• Administrators testify Chainrai is only credible option
• Businessman will not confirm whether he will buy the club

Balram Chainrai today signalled the strengthening of his position following Portsmouth’s victory in the high court by refusing to confirm he will definitely buy the club. Chainrai did, however, say that if he does make the purchase he will supply funds for players to aid the club’s bid for instant promotion back to the Premier League.

During Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’s unsuccessful challenge of the company voluntary agreement, the club’s administrators told the high court that the Hong Kong businessman represented the only credible option to buy Portsmouth.

Mr Justice Mann said he agreed with the administrators’ assessment but Chainrai told Radio Solent: “I’m not talking to the administrator, the administrator is talking to me. It all depends on my family, my present situation. If I go in I will go in with money to stabilise the club and bring it back to the Premier League. I’m not going to stay in the Championship. The manager would receive my full support.”

Chainrai, who is owed £17m by Portsmouth, could buy the club for nothing if he can guarantee to creditors the terms of the CVA, which say creditors must be paid 20 pence in the pound over five years.

Andrew Andronikou, one of the administrators, said: “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. If anyone else wants to come in, they have to pay him off as well, which would come to around £35m.”

Andronikou acknowledged that some supporters may not be happy with Chainrai, who controlled the club when it entered administration, becoming owner again. He said: “When you are working with 25,000 people you have to strive to achieve a general result to benefit the majority. 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, [and] we are well on the way. 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.”

PortsmouthBusinessJamie Jacksonguardian.co.uk

Pompey are not lovable but it is hard not to admire their Hollywood-like refusal to die

The FA Cup final is already a fascinating meeting of opposites: Portsmouth, a club who have pretended to be rich, against Chelsea, a club who remain almost unassailably so. Next to today’s blue-chip opponents Portsmouth have the look of a society imposter, some small-town insurgent in a borrowed tuxedo, the sole of one shoe flapping, shirt-front triangle flipping up, and an entire invented history very publicly unravelling as he prepares very quietly, to beat your brains in with an oar. Only one thing seems certain: partisans aside, it is surprisingly easy to want them to win it.

Not because Portsmouth are lovable. This is not in any sense a self-propelling crackpot modern fairytale. Perhaps you might even still feel the tug of something Hollywood in Portsmouth’s rag-tag widescreen reckoning up, picturing some Pompey-shirted Steve Guttenberg or Tom Hanks rising solemnly to his feet as the dressing room falls silent and saying, “Fellas, this isn’t about us. Hell, it’s about…” even as your hand skitters about in search of a toothpick or a kebab skewer to jab repeatedly into your own eye to drive back the auto-schmaltz tears.

The Portsmouth that will reach its full stop at Wembley has instead been a ludicrously fuzzy-headed organisation. And let’s not be fooled by attempts to garland the players with altruistic laurels because they clubbed together to keep some of the people who do chores for them in a job for a few weeks. When considering a Premier League club burdened with unimaginable debt, it is important to remember at all times that up to 90% of this has been given to the players, converted directly into a bathtub carved out of a five-tonne block of limestone, 25 identical unworn pairs of earwig-skin pointy brown leather bloke shoes, and enough combined vast yawning flat-screen mega-pixel TV expanse to fill the red spot on Jupiter. This is what has happened here: compulsive excess. They didn’t ask for it, we hear. But they certainly took it.

Perhaps the only really lovable thing about Portsmouth is Avram Grant, often criticised at Chelsea for his glum, sardonic, mooching demeanour, even at times when his glum, sardonic, mooching demeanour was by far the best thing about Chelsea. In adversity he has developed a lovely, shrugging excitability, a conviction that something or other means something and that’s the real, you know, point here.

Plus, of course, Portsmouth’s supporters have remained steadfast and unbowed, even the ones who have to stand near that man and his annoying bell. But I wonder if even Portsmouth fans can really love this nonexistent screen-grab of a team. This is the seductive quality of a Portsmouth victory: it would surely be one of the most meaningless triumphs in any cup competition. This is a team of the here and now and nothing else, one that’s falling apart before our eyes. Look, there go its legs racing in on goal but not stopping, carrying on over the hoardings and off down Wembley Way.

In a way you can admire the furiously literal-minded shamelessness of Portsmouth, their utter immersion in the crackhead-scale appetites of the Premier League. While also feeling a bit sorry for the FA Cup, with its foot-bath-level reservoir of dwindling magic, still standing by trying to look dignified and vital while an imported drama of opposites takes place on its lawn.

PortsmouthChelseaFA CupBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk