It's almost too far-fetched to be true.
The story of Portsmouth Football Club, especially over the past 30 years when 'S.O.S. Pompey' came to the rescue of the ailing club in the late 70's. I remember being a member of the 'Pompey Action Group' - Treasurer in fact - as we walked the streets around Clive Road, knocking on doors collecting newspapers that we would then gather up in a vacant garage near the old Pompey Pub in Frogmore Road.
When full, the garage would be emptied of its contents and sold off to Bowater's for a cheque that would be banked and eventually passed on to the club in the form of a bigger cheque to pay off whatever outstanding bills it could cope with. One such bill I recall came in the form of a £250 Registration Fee payable to the F.A. to enable the club to bring Free Agent Eoin Hand back to the club for a second spell. Desperate times indeed and something that at that time felt like a one-off situation that, if we could hang in there and overcome it, the future of our football club would become stable and we could progress and establish ourselves as a Top 10 outfit in England. If only that had turned out to be the case.
The Action Group continued to help in every way it could; putting on fund-raising events, painting the crash-barriers on the then all-terraced stadium, building and operating a supporters shop under the North Stand during games, doing a sponsored walk from Wembley Stadium to Southsea Common etc, etc., and all for the love of Pompey.
On the pitch, things weren't anywhere near as healthy as they are today. The players were average at best, the team was below average at best but the supporters, as always, were well above average and remained eternally optimistic which to most outsiders would have appeared misled and foolhardy. And maybe it was - but the supporters kept the faith and slowly but surely were rewarded for what must be recognised as a massive contribution to the clubs rise from the bottom of the old Division 4 (now League 2) to the First Division (now the Premiership) in a relatively short space of time (even if it then felt like a lifetime!).
I clearly remember hitting rock-bottom (92nd position in the Football League) as it was a rare occasion when I left the ground before the final whistle. We were playing Rochdale at Fratton Park. Rochdale - nobody lost to Rochdale, and certainly not at home. Needless to say, with about fifteen minutes left, the visitors broke the deadlock and five minutes from time, I gave up. Out of the stadium I went and as I was walking away, the roar from the Fratton End signalled what transpired to be the equaliser. A 1-1 draw was just enough to cancel out the impact of an earlier kick off on the day that had consigned us to bottom place for a few hours. I thought that things could only get better. And they did.
Bobby Campbell took up the managerial reigns and I was a regular at Reserve games at the time; extracting full value from my Season Ticket but also genuinely enjoying just being at Fratton Park at any and every opportunity. I think we were playing Millwall or Brentford Reserves on the night and whilst sitting in a cold South Stand my eye was drawn to the distinctive figure sat some rows in front of me. At first, I couldn't put a name to it but quickly realised that it was a certain Alan Biley that was sat alongside the Pompey manager. Dashed home, told all my mates, some disbelieved me. My story was confirmed the next day In The News. Alan Biley set to sign for Pompey for £250,000. Alan Biley coming to Pompey!! It was as exciting as things had been for a long time as far as I was concerned and made pounding the streets of Fratton collecting newspapers all the more worth it. Anyway, the blond one didn't disappoint and he went on to forge a lethal partnership with Billy Rafferty and elevate our club a couple of steps further up the footballing ladder. This included clinching the then Division Three Championship in 82/83.
John Deacon was the owner/chairman at the time and he soon appointed Alan Ball in an attempt to continue the clubs forward momentum. But still the club were trying to build on less than stable financial foundations. And after achieving the dream of promotion to the top flight we were quickly relegated back to whence we came - Division Two. Again, this was largely a case of the finances at the club and the wealth/ambition of the owners being outstripped by success on the pitch and we were again in danger of living beyond our means. But Deacon was astute enough (although I didn't feel that way at the time!) to reject his Manager's calls at the time for that 'one more signing'. But in declining his Manager's request, instant relegation was assured.
This raises the debate of 'should he or shouldn't he?'. At the time, I think we were talking about £120,000 for a striker. In saying 'No' was the owner simply being realistic and sensible or would the rewards for that additional "investment" have been guaranteed and given us the ability to survive in the top flight both in football terms and financially? Personally, I think Deacon was out of his depth financially; possibly with his resources being drained faster than expected by him sharing his love of football with a liking for top class basketball in the city. But we'll leave that debate for now.
