"Balram Chainrai, the owner of Portsmouth Football Club, has today served notice that the club will go into administration unless new owners can be found by Friday."
Make no mistake, Pompey fans, that means administration, and, as things stand, it is a best-case scenario.
merely confirmed what most close watchers of Portsmouth's desperate decline have known for some time: the club is down, broke and on the verge of oblivion.
But what does "going into administration" mean? Is this the end of Pompey's pain? And how has this happened to a recently successful team in the world's richest football league?
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"I think what you do to referees is nothing short of criminal. I've looked at (a replay) 24 times and still couldn't get it right. (A referee) makes a decision in the heat of the moment, with 30,000 people shouting - it should be emphasised how hard it is to referee a football match."
The quote comes from 30 years ago (my thanks to for rediscovering it). Can you imagine a manager saying that today? No, me neither.
Far more likely is what happened on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 5 live on Monday when against officialdom only for them to agree that all four goals in their FA Cup clash were preceded by bad decisions and therefore a draw was a fair result. Respek!
Given that level of public scrutiny, second-guessing and out-and-out hostility, what kind of person would choose to be a referee? Surprisingly normal ones, if my trip to the University of Warwick last week was anything to go by.
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There was a moment on Wednesday, perhaps five seconds at most, when I thought court registrar Christine Derrett had heard just about enough of Portsmouth City Football Club Limited's excuses.
Having raced through hundreds of decisions (some big, some small, all involving unspoken stories of disappointment, failure or bad luck), she had run into .
and even other football clubs had been dealt with in efficient fashion, and it was now time for lunch.
So why was this barrister, Derrett could have been forgiven for thinking, giving me a sob story about returned points and disrupted TV schedules? It's the second time he's played this card, and it annoyed me the first time.
"I'm aware there are consequences to winding up a football team," she snapped, "but those are not my concern."
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Hi, I'm Matt Slater and I try to shed light on what's happening behind the scenes in sport - so everything from football finance to Olympic squabbles. You can also follow me on . 