Portsmouth cling to Europa hopes

Portsmouth's administrator is confident the club will be able to satisfy Uefa financial rules and be allowed into the Europa League next season.

Pompey's appearance in the FA Cup final guarantees a place in the Europa League if they can get a Uefa club licence and administrator Andrew Andronikou has been poring over the details of the regulations. He now believes that the club can make a strong case to be approved to play in Europe before the 31 May deadline, and that it would be wrong to prevent them from doing so.

Andronikou said: "Since Sunday we have been scoping out what we can do and trawling through legalities. I believe that we will satisfy all the criteria. We should be in a CVA [company voluntary arrangement] by the deadline, all debts will have been sorted out and arrangements made with the football creditors. We should tick all the boxes. In terms of sport ethics, I think the club has had its medicine and should be allowed to go forward."

Uefa delegate their licensing scheme to national associations so it will be the Football Association which needs to sign off Portsmouth's application. The main issues are that there should be no late payments outstanding to other clubs, or to staff and players. If Portsmouth are in a CVA with a new debt payment schedule agreed, then they should qualify on that basis. The other outstanding issue will be the need to file independently audited accounts.

If Portsmouth's bid is not approved, then Everton could benefit and their manager David Moyes does not think the governing bodies will be persuaded. Moyes said: "I was told Portsmouth had not applied to be in Europe. So if that was the case, they were not a consideration. It will be unfortunate for them but if they had not applied, you cannot say 'We want to do it now'."