So our beloved football club faced yet another crisis. Jim Gregory emerged as the new saviour in 1988. A decent reputation within football circles, Gregory had operated at a higher level than Pompey had consistently enjoyed and therefore his arrival was generally seen as a positive thing. He also had high profile connections including a firm friendship with a certain Terry Venables. But pre-Venables, it was Jim Smith that defied all the odds and got the club to the F.A.Cup semi-finals where, in 1992, we somehow contrived to unsurprisingly lose to Liverpool on penalties after a replay. I maintain to this day that had we won the semi-final we would have gone on to win the Final that year. To rub salt into the wound, we also missed out on promotion back to the top flight on goal difference by a single goal.
But still, financially, we were still in trouble. And this is the point of this article. It seemed never-ending regardless of what comparative success we enjoyed on the pitch. The supporters remained fantastic throughout - and rightly so considering the relatively consistent periods of success that had been enjoyed from the early 80's up to this point. The poor financial position was emphasised by the fact that Terry Venables was soon able to purchase the club for £1 and in doing so purchased what were, by today's standards, modest debts. But the new regime could not prevent the club eventually going into administration at the end of 1998.
Enter Milan Mandaric. Mandaric 'invested' and we survived by the skin of our teeth on the final day of the 2000/01 season. Mandaric then appointed Harry Redknapp and we all know it's been even more of a rollercoaster since this landmark day. Good appointment?? Without doubt in my opinion. Expensive appointment?? Again, without doubt in my opinion. The challenge is somehow to reconcile the two which we fans have bee effectively trying to do for months. Winning the F.A. Cup coupled with potential financial oblivion versus financial stability at the time of writing? Again, we'll leave that debate for now.
It's just four years ago that Mandaric sold Portsmouth Football Club to Alexander Gaydemak. Gaydemak : the man to hopefully take us on to the next level, recognising that financially Milan Mandaric had taken us as far as he could. At the time I credited Mandaric with leaving the club in a better position than when he joined. And I think I still do (I think). Did Harry's demands and spending during his two spells perhaps sound alarm bells with Milan and he, realising the hole that he had helped dig, was simply astute enough to get out before the club descended into the monetary meltdown that we are now experiencing, thus deflecting the attention away from his own culpability? Either way, the next crisis wasn't long in coming was it. What has happened in the past four years?
Gaydemak has been written as both hero and villain. And in truth he has genuinely played both roles as far as Pompey fans are concerned. Initially, masked as a significant benefactor, he produced a man of the match performance off the field that few would have challenged. The Manager demanded quality and numbers and the Owner met with those demands. The squad has never in the history of Portsmouth Football Club been of a higher calibre than it has been during these four years and the end result was an F.A. Cup win and solid Premiership performances, worthy of where 30 years ago I felt Pompey's place in the world of football should be. But the cost has been massive to the club and this new era of football ownership where football clubs are falling prey to individuals who know little or nothing about the game and whose motives are distanced from those of the fans is also taking its toll ..... and how! And eventually, Gaydemak was unmasked.
Initially a benefactor is what we thought; he has turned out to be simply a money lender rather than a true Investor as I had hoped. Or are we really going to say, "Thanks for the Megastore Alexander. Your work is complete and you go with our blessing". I think not. Our expectations, rightly or wrongly, were greater than that. And I wouldn't be overly critical of Gaydemak if it weren't for the revelation that he was/is charging the club 15% interest on the borrowed money. His first financial contribution was of course the triple signing from Spurs of Pamarot, Davis and Mendes for circa £7.5M. It was understood at the time that the purchase of these three players on a mortgage arrangement to Gaydemak, coming so soon after his acquisition of the club and with final details still being ironed out, was necessary because of a timing issue. How naïve I was to believe that one! Clearly, the players had become the property of the owner and it seems that this is now how things work when you are one of football's new breed of owners. And I don't believe that it's any different at Man City, Chelsea and others. It's simply that some clubs can sustain a debt better than others and we at Pompey have a ground capacity of 20,000 and are effectively surviving on around 5,000 paying customers each home game. This is the main reason why our problems have surfaced faster than anybody else's. Enough said.
From the Gaydemak era, we have moved anything but seamlessly through Al Fahim to Ali Al-Faraj, whoever he is. On each occasion I have naively hoped beyond hope that first Al Fahim could be the real deal and when he let me down I hoped (and possibly even believed) that Al-Faraj would undoubtedly step up to the plate as a true 'investor' in our football club and we would at last see some progress with the training facility, the stadium and the general infrastructure at the football club.
Wrong again. And I have to admit that out of a total of 45 years supporting Portsmouth Football Club, the various crisis' that punctuate the last 32 of those 45 years are taking their toll. Who do I want to blame? The F.A. - Yes; The so-called 'big' clubs - Yes; Managers - Yes; Owners/Chief Execs - Yes; Agents - Yes; Players - Yes; We, the supporters - Yes; City Councils - Yes.
