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Doomed Portsmouth may field weakened team in Premier League

• Avram Grant says points deduction punishes wrong people• Pompey 'do not have duty to other teams' in the league Avram Grant reflected on a "sad day for football" after the confirmation of Portsmouth's nine-point deduction for going into administration and he hinted that the bottom club might be tempted to field a weakened team in their remaining Premier League matches. The deduction virtually guarantees Portsmouth will play in the Championship next season as they now have only 10 points, 17 from safety with nine games left and 14 behind second-from-bottom Hull City, whom they face at Fratton Park tomorrow. By then Grant will have gauged the mood in the squad, who still have an FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea at Wembley to aim for but may lack motivation for what are, to all intents, meaningless league matches. "Even though the writing was on the wall a long time ago and I tried to tell everybody we would do our best, for me this is a sad day," Grant said. "A football decision has not been decided on the pitch. It has been decided in an office somewhere and that is wrong. "What they have done with this decision is not punish the people who did something wrong, so now the people who come along next time will think, 'OK, I can go away to my house and they will punish the fans and everybody who came after.' This is not good." Grant intends to give the Portsmouth players the chance to air their views after today's training session. "I will talk with the players about it tomorrow and we will make a decision and go from there," said the Portsmouth manager last night. "It is not easy because we still believed that even with all the difficulties we could fight against relegation, because Portsmouth did that a few years ago. Now we need to think about everything." Grant added: "Football needs to be decided on the pitch. You need to give all teams an equal chance, which we did not have in this case. "The decision was taken a long time ago that Portsmouth would not stay in the Premier League, for one reason or another.We do not have a duty to the other teams – the Premier League has a duty to the other teams. We tried everything in the last month to keep what I think the spirit of football is about. "If we had given up before, people would not have thought that was good for the Premier League. We need to hear what the players think about what we need to do from now on." The former Chelsea manager said: "For me it is a new situation. It is the first time in the history of the Premier League this has happened. Nobody knows how to deal with it. I said we would fight against relegation as long as we thought we had a chance – and we did. Now I do not know. "When it has not happened, you always have hope. Now it is a different situation and we have to deal with it differently.""Now, we create the experience for the next one – because we will not be the last." Andronikou claims former chief executive Peter Storrie, who is still acting as an advisor for the club, must bear part of the blame for the crisis that has engulfed the club. Grant, though, maintained: "I must say, that in the time that I worked with Peter, he was 100% professional and tried to do everything to save the club. "What happened in the past, I do not know." Premier League Portsmouth Avram Grant guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds show enclosure (image/jpeg)

Source : Football news, match reports and fixtures | guardian.co.uk: - Updated 2010-03-19T01:09:05Z