The South Coast Mafia

Many assume that the Mafia is a Sicily based crime Mob which they are, but there is a new group of dirty rotten scoundrels working in the undergrounds of English football.


Step forward Portsmouth football club and your former owners and executives.


In every industry there is some form of corruption from somewhere or someone; where there is money there is someone there to extract it by less than legitimate means.

Betting rings and match fixing is footballs big underground industry. However, Portsmouth stands out as one such club who seems to thrive in criminal activities and poor business practice. Admitted the criminal activities are yet to be confirmed.


What`s worse than the fact that they have tarred the English game with conspiracy and corruption? They may well yet get away with it.
This is a club with more than £150 million pounds worth of debt with 38 million of that owed to the British Governments Tax arm.

Little in assets, and with the loss of its Premier league golden ticket. Meaning that you would then assume players would have been sold in January just like their Crystal Palace counterparts?

Surprisingly though, they signed 2 players and a loan player whilst keeping prized assets such as Boateng and Belhadj. Surely this just smacks of arrogance when small businesses and charities are struggling through a recession and need all the cash they can get.

Worse, the honest creditors are being denied they`re cash simply because the club’s hierarchy weren’t prepared to do the right thing by them.

Can`t pay? Perhaps they just won`t pay.
Other clubs like Crystal Palace sold their best players in January to try and pay the creditors and therefore secure the future of the club.

I am sure that they didn`t want to lose Moses or Fonte or anyone in fact. Palace though felt it was what they had to do. Sell anyone who can be sold.

So why has the Portsmouth administrator not been doing this? Or to put this more bluntly, why is Portsmouth`s Administrator Mr Andronikou being allowed to remain as administrator when he is clearly not listening to the concerns of the creditors?

One argument could be that every club is given leniency on ridiculous scales.
Considering Chester city are now no more over a tax bill of £150,000, Crystal palace were hours from being no more, and countless other clubs are set to be wound up or bankrupt, and considering every one of those clubs has at most a quarter of the debts owned by Portsmouth?.
Why are they being treated so badly whilst the South coast mafia continue to thrive? As we all know that any other business would be long gone.

I would like to conclude this piece with a small message to anyone from the Blue half who may object to this article, I don`t like the idea of any club going out of business without good reason, and if you read my past article about ‘life and death of football today` you will realise that I am an advocator of the negative effects that money has had on clubs.

But if Portsmouth F.C. get away with this, what does it mean for the future of football? When a club can get away with fraudulent and despicable business practices on that scale and walk out the other side?

Surely you can see why some people see your cup run as a total farce, the fact that you can buy success through stealing from businesses, then enter administration and pay a fraction of the price. And this wasn`t a business plan gone wrong, it was just plain stupid arrogance.

The belief that they were untouchable. I sincerely hope that you the fans can still have a club. I also hope that the people that made this mess can be taken to task. They made this mess and need to be forced into righting as much as is possible.

If that means criminal liability so be it. Sell their possessions and give the fans of all clubs a ray of hope for the future, by telling the money people that enough is enough.

Red army comrade