'Portsmouth could have been liquidated that day in court': 10 years on - ex-Spurs and Swansea man on how helping save the Blues remains his finest achievement

Yet 15 months spent at Fratton Park overseeing the Blues’ survival and preventing its liquidation remains his finest accomplishment.

It was February 2012 when Portpin’s desire to reappoint Andrew Andronikou as Pompey administrator was met with opposition from HMRC, citing a conflict of interest considering previous involvement.

As a consequence, a High Court hearing ruled that PKF – and Birch – would instead oversee the Blues’ second administration in 24 months.

According to the former Chelsea chief executive, Pompey could subsequently have been liquidated on many occasions, including the fateful High Court case.

Yet the supporters united to save their football club from extinction – and Monday marked 10 years since that remarkable feat in the Rolls Building.

Birch told The News: ‘Pompey was the most difficult job I have done, it was almost insurmountable considering the level of commitment and liabilities (players’ wages) going forward.

‘Yet the ultimate solution and working with the Trust was probably the greatest satisfaction I have achieved in my professional accountancy career.

‘The administrator’s objective is to get the best deal for all the creditors. That might well be the sale of a stadium for housing or whatever because that’s the best price available. But that doesn’t save the club, so there can be conflict.

‘At Pompey, there were the usual array of potential interested parties, but, once the Trust and the high net worths started to get their act together, it became quite clear that would be the main party which would provide the solution.

‘The Keith Harris bid was all a little bit strange, wasn’t it, and had the potential to derail the Trust bid – and thankfully it didn’t.

‘It was also challenging working with Balram Chainrai, but he sat there with the debenture, which had to be dealt with to get the club out of administration.

‘It went to court and was probably only the second time that particular clause within the insolvency act – paragraph 71, from memory – had ever been used to challenge a fixed-charge holder.

‘Pompey could have been liquidated at any particular point – and finally at the end (High Court). If there hadn’t been a resolution then liquidation was really the only alternative.

‘I had a number of conversations with the FA in the scenario of if we had to liquidate what would happen? Whereabouts in the pyramid would Pompey have been placed?

‘There’s no process to deal with that, you would have to make an application to the FA and see if you might be put back into the pyramid, with no guarantee.

‘Pompey could have been liquidated that day in court, it was momentous, that’s why there was such a lot of emotion on the day from those of us there.’

Birch later served as administrator for Hearts, while returned to football as Swansea chairman in 2019, before becoming Spurs’ director of football.

Since January 2021, he has served as the Football League’s chief executive.

And he will be back at Fratton Park on April 22 for the encounter with Accrington, when the club commemorates the contribution of community ownership as part of its 125th anniversary celebrations.

Birch added: ‘That day in High Court was a big moment – and then there was the relief of a year’s hard work trying to get everything resolved.

‘You are invested in it too. It was 14-15 months of my life that I was totally committed to trying to achieve a solution which at times looked a little bit tricky.

‘You went to bed thinking about Pompey and woke up thinking about it and how you were going to resolve it – and I am sure Iain McInnes, Ashley Brown, Mick Williams, Mark Trapani and the others all thought the same.

‘They saved the club and brought stability. They cleansed Pompey, it was a great collaboration between all the supporters involved, a marvellous achievement.

‘It’s right up there as probably the best job I have ever done in terms of what was achieved. It saved the club – you can’t really put too fine a point on it.’