his book or sat next to him in the directors' box while he kicked every ball will testify. Jacob had attended all academy matches, shivering through the winter on the touchlines. He personally intervened according to eye witnesses to insist Paul Hardyman was retained.

Meanwhile, Azougy was telling one member of the executive team that he needed to fire a list of the club's high earners without pay or notice. Again, the situation deteriorated to the point where the executive and Azougy were nose to nose. Heroically, the member of the executive team told Azougy if he wanted to fire people he could do it himself - which of course Azougy could not legally do.

In January 2010 another of Azougy's stunts was uncovered. He had promised some kind of merchandise contract to Lotto of Italy. Unaware that Azougy was not an authorised signatory, they are thought to have advanced him a sum of in excess of half a million pounds.

A source close to the regime had previously claimed that Azougy was only ever paid once in connection with his role at Portsmouth and once it was discovered, Jacob forced him to repay the money. It is believed that this is the payment from Lotto and that this explains the subsequent lack of any claim in administration from them.

Again, the contrast between what Jacob had the delegated power to do as holder of the proxy over the shares on behalf of Portpin, and Azougy's impotence. Azougy and Jacob were supposed to be jointly running the club on behalf of Falcondrone and Portpin. In reality, only one side had the ultimate power to direct.

In November 2009 Pompey played Manchester United and the five creditors were all in attendance with their families. It was a convivial atmosphere with the group staying close together. By January 23rd, as Pompey met Sunderland in the fourth round of the FA Cup, the atmosphere between the two groups [click here to see who was present] was described by an eye witness as "poisonous".

At the end of January the regime was stumbling towards its end. The world was bewildered at the lack of players sales at a club which was obviously bankrupt. However, as previously explained, there was no point in selling players when their fees would go straight to football creditors. As soon as the second football rights payment and incoming transfer fees cleared the club's football, creditor slate and brought Pompey up to date, Azougy sprang into action.

If you ever wondered why the ludicrous Asmir Begovic deal was done, whereby we ended up paying Spurs £1m for NOT signing our player, this is the answer. Azougy was so desperate to shift anyone that he would accept any offer if it generated cash up front, as Stoke were willing to do. This meant he agreed to a daft deal to cancel a proposed move to White Hart Lane at a price, which came back to bite us subsequently. How did he get the deals signed off? Jacob refused to sign the deals because he felt they were terrible business for Pompey, which didn't endear him to Portpin or Falcondrone.

In the end, one director stepped forward to sign them off. They did so because the only other authorised signatory had made it well-known they would not. The signatory was relatively close to retirement and so another Pompey director stepped up to the plate and signed the deal off. Only with his signature would the Premier League allow the transfers to go through, and the director did it purely to avoid a great club servant being put in an impossible position on the eve of their retirement.

Of course, as soon as the money came into the club Portpin took the first slice of £2m. As explained previously, Azougy then sent a forged letter from Ali al Faraj demanding that this not happen again. However, Jacob had no choice but to obey Portpin and sent the next installment of £2m a few days later.

Following the decision by Portpin to seize the club in early February 2010, Azougy made himself scarce to the naked eye. However, when Pompey found themselves in the High Court in March, Azougy marched in, as bold as brass, through the front door surrounded by a media scrum and smiling like it was Christmas. In fact, today his Facebook profile picture is still this photograph. Why was he there?

He was there because Falcondrone still wanted to see what could be salvaged from the wreckage of Pompey. And whilst there were clear limits on what Azougy could do while theoretically running Pompey, no one in England can tell him what to do. So Portpin and Pompey's legal team had to stand there and grin and bear it while Azougy lectured them on their legal strategy in a corridor of the High Court. Eventually, a crowd of journalists surrounded Azougy demanding answers to questions and he was forced to flee.

Even if repayment was harder to come by for Falcondrone and Portpin, the record books will show that Sacha Gaydamak lost more than anyone from the collapse of Portsmouth. Falcondrone, for it is almost certain theirs was Azougy's 'unauthorised' money grab of £1.5m, probably came out about even.

Portpin, however, came out holding all the cards. They controlled all the assets and money of Pompey. They took the last £4m cash. They put the club into administration and kept all their secured debt. That's what happens when you make sure you hold all the real levers of power and pull them at the right moment...

Footnote and a statement by Portpin

The stories I have published over the last two days are the full, inside story of the Ali Al Faraj/Falcondrone/Portpin bid for Pompey, and of their ownership of Pompey. Whilst many of the central issues and allegations have been reported before, this is the first time the full story has been told.

I have been researching this for three years, and my articles are the results of interviews with multiple sources both inside and outside the UK. I have numerous eye witness accounts of life inside the Falcondrone/Portpin regime – and these accounts come from senior people who want the full story to come out.

Portpin's retained PR company has been given ample opportunity to comment on the central allegations, and on the two articles in their entirety. They have also seen more than 100 questions which I believe Portpin need to answer.

Now, more than a week since the first questions were put to them, they have decided to comment on their 'no comments' after all. On Tuesday Portpin's PR company said: "Our decision not to comment on Mr Hall's blogs to date should in no way be taken as an acknowledgement of these unfounded, unsubstantiated and defamatory allegations."

The opportunity for Portpin to answer the questions and publicly respond to the allegations I have outlined remains there. I will publish any answers to the questions or any further statement they wish to make in full. If what I am saying is not true, this matter can be resolved very quickly and easily with a full and frank explanation of how all my sources and eye witnesses are clearly mistaken.

I am happy to repeat the central allegation. That a group of Arkadi Gaydamak's creditors - Balram Chainrai, Levi Kushnir, Yoram Yossifoff, Ron Mana and came to Portsmouth Football Club intending to undertake short-term asset stripping as a form of debt recovery. They brought their debt-collector, the convicted forger Daniel Azougy, with them.

They found a Saudi Arabian hermit, Ali Al Faraj, to front the bid to hide their own presence. He was never seen or heard in Portsmouth, and hasn't been seen or heard of since. Instead, a convicted fraudster and forger was running the finances of the club alongside their own solicitor who had overall control. Neither Falcondrone or Portpin had any experience of running a football club, and, once the Premier League got wise to their game and effectively stopped it by diverting payments coming in to Pompey, the game was up.

Portpin - after a long period of silence - now claim that these allegations are defamatory. I am sure I am not alone when I say I look forward to seeing Ali Al Faraj in the witness box.

Micah Hall

Honestly, read that (if you have a few hours to kill) and tell me that Portsmouth should physically exist at this moment in time. I'm actually feeling sorry for the fans of Portsmouth who are thinking of buying the club as a consortium, they could well be the ones hit by the ridiculous penalties in the same way Rangers were after Craig White bought the club. It's just unbelievably risky and I don't understand how they can manage to pay the players, let alone run the club (which could be why Portsmouth brought in players on higher wages than rival clubs, to kill of any chance of a non Gaydamak related party taking control). The club is going to cease to exist within the next ten years, and it's just a case of whether it's worth putting so much money into this project which is obviously going to fail and leave no money for a potential phoenix club a few years down the line.

[MDK]

I can sum up Orients result with one word:

Pugh.

[IAceI]

Carlisle got beat 4-0 at home off Notts County and ex played Francois Zoko even scored. I can't decide whether that's better or worse than last years 3-0 home defeat to them where Lee Hughes scored and pretty much cheated for an hour before he got substituted, who should have been sent off ages before. Probably today's outcome was better, as Lee Hughes ruins everything.

Edited October 13, 2012 by IAceI