Clubs root for Portsmouth in £18.2m high court battle with taxman

Portsmouth will be cheered on by the rest of Britain's professional clubs when they defend themselves against the taxman in the high court next Tuesday. Every UK football club – as well as those in rugby and cricket – who give their players an image rights payment as part of their salaries have an interest in the case. That is due to HM Revenue and Customs' claim against the club for £18.2m in "unpaid taxes of the image rights of certain players". Several other clubs are in dispute with HMRC over their own arrangements for players' image rights. HMRC knows the case provides an opportunity to set legal precedent for the entire sports industry. The taxman is confident of convincing the court that Portsmouth have been avoiding tax. Officials will point to the alleged existence of a contract with Sol Campbell entitling him to £1.67m a year in image rights payments. At the time Pompey were earning only £7.2m a year from all their merchandising and sponsorship activities, meaning one pound in every five the club received was allegedly going to Campbell's offshore account. Assuming Pompey paid no tax on any image rights payments and HMRC are claiming £18.2m, their total image rights commitments amounted to £45.5m – an astronomical sum. (If they did pay some tax then the £45.5m rises still further.) Sports clubs will be supporting Pompey on Tuesday. But as the taxman makes this a test case, those clubs might equally wish it was someone else going in to bat for them. Croatian sleuths at work Croatian anti-corruption investigators have been pursuing an inquiry into allegedly fixed football matches, one of which might have involved Arsenal. According to reports in Croatia, the Gunners' 3-0 win over Dinamo Zagreb four years ago was suspicious, although there is no suggestion any Arsenal staff were involved in the alleged fix and the club have not been contacted by investigators. Vuk Djuricic, the spokesman for Croatia's anti-corruption service, USKOK, told Digger: "We have been working on these football cases for a long time together with Croatian and German police. But I cannot discuss individual matches under investigation: that is top secret." Trolley dash to the top Sir Terry Leahy's decision to step down as chief executive of Tesco next March is perfect timing for those with an interest in reforming the Football Association. Digger has learned that influential progressives will urge Leahy to stand for the part-time FA chairmanship and if he decides to pursue it he could become the first major corporate figure to head English football's governing body. It sounds outlandish, but Leahy, an Everton fan, showed an interest in the game when he was appointed a vice-president of England 2018's World Cup bid and made Tesco a major FA sponsor. Sainsbury goes shopping Sebastien Sainsbury, a scion of another supermarket dynasty, has set up a company called Charlton Athletic 2010, which may presage a bid for the League One club. Sainsbury has dipped his toe into the football market before, fronting a bid for Leeds United about 18 months after its financial collapse under Peter Ridsdale. Charlton, meanwhile, are in the midst of a restructuring exercise that is likely to see the chairman Richard Murray take sole control of the club next month. Yet if Sainsbury intends to take it off his hands he has yet to inform Murray: the pair have never spoken. Unofficial Christie When Linford Christie was interviewed by the BBC after Mark Lewis-Francis's silver-medal run in the European Championships 100m final, he was wearing a Team GB polo shirt. Any viewer might have assumed he was part of the official party. He was not. Christie has had no formal role with Team GB since Niels de Vos became UK Athletics' chief executive in 2007 and ended Christie's contract as an athlete mentor. But despite the fact Christie is serving a life ban from British Olympic teams due to his positive test for the banned substance nandrolone a decade ago, he is still able to act as Lewis-Francis's personal coach. Which is all a bit embarrassing for UKA, after declaring 2010 the year of the coach and aiming to make "the athlete-coach pairing – a natural part of the knowledge and storyline of our sport."