Note I didn't say 'Who should take the blame?" because it's difficult to pin Pompey's (or football's) situation on one factor or individual. I honestly don't think that one single thing could create such a mess on its own. So it's more a case of "Who do I want to take the blame?".
The F.A. :
1.The Fit and Proper Persons Test. What an unconditional failure and waste of time this has turned out to be. And it created another delay to the takeover of Portsmouth Football Club without adding any value whatsoever (although whether that delay added to Pompey's problems is possibly doubtful. What more would Al Fahim have done with the club had he become owner earlier than he actually did?).
2. The African Nations Cup. Don't the F.A. carry any negotiating weight whatsoever in world football? Clubs like Pompey are forced to go the African route for players because we can't afford to purchase quality English players like David Nugent (!) every day of the week. So, for a competition such as the African Nations Cup to be approved and held every two years in the middle of the season is ludicrous and again is to the detriment of the less wealthy clubs who receive no form of compensation. And why should they (the African nations) also be allowed to then participate in the World Cup. It's one or the other as far as I'm concerned and it should be 'out of season'. The Premiership is supposedly the best league in the world. The F.A. should at times wield the power that that position surely brings.
3. Stop messing around with changes to the laws of the game and worrying about booking players when they celebrate scoring a goal and start thinking about ways of levelling the financial playing field a bit. The Premier League is not much more than a 4-team tournament that takes place over 8 months. The reason : money. Give me Abramovich's money and I could turn Rochdale into a top 4 Premiership club and they too would be technically insolvent.
4. Maybe we should revert to when gate money was shared among the clubs for each match. Visiting Old Trafford and getting a share of the income from 75,000 paying customers would at least soften the blow of getting beaten and would help address the financial imbalance that exists. Or perhaps clubs should get given their ticket allocation for away games and then that club retains the income from the sale of those tickets. Whatever, the F.A. should be brainstorming some ideas.
5. Maybe squad sizes/structures need to be controlled in some way so that certain clubs can't simply hold two world class elevens and rotate them, to the detriment of other clubs and the fans who are deprived of having/seeing them.
6. Players Contracts. These are weighted too heavily in favour of the player and this needs to be addressed.
The Big Clubs :
1. You've made a massive contribution to the current financial mess in football. Thanks a lot. Why did Man City need to increase Shaun Wright-Phillips wages from £50,000 a week when at Chelsea to £80,000 when he signed or Wayne Bridge's from £50,000 to £92,000?? What happened to £51,000; £55,000; £60,000 etc. It's barmy and it cascades down through all levels of football.
2. Change in football will need to start at the top. The big clubs need to start proving that they still have some power (because I'm not sure that they do) and influence downwards the size of wages to players and payments to agents. The top clubs in England (and possibly Europe) need to get together and simply refuse (maybe with the support of FIFA) to pay some of the wages and fees being demanded.
Managers : Managers need to act more in the longer term interests of the football club. To keep demanding more and more players at greater and greater expense without any thought as to the implications for the football club is disrespectful to the fans, damaging to the club that employs them and contributory to the current situation.
Owners/Chief Execs :
1. If these guys don't understand the financial position at a club then who does? But I have to blame the Owners over and above the Chief Execs. The Chief Exec is answerable to an Owner and if there aren't regular monthly reviews of a businesses finances that are seen by the owner and his Finance Director then there is something fundamentally wrong. And if that were the case, I'm afraid the owner is culpable for not putting the process in place in the first instance.
2. The owner must surely give a Chief Exec parameters and a delegated authority within which to work. If the owner has set this delegated authority at too high a level and one which is unsustainable within the business then the blame lies fairly and squarely with him/her.
3. The motives of the owners must come into question. Why do they want to own a football club? The answer is obviously to make money so the next question must be "How do they intend making money?". The answer that the F.A. should be looking for is via investment and the growth of the football club that will then yield additional revenues and their business plan should clearly state this and they should be accountable for it. Fit and Proper Persons Test??
Agents :
1. Don't tell me that the role that these people play is good for the game. Yes, maybe players (some players) need a representative BUT the role of the Agent is now questionable and the sums of money involved appear frankly extortionate.
2. Agents are taking money out of the game to the detriment once again of clubs who can least afford it. They have further diluted the value of contracts as it doesn't pay for their clients to stay in one place for too long despite the five year deal that they have probably just negotiated.
