Grant was granted his work permit for his technical director role at Fratton Park but Pompey will now acquire a new sponsorship from the FA that will change Grant's role to official manager.
For the time being, the 54-year-old Israeli will take charge of the team in the technical director rile but is essentially the new boss after Paul Hart was sacked on Tuesday.
Grant has had 23 years of management experience, mainly in Israel but will be known in England for taking Chelsea to the verge of three trophies, having lost the Carling Cup to Spurs, lost the Champions League on penalties to Manchester United as well as falling short of the 07/08 Premier League title by two points.
I think this is a shrewd appointment by the board and at least restores a bit of hope going into a ngithmare run of fixtures coming up. Grant knows what he is doing and surely wouldn't have taken the job if he wasn't given assurances that he'd be able to bring players in during January.
My only reservations about his appointment is that much of his success at Chelsea was attributed to the input of assistants Steve Clarke and Henk Ten Cate and his style of management has been criticised by Chelsea players under his reign as well as Eyal Berkovic who slammed him as being "disrespectful".
The cynics will say that this was always going to happen and the board were simply waiting for Grant's work permit to arrive before giving Paul Hart the chop but the club are never going to admit to this even if it were true, so all we can do is speculate.
But I'm all for this appointment overall and it can only be a good thing. Grant's got a good knowledge of the game overseas and may be able to find us one or two gems in January is finances allow. He is also tactically apt, but it remains to be seen what he can do with the players he currently has at his disposal.
Let's hope Grant's arrival can galvanise the team, starting with Manchester United on Saturday!
Avram Grant Career Record
- Won the Israeli Toto Cup twice with Hapoel Petah Tikva in 1990 and 1991.
- Won the Israeli League title and later an Israeli FA Cup with Maccabi Tel Aviv.
- Won two Israeli League titles and a Toto Cup with Maccabi Haifa in the early 2000's.
- Managed the Israel national team from 2002-2006 but never qualified for a mjaor tournament.
- Joined Pompey shortly after as Technical Director before leaving for Chelsea for a similar role after a year.
- Took over as Chelsea manager after Jose Mourinho's departure, taking the club to both the League Cup final and the Champions League final where both were lost.
- Also lost the Premier League on the final day of the 07/08 season after drawing 1-1 with Bolton before being sacked, having taken Chelsea on a previous 16 game unbeaten run to put them level with Manchester United on points on the final day of the campaign.
- Returned to Portsmouth as director of football in October before being confirmed as the new manager-to-be today.