Chainrai Walks Away

Balram Chainrai has withdrawn his offer to purchase Pompey from administration.

The Hong Kong businessman this morning released a statement which read: ‘Portpin Ltd regrets to announce that it is withdrawing its bid for Portsmouth Football Club

‘Unfortunately, our efforts to save the club once more from extinction have hit a wall of rejection and lacking co-operation from the administrator and other interested parties.

‘Unfortunately, our efforts to save the club once more from extinction have hit a wall of rejection and lacking co-operation from the administrator and other interested parties.”

‘We are not the ones who have caused the club to collapse and we are not the ones to choose PKF as administrators .

‘As history has recorded, we sold the club over a year ago after saving it from liquidation and unfortunately found ourselves again fighting to try and save the club from another liquidation.

‘Through this administration process over the last six months we have always had the club’s best interest in mind – unlike many parties who were involved in the process.

‘We repeatedly encouraged the administrator to find a new, willing and able buyer to take over the club – unfortunately he was unsuccessful in this job and couldn’t find a buyer despite his promises!!

‘Later he approached us to be his safety net to save the club as he couldn’t find a buyer. We agreed in the effort to avoid liquidation of the club.

‘At this moment in time, we feel that:

- the negative criticism and lack of support for our takeover by the fans of this club.

- the fact that the administrators do not want to compromise on their unrealistic fees.

- the fact that suddenly the club has received additional huge football creditors’ claims from former players and management such as Hughes, Brown, Kanu, and Lampitt and more.

- the fact that all the money from the parachute payment which were supposed to carry the club for the next two seasons was spent and committed by the administrator on players’ compromises and fees : total £12million.

- the fact that the football league has decided to deduct 10 points for no reasonable reason and by its decisions didn’t show any willingness to help in saving this troubled club.

- the fact that the supporters’ trust which we met and we voiced our support for their takeover bid could not raise the funds to satisfy the administrator or the Football League and the loan that was promised them by the council had unrealistic terms.

- the fact that the club did not get any real support from any official they were all very good at creating headlines.

- and finally the last straw yesterday afternoon the manager told the press before the season starts that he is sure of another relegation.

‘All of these facts have left us in a position that we no longer want to fight this battle, we have zero support to save the club therefore we formally withdraw our bid and our honest attempt at saving the club. We will sleep well knowing we did our utmost to save the club.

‘We welcome and will assist anyone, including the supporters trust to try and save the club in the coming days.’

The next few days are likely to be busy for the club, Trevor Birch is seeking a meeting with Portpin and the Supporters Trust, whilst also battling to secure dispensation for Michael Appleton to build a competitive squad for the season opener which is less than 72 hours away.