LONDON: Portsmouth on Friday became the first Premier League club to enter administration in a move designed to protect the heavily-indebted club from going out of business altogether. The move means Portsmouth will automatically be docked nine points, a penalty which virtually guarantees the top flight’s bottom club will be relegated to the Championship at the end of the season. The move into administration was confirmed at London’s High Court following the failure of attempts by Portsmouth’s Hong Kong-based owner Balram Chainrai to find a buyer willing to bail out a club which has debts in excess of 60 million pounds (90 million dollars). Had Portsmouth not gone into administration, the 112-year-old club would almost certainly have been liquidated on Monday when a High Court judge was due to rule on a winding-up petition brought by the British tax authorities over an unpaid Value Added Tax (VAT) bill of 7.5 million pounds.