Richard Sutcliffe: Mirroring Leeds's slide may not be worst fate for Portsmouth

The writer, a Portsmouth fan exiled in God's Own County, had taken huge exception to my column about the goings-on at Fratton Park.

Under the headline 'Pompey are the new Leeds as reality starts to hit home', I had likened the sorry state of the south coast club to the mess that had been Leeds United six years earlier.

During the transfer window that had just then closed, Paul Hart had been restricted to the loan market when trying to replace proven quality players who had been sold to ease crippling debts. The same had happened to Peter Reid at Elland Road in the close season of 2003 and the result was him being sacked that November, six months before United slid through the Premier League trapdoor.

I finished the column in our September 5 edition by writing: 'Although they may not want to hear it, Portsmouth fans may soon look back on last year's FA Cup triumph in a similar way to how their Leeds counterparts now view their Champions League exploits. Fun at the time, but with a helluva hangover in the morning.'

On opening the indignant e-mail, it soon became clear this particular exiled Pompey fan didn't agree. Instead, in an articulate five-point reply, he made his case as to why the column had been way off mark.

Chief among the reasons why Pompey would not suffer the same fate was that 'Leeds never got any large financial backing to steady the ship. Once Dr Al Fahim has fully completed the takeover and assessed the squad needs, further additions will be made in January to complement the ones made at short notice in the window just closed'.

Due to our sports editor being a Portsmouth fan, I sincerely hoped he was right – not least because the boss's mood come Monday morning is never the best after his beloved team have been given a good hiding.

Sadly, for both the YP sports desk and the Fratton Park faithful, the reality for Pompey in the months since the column appeared is darker and more miserable than even I could have imagined.

Seven points adrift of safety and fresh from a 5-0 hammering at Manchester United, Portsmouth seem doomed to relegation. Worse still, they have just been taken over for the fourth time inside a year and the new man has already made it clear he has zero interest in running the Premier League's bottom club long-term.

Balram Chainrai, a Hong-Kong based businessman with British citizenship, has seized a 90 per cent holding from previous owner, Ali Al Faraj, after exercising a clause in a contract relating to a 17m loan to the club from his company, Portpin.

His first task is to try to put off a winding-up order in the High Court brought by the taxman over an unpaid VAT bill of 7.5m. The club are due in court on Wednesday.

Add to that, previous owner Alexandre Gaydamak claiming to be owed 28m plus the failure to pay their players' wages on time on no less than four occasions this season and Portsmouth appear in deeper trouble than even Leeds were as relegation beckoned in 2004.

Things became so bad last week the club's official website was off-line for a few hours after a bill had not been paid, a turn of events that would be laughable if the situation wasn't so utterly tragic. Pompey are one of the game's great traditional clubs but where they go from here is anyone's guess.

Leeds took the best part of four years – and a stint in administration – to get back on their feet and even now are still in the old Third Division. Right now, Pompey fans may take a similar outcome as the alternative, unless a benefactor with genuinely deep pockets can be found, is not worth thinking about.