New Zealand businessman Victor Cattermole claims his Endeavor Plan consortium are still interested in buying Portsmouth. The south coast club went into administration last week after they were unable to agree a deal with any of four interested parties, with the Premier League due to imminently ratify the resulting nine-point deduction.
But Cattermole told Sky Sports News: "We are still interested in buying Portsmouth.
"We still have to carry out due diligence and see what is owed, what is expected to be paid for it and what the value's going to be once the whole issue of relegation and the nine-point issue is sorted out."
The reason given for the lack of a sale last week was that none of the parties in talks had provided the club's chief executive Peter Storrie and current owner Balram Chainrai with proof that funds were in place.
That ruled out the prospect of a deal being completed before a winding-up hearing scheduled for today, but Cattermole said: "We provided evidence of an offer for a bank facility of €200 million last Tuesday to Peter Storrie.
"That was obviously not disclosed to any of the media.
"We also wrote to them advising that we were strongly opposed to administration but they had a path they were and it didn't matter what we said, that wasn't going to change.
"We wouldn't have bought it - administration was unfortunately inevitable because we couldn't have carried out due diligence and negotiated prior to the liquidation hearing.
"Sadly administration was the only option and the revenue department, as late as Friday morning, were adamant that there was nothing that could be negotiated with anyone that would stop them taking their action.
"So unfortunately, because of that, administration was really the only option to save the club."