Financially crippled Portsmouth have been granted a stay of execution and a seven day reprieve to sort out their debts after Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) told the High Court that the club are "insolvent", owing them £11.5 million.

With the very real prospect of the Premier League club being wound-up and going out of existence the newspapers are full of comment and astonishment that such a thing could happen in such a lucrative competition.

Writing in The Guardian, David Conn claims that for a Premier League club, which declared earnings of £70.5 million in their most recently reported financial year, to face a winding-up order is unforgivable.

"How is this possible, for the world's richest league, watched in 200 countries, whose top players make their reported £170,000 a week, to have a club facing liquidation?

The straight answer, of course, is that Pompey overspent. They did not use their TV bonanza, £49m in 2007‑08 alone, to develop Fratton Park or training facilities; Redknapp's stars did their indoor work in Portakabins. The club relied on Sacha Gaydamak, who owned the club via a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, putting loans in to fuel spending on high wages. They borrowed from banks too, for Sulley Muntari, Lassana Diarra, Glen Johnson and Jermain Defoe. Even in that year of FA Cup triumph, Pompey turned their £70.5m windfall income into a loss of £17m. That was before the banks wanted their money back.

Portsmouth are in the last resting place the free market offers. When they were running around Wembley with the Cup, anybody pointing out that it was all unsustainable would have been slapped down as a misery. Now a Premier League club formed in 1898, FA Cup winners in 2008, have been told by a winding-up court that they are a house of cards, and given just days to live."

Writing in his column in The Independent, former Portsmouth player Andrew Cole says fans can't blame the players for accepting Pompey's 'Champions League wages'.

"Portsmouth's worries are simple to explain: they have spent more than they've earned for too long. That's it. It isn't rocket science. And let's not beat around the bush over what they've spent the money on. A huge part of any football club's outlay is players' wages, and Pompey are no different and probably "worse" in this respect.

Good players cost good money, and in a market place where clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool are your rivals for signatures, aspiring to compete with them costs a lot.

Did we, as players, look at our contracts and think "Hold on, Portsmouth play in front of 20,000 people per week, the business plan is unsustainable"? Of course not. And why should we? There was an owner – a rich, football-loving owner with plans for a new stadium, an expanded fan base, Premier League stability and maybe even Europe – and he demonstrated the will and means to fund that."