• Chainrai must guarantee to pay creditors £16m-£20m
• Rival bidders would also have to pay Chainrai’s £17m debt

Balram Chainrai will be able take over Portsmouth for nothing if he guarantees to pay £16-20m to creditors over the next five years, the club’s administrator has revealed.

The Hong Kong businessman is likely to take control of the club for the second time this year after Pompey won a High Court case against the taxman. Chainrai needs only to guarantee that he will fund the debt payments – which on a 20p in the pound basis equate to between £16m and £20m – and he should become the owner subject to ratification by the Football League. He will then be able to try to recoup the £17m debt he is owed by the club – any rival consortiums would have to pay that sum too if they want to take over.

Portsmouth’s administrator, Andrew Andronikou, told the Press Association: “In the absence of anyone else coming in we hope the sale of the club will go through within the next couple of weeks. We have to go through the rigmarole with the Football League such as their ‘fit and proper person test’ but we should have everything buttoned up soon.

“Because Mr Chainrai is a secured creditor there may not be a straight fee to buy the club but there will be a financial obligation – as the purchaser he will pay over five years a minimum dividend of 20p in the pound, between £16m and £20m. If anyone else wants to come in, they have to pay him off as well which would come to around £35m.”

Andronikou said he hoped the majority of Pompey fans would be happy with that outcome but recognised there would be some dissenting voices.”When you are working with 25,000 people you have to strive to achieve a general result to benefit the majority,” he said. “There may be discerning people who do not want Mr Chainrai there for lots of different reasons.

“When we took over the assignment we made a commitment to save the club and maximise the position of creditors, we are well on the way and it has been a 24/7 job and still going on. We are getting remunerated for it but we also have a passion for the job and we will get the right result.”

Andronikou said Portsmouth’s wages budget would allow the club to compete in the Championship but that money was not available to pay transfer fees.

He said: “We are monitoring the cashflow and we are OK. The club will be able to sign players on free transfers and loan players and there is quite a healthy wages budget of £13m for the first year reducing down to £10m thereafter.”

Portsmouthguardian.co.uk

• Flight delays, missing kit and injuries dog US tour
• It’s painful, admits manager Steve Cotterill

If Portsmouth thought that things could hardly get any worse for them after going into administration, being relegated from the Premier League and having a transfer embargo imposed upon them, they were sorely mistaken.

A disastrous pre-season tour of North America concluded yesterday with a 4-0 thrashing inflicted by DC United in which the English side had to borrow kit to clad their patchwork team of youth players and senior pros after losing their luggage during a lightning-storm affected, 27-hour journey, in which they spent much of that time in transit at an hotel near Chicago airport.

Portsmouth’s two-week trip to the States has been dogged with almost farcical problems. So limited are the club’s player reserves that more than half of their squad in the US had never played a first team game for the side before the tour, leaving the manager Steve Cotterill with little option but to field youth players.

Their initial journey from England to their first game in San Diego took 42 hours after a connecting flight was cancelled, leaving the squad stranded in Chicago. Then, after they had travelled to Canada – where, against Edmonton, Cotterill had a back five made up of three second-year professionals and two triallists – two players had to be sent home with injuries, including a suspected broken leg for the goalkeeper Jon Stewart.

Cotterill must have been hoping his luck would change. However his squad were then stranded in Chicago once again as a storm grounded their plane from Edmonton to Washington. When they eventually arrived for Saturday’s game against DC United, they did so having had just four hours sleep and without being able to train for three days. “The time it took us to get here, we could have flown to Australia,” said the furious manager.

The club’s midfielder Michael Brown added: “After a cancelled plane the boys got up at three in the morning to get another plane that was then delayed which meant we got to Washington just a few hours before the game.”

Worse was to come, though. During the flight, 14 of their bags went missing – including the one containing their kit. After being forced to borrow DC United’s change kit, they then strode out on to the pitch to find the temperature was 38C (100F), the hottest day of the year in the the US capital so far.

“The temperature at the stadium was unbelievable,” said Brown. “The lads all lost 4kgs. That tells you how hot it was. It was very humid. We came from Edmonton, where it wasn’t too hot, straight to this. But, just like throughout the two weeks, we’ve had to deal with it.”

Once on the pitch, the situation – almost unbelievably – worsened. The goalkeeper Jamie Ashdown, fighting to earn a new contract, injured himself as he collided with his team-mate Joel Ward and had to be substituted. Then, as the heat rose, tempers flared. Hayden Mullins was sent off after getting into an argument with DC United’s Santino Quaranta. Quaranta himself was also dismissed after appearing to spit at Mullins, before a second player for the US team, Julius James, was also sent off in the last minute.

“I can’t believe he’s been allowed to officiate a game,” said Cotterill of the referee. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

The result hardly seemed important after Portsmouth’s tribulations. In the event, they were sunk by a hat-trick from the Australian veteran Danny Allsopp.

“Probably that result summed up the tour for us really – it has been extremely tough,” said Cotterill.

He added: “We were OK for 20 minutes against DC United, but after that we were shot. The next 70 minutes were very painful and hard for the players.

“The one thing about this result is that it’s shown the position we’re in. It’s painful. We’ve got some good honest senior lads here and some youngsters who are trying their hardest. The kids have got to be at full tilt to be anywhere near the team, and we’re going to be playing in a mans’ league in a couple of weeks’ time.”

PortsmouthChampionshipTom Bryantguardian.co.uk