Goodbyes are often so difficult, but the farewell that fans bid to the “old” Pompey a couple of weeks ago represents the biggest opportunity for a fresh start since the club became contaminated by greed and bad management during the last decade.
The emergence from administration of a Portsmouth Football Club, battered, bloodied, traumatised but still intact, was what so many had dreamed about during our financial imprisonment of the past three or four years.
It represented not only a chance to shed the final links with previous regimes that had come to stand for irresponsibility and greed, but also the opportunity to start afresh from a position of relative comfort – the bottom tier in the Football League – when it could have been so much worse.
For me, four major events occurred in that hectic – and euphoric couple of weeks:
- Pompey finally came out of administration, a necessary – but restrictive – stranglehold designed to prevent further destruction but also denying the opportunity for development
- The club was bought by a supporters’ trust – a model looked on with envy by most of the football world, but which I fear will provide a greater challenge – and potentially bleaker reality - than many fans realise
- The Football League finally looked kindly on the club after years, along with the Premier League, of seeking to ensure that it should continue to pay for its previous sins, and deducted the latest 10-point penalty in the current season – when it no longer mattered
- Portsmouth Football Club opened its new account in the final home game of the 2012/13 season with a 3-0 win over Sheffield United.
The men and women who have worked so hard in incredibly challenging circumstances to provide a platform from which Pompey could actually be saved deserve the thanks of fellow supporters and the admiration of even those who have no interest in the club.
Pompey Supporters’ Trust has given the club another chance. And most fans seem to like the ideal of having a share in the club’s fortunes.
A tentative fan base has gradually agreed to part with precious cash in the depths of the longest recession most of us can remember to help save the club and to be part of it.
Waverers won over
Future projections for running the club as a responsible business (now, there’s a phrase I never thought I’d write about Pompey) have been based largely on converting most of those promises into hard cash.
The trust would be the first to acknowledge that not every promise will be backed by delivery.
But the fact that sufficient people had been prepared to commit, and trust members had been prepared to continue clambering over every obstacle put in their way, built a momentum that finally led to Portsmouth Football Club being handed over to the loving care of some fans – and with it, the catalyst to ensure many waverers followed suit.
Now, though, the hard work really begins.
I have remained a sceptic throughout the trust’s campaign – not a nay-sayer; certainly not a critic, but one of those who would be happy to believe it when I saw it.
Not the takeover. Believe it or not, I reckon that was the easy part.
But the ability to run the club along the lines it envisages – responsibly, circumspectly, ultra-efficiently, without ever returning to the embarrassing and pitiful position where a giant organisation with a multi-million-pound turnover could not even pay its creditors. Repeatedly.
Even the minuscule creditors who not only provided the club with services but invariably parted with their hard-earned money on a Saturday afternoon to support them.
I am sure the new owners have the right intent and am optimistic they have the expertise to attempt to run the club along those lines.
What remains to be seen is whether progress on the pitch and the backing off it allow it to happen - whether income from attendances continues to match those on which the budgets are based.
Perhaps not in the coming season, when the euphoria of the club’s last-minute survival and the promise of a new beginning should ensure bumper season-ticket sales and large crowds every fortnight.
But maybe beyond then. Especially if Pompey are struggling, with a hapless team representing all we can afford on our new, realistic budgets.
Survival or success?
Will the club of the people always satisfy the people?
Will the temptation be for some to call for a January push to sign players on bigger wages in the hope that it will catapult us to promotion – where the financial rewards will be higher?
Will that cry be drowned out by those complaining that Pompey should offload their star players for financial stability, albeit at the cost of a successful side?
What if the sums no longer add up? Can any fan forgive another Pompey management regime – no matter who it is – presiding over another administration and, perhaps, next time, the club’s extinction?
Can – and should – the new management govern with impunity after previous regimes were so despised (even those that brought on-field success)?
What happens if fans’ favourite Guy Whittingham, who has been a superb ambassador for the club while guiding it through the worst run of defeats and one of the worst winless runs in its history, finds himself steering a team towards non-league football?
Will the board have the heart to fire the man they have rubbed shoulders with for much of their odyssey to the takeover?
Or will they give him a little longer than they might someone else, at great cost to the club?
In fact, in my view, the supporters’ trust’s success depends very much on Pompey’s manager.
That result – and more importantly, performance – against Sheffield United told me a lot about Guy Whittingham, one of my playing heroes during a previous Pompey life.
He presided over most of that demoralising run I referred to, having inherited a bunch of individuals from Michael Appleton (whose own shackles when running the club should not be forgotten).
But, with Andy Awford by his side, he got them through that trough and out the other side, with a good blend of young and experienced players, all appearing to be happy to give their all to the Pompey cause.
Respect
They finished the season with a terrific run, given their predicament, and showed what good football Guy Whittingham’s teams could play, in the right circumstances.
And then came the piece de resistance – Whittingham’s comments, reported in The News on April 27.
The Pompey manager spoke of the need for all connected with the club to earn people’s respect; of the need to work within their means, even if it meant disappointment on the pitch.
He was not only prepared to work with a limited budget but said it was the right thing to do.
He said: ‘We owe people so we pay it. That’s how it has to be now.”
It might be a bit more difficult to maintain that view if he feels at some stage in the future that success or failure depends on whether the club signs a bigger name or breaks its wage budget.
But Guy Whittingham has proven himself in so many ways – with the way he played the game; with the bucketful of goals he scored; with the way he has remained loyal in the background during Pompey’s nosedive towards oblivion…
With the dignity he brought to the role of caretaker manager; with the rapport he seems to have built with his players; with the team ethic he introduced in a squad reeling from signing over-rated allegedly established figures who were happy to soak up some of Pompey’s precious income…
With the players he has brought to the club, thanks also to the lieutenants he has evidently trusted so well; with the faith he has shown in the club’s talented young players – an astonishing development, given the constraints of recent years - with the quality of football they have begun playing.
