Increasing numbers of reports on Portsmouth’s journey to administration have mentioned links between associates of latest owners – the semi-mythical Ali Al-Faraj and the all-too-real Balram Chainrai – and Arcadi Gaydamak, a “controversial” figure and father of former owner Sacha Gaydamak.

Suspicions were aroused when Sacha Gaydamak took over Portsmouth in 2006 that the big money behind the deal was his father’s. The 29 year-old Sacha had no obvious access to sufficient wealth, certainly not from his limited business portfolio, where profits were thousands rather than millions, where there were any profits at all.

Sacha didn’t put much money into Portsmouth, funding their relative success largely bank-borrowed, suggesting Daddy, then involved in investigations which led to his assets being frozen, hadn’t been involved in Portsmouth.

 

No link was made, and the Premier League’s own investigations confirmed that Arcadi was not, at all, involved with Pompey.

And there an end, until suddenly last summer, a mystery Arab - “Al-Faraj” – bid for the club. Al-Faraj was, it was barely remarked upon at the time, backed by an expanding group of Israelis; surely a genuinely remarkable example of cross-combatant Middle East co-operation. Some of the Israelis were suing…Arcadi Gaydamak for multi-millions.

Sacha sold to the clownish Sulaiman Al-Fahim rather than deal with “Al-Faraj’s” people. And that decision soon proved to be business madness

In January, Sacha Gaydamak said that it was “co-incidence” that four of those in charge of Portsmouth were four of those who had successfully sued his father. So it must be a co-incidence.

And Balram Chainrai, himself linked to the action against Arcadi, now owns the club and ground once owned by Sacha, with the club on the brink of bankruptcy and Chainrai guaranteed repayment of all monies he’s “invested” in Portsmouth? A co-incidence too.