Players :
1. The clubs are as good for them as they are for the clubs and they should recognise that.
2. Example : Jermaine Defoe doesn't ask for a transfer but makes it clear he wants to go and play somewhere else. The club kindly agree and the player claims a £750K Loyalty Bonus because his contract sates that he's entitled to one if he doesn't submit a Transfer Request. OK, It may be at the Agent's instigation but the Player surely has a say. So do me a favour!!
We, the Supporters : I don't think we can ignore the part that we the fans have played in the overall scenario. And I totally include myself in this. I have craved better and better players at my club to the point where we were at a level attracting the celebrity footballers to Fratton Park. And what a team we had!! But I did so ignoring the financial impact that having them was having on our football club. Gates of 20,000 with only 5,000 of that representing a cash income. A modest merchandising operation and limited sponsorship income. So how could I possibly expect to sustain it. Yes, the Ticket Prices were high and some feel unreasonably so but in truth, for the players that we had on the wages that we were paying, ticket prices would have had to have been doubled to cope. Yet, it didn't deter me. As soon as the Transfer Window opens I expect to see more and more talent (forgetting that they need paying) to improve the product available to me on a Saturday afternoon. Ignorance is bliss..... But only for a while because it comes back to haunt you eventually and it certainly has right now.
City Councils :
I can't complete this without mentioning City Councils and to be fair this is probably specific to Portsmouth rather than nationwide. Why? Simply because in every other part of the country new stadia have been built seemingly with ease, even in Central London. And I know that Peter Storrie has recently commended the Council for its support of the Club but the development of Fratton Park or relocation to a new stadium has been an issue now for over 30 years. And the council could have helped more. The old City Airport where Channel Island Airways used to fly from. It's now Anchorage Park but should have been the new home of Portsmouth Football Club 30 years ago. Then there was Farlington and the Brent Geese. What the hell were they thinking?? Bowing down to residents when there was an industrial estate between their properties and the proposed football stadium.
As for the Brent Geese. Don't make me laugh. You see more in the grounds of Portsmouth College now than you do at Farlington. Another wasted opportunity where the Council didn't have the strength to stand up for something that would have been for the long-term benefit of the City of Portsmouth. And because of these examples I can't help but feel that they still have a problem saying 'Yes' to the football club for fear of the short-term flack that they would no doubt endure. But that's life, deal with it. It's embarrassing when you see how easy it has been in other parts of the country. Oh, and I won't mention the withdrawal of the World Cup bid because of the £24M outlay - in the same week as The Rose Bowl announce that they are getting £32M from Southampton City Council to improve the Cricket Ground!!
So you could say that Pompey fans are no strangers to a crisis!
But what if anything can we do about the current position of our football club? How can we be heard? Who actually is it now that we need to be heard by if it's to make any difference? Things have changed so much at our club that these questions are in themselves more difficult to answer than they have ever been before.
Let's stage a protest. But to whom and when? The owners never attend Fratton Park so would it amount to a protest or simply free entertainment for the masses gathered on the terraces? Furthermore, would they actually care or react in a positive way to such action even if they were there. In my opinion, it's highly unlikely because I simply don't believe that their motives for owning the football club revolves around the football team being successful on the pitch. Notwithstanding all of that, maybe it's worth a try, if only to make us feel like we've had a go.
So what else. Maybe we can emphasise our feelings to the rest of the football community. The current suggestion which I personally intend following up on is that we email both The Premier League (http://www.premierleague.com) and also the Independent Football Ombudsman (http://www.theifo.co.uk/contact-us.html). [Thanks to Miggss for the addresses]
This may in fact be our best shot. Who else is actually going to listen? We could write to our own City Council but what can they actually do with a group of effectively anonymous, faceless owners. And anyhow, given the Council's track record ......................... probably a waste of paper.
Our entire situation makes you wonder whether in fact we are heading towards the formation of our own club in the same way as AFC Wimbledon evolved in its new guise and also the other Manchester United F.C. following similar discontentment at their respective clubs. Amazing really; even Man United fans get cheesed off!!
There is no definitive answer here because it simply doesn't exist but it's a situation that's not new to Pompey and this in a way highlights how long we have been festering in this way. In fact, I'd say that it's more common to our Football Club than it is to any others and in that respect we are again unique. In fact, how many clubs with the right to expect what I feel we should be able to expect from a Football, Club (One City, One Club) have under-achieved in so many ways and so spectacularly as we have?
WE DESERVE MORE ..... AS A CLUB, AS FANS AND AS A CITY.