He played for Liverpool as a youngster and later worked for the likes of Everton, Sheffield United and Derby County, but the man who has announced his EFL exit will be remembered around PO4 for helping keep Pompey alive.
Former Pompey administrator Trevor Birch is to step down from his position as the EFL’s chief executive.
Former Pompey administrator to step down from EFL role
Birch joined the EFL in 2021 after a brief stay as Spurs director of football, with the news coming as chairman Rick Parry was re-elected for a further three-year term.
'With one more season ahead, my focus is on supporting the league, our clubs and colleagues, and ensuring a smooth and orderly transition to new leadership.’
Birch had a career as a footballer, emerging as a youngster at Liverpool and then moving on to stints with the likes of Shrewsbury Town and Chester.
After his playing days he operated as Chelsea’s CEO, orchestrating the club’s sale to Roman Abramovich before joining Leeds United and later the likes of Everton, Sheffield United and Derby.
He is remembered at Pompey, however, for being the administrator during the club’s second period of insolvency in two years in 2012.
Birch: Working with PST was ‘greatest satisfaction’ in accountancy career
Birch was appointed after HMRC opposed Portpin’s desire to see Andrew Andronikou oversee the process, with the High Court ruling PKF - and Birch - would do so instead.
That paved the way for Pompey Supporters’ Trust to broker a deal for the club, an outcome the 68-year-old ranked as the ‘greatest satisfaction’ of his accountancy career.
Speaking to The News in 2023, Birch said: ‘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.
‘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.’
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