Pride that came after the fall at Portsmouth

Portsmouth take on Chelsea in the FA Cup Final today hoping to end a traumatic campaign on a high note. Four owners, two managers, a winding-up petition, forced player sales, administration, a nine-point deduction and relegation — few teams have been through so much. This is their story of the season.
July 2009. Sulaiman al-Fahim undertakes due diligence on a possible buyout of Alexandre Gaydamak as players still under contract report back from their summer break.
Paul Hart, manager: We returned for pre-season training on July 9. I had 14 players and four of them were goalkeepers. I had to lie to the media, tell them we had a squad of 20, because the truth was just too shocking.
David James, England goalkeeper: The August transfer window was sad because as a group of players it was like: “Who’s going to be here tomorrow morning?” Niko [Kranjcar] said he was going up to talk to Spurs, but he didn’t think he was going to sign. Then he texted me to say: “I’ve signed.” I didn’t see that one coming and it was that transfer that encapsulated the state of the club.
August 26. Al-Fahim finally completes his takeover just before the transfer window closes and Hart is given the green light to sign eight players in five days, mostly on loans or free transfers, including Michael Brown and Jamie O’Hara
Brown: Paul Hart rang me up and said: “We’ve got a battle on our hands and it’s not going to be pretty, but I think we’ve got a chance.” I like a challenge and I thought I’d give it a go. But none of the lads coming in thought it could possibly be as bad as it eventually became.
September 24. The wages are late, paid eventually thanks to a loan from Ali al-Faraj, who becomes the third owner of the season.
Brown: We were told that it would be just the one month. But then it was another one, and another one, and another one, and different things happening in the club all the time, until the bubble burst.
November 24. Hart is sacked, replaced by Avram Grant, who is promised money to buy in January. Instead, he is forced to sell two players.
Brown: It was so disappointing to see more go when we were supposed to be signing four. So we were six down from where we thought we’d be. I still think we could have done better and we had enough to avoid relegation. Then someone might have taken us over and we might have avoided administration. But some bad results and the writing was on the wall, and these “investors” just disappeared.
February 4. Al-Faraj defaults on loan payments to Balram Chainrai, who becomes the fourth owner of the season.
Brown: It was always “the next takeover”. Even as we were signing, there was another potential sheikh taking over the club. Generally when a takeover happens, a club starts to head in a healthier direction, but eventually that takeover didn’t seem to be happening, so there was another takeover and we all thought the worries would be over. But it seemed to go from bad to worse by the week and obviously it got much worse.
February 10. Portsmouth narrowly avoid a winding-up in the High Court after Revenue & Customs presents a petition over a tax bill of more than £11 million.
Linvoy Primus, retired defender and mentor to young players: It wasn’t until it got to court that we thought: “Wow, there is a possibility this could really happen.” I think that was when it really hit home how serious it all was. We weren’t hearing anything from the club. No one seemed to know the final outcome of anything. We heard about Mr al-Faraj, but that was as far as it went. We never met him.
February 26. Portsmouth become the first Premier League club to enter administration. A nine-point penalty makes relegation almost inevitable and 85 employees are made redundant. The players fund the wages of seven members of training-ground staff.
Brown: You could see as the weeks were ticking by that the writing was on the wall. They were saying for so long: “It has never happened before and it never will.” But you were thinking: “They’ve got no chance.” Footballers are generally lucky, we do very well. It brings you back to earth when you see other people in the club losing their jobs and it’s a big, big thing — they can’t make payments for their houses. It didn’t make us feel too good when friends and work colleagues were being laid off. Even people who were still here were taking wage deferrals.
O’Hara: When people started losing their jobs, a lot of the lads tried to stand up and say something, because there were people that we still needed around the place, but we couldn’t help everyone. I was still getting paid by Spurs, but only the basic salary. After that, there were bonuses that I haven’t received and I think most of the team has got money owed to them, but that’s something that is just going to have to be sorted out in future.
Brown: Our aim was to get enough points to prove that we would have succeeded in getting out of the bottom three but for the points deduction. Amazingly, after what’s gone on, we’ve come up only six points short ... and I still think we should have got them.
April 11. FA Cup semi-final: Portsmouth 2 Tottenham Hotspur 0
Brown: Tottenham was a big performance for us. That was how we needed to play in a lot of the games that we lost. I think someone quoted us at 11-1, so it just shows you what the achievement was. A lot of people were saying that it was a better day than winning the Cup in 2008.
April 21. The administrator’s report reveals that Portsmouth owe more than £4.3 million to charities and other creditors, including Primus’s Faith In Football.
Primus: Compared to the amounts out there that they owe, it was small, but for their own reputation we believed that we would get it and it was just a question of when. And it’s not as if they could hide from me, because I’m here every day.
Steve Finnan, defender: It wasn’t a shock when the administrator’s report came out, because we’d heard about similar things before that. The internet bill hadn’t been paid earlier in the season and they cut the office internet off. There was no money for anyone really, which is a shame because local businesses needed it.
Brown: They actually missed quite a few things off there, to be honest, I know that for a fact. But it was such a lot of debt and I can’t see how they can sort it out. Something went wrong and a club with the revenue this one was producing couldn’t pull it back. You see these people who have worked very hard for Portsmouth who are not going to get paid and it’s very difficult.
May 15. Chelsea v Portsmouth, FA Cup Final.
Brown: The Cup run has saved our season, because three months of the situation we were in would have been a disaster. But we have achieved something. It will be a special season even though we are relegated. It has even been funny at times, but when people lose their livelihoods, it becomes serious.
Hayden Mullins, defender: I was at Crystal Palace when they were in and out of administration but this has been unbelievable, with one thing after another, and I’ve never seen anything like it in football. You think it couldn’t get any worse: nine points, then administration, no money, then the debt is getting bigger every week. You have to have a sense of humour to get through it, you have to look at it and laugh, because it’s such a bad situation that the club finds itself in. Hopefully this is the end of it and we can build next year.