Portsmouth may only have weeks as Storrie reveals real debts of despair

THE PORTSMOUTH chief executive, Peter Storrie, has revealed the true extent of how close the club is to financial disaster. Storrie warns that 30 per cent of the €55 million the owner, Sulaiman al-Fahim, has promised to provide this month has to be in place within two weeks or Portsmouth face possible meltdown.

Following yesterday’s revelation that Fahim was unable to pay the club’s first-team squad and three executives of its board their monthly wage, Storrie said Portsmouth will also have to find millions owed to several clubs and agents in unpaid fees for transfers.

Discussing the need for Fahim, who is recovering from an operation for kidney stones he underwent yesterday in Dubai, to find the fresh finance to save Portsmouth, Storrie confessed he is unsure if the 32-year-old will be able to produce the required amount.

“I have to be truthful and tell you that I don’t know if the 30 per cent of the £50 million (€55m) refinancing package will arrive with us in mid-October. I would say that you have the date about correct, around October 15th,” he said. “So the bottom line is the middle to end of October. I really don’t know what will happen if that money doesn’t come through. All I can tell you is what I have seen. The documentation is in place but the proof of whether it is all genuine will be if it turns up. Sulaiman says that it will, so I have to believe that it will. He believes it, so let’s wait and see.”

Storrie also revealed that a €5.5 million loan, borrowed from the Saudi-based Faraj brothers so that Portsmouth could pay the missing wages and Portsmouth’s day-to-day costs, may have been borrowed against the club.

“We have a loan to pay the players’ wages for last month but what has been used as security I cannot tell you because it has been handled by the lawyers between the two parties, while I have just been the guy doing the introduction,” he said. “If we are talking about the club being used as security, then all I can say is that I genuinely don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I persuaded them to help the club. There are people willing to help this club because it is worth saving.”

Agents, meanwhile, including two high-profile representatives – thought to be Pini Zahavi and Jonathan Barnett – are owed around €3.3 million for deals that brought Sulley Muntari, Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe to Fratton Park.

“It is true that we owe a couple of top agents a great deal of money and, if you say it is £3 million (€3.3m), I can confirm it is not far short of that figure. But there are other agents owed their commissions as well,” Storrie said, before claiming that only his relationship with the pair has staved off their demand to be paid what they are owed immediately.

“The two agents you talk about have been incredibly helpful,” he added. “It is through my friendship with them that they are not banging on the door. Rather they have been really understanding. But we have owed money on transfers to a number of clubs, and those clubs have also been extremely helpful. So it all depends on the refinancing and I don’t see it as a deadline necessarily in mid-October, but (it) cannot go on any longer than the end of October. I have been asking people to be patient – but they cannot be patient for ever.”

Portsmouth’s predicament has revived the interest of the Faraj brothers in buying a major shareholding, with representatives due to meet Fahim to explore how major a partner the Saudi Arabian businessmen may become in the beleaguered club. They had been leading members in a consortium, headed by Storrie, that tried to buy the club in the summer.

Portsmouth’s players are understood to have been offered a minimum of information by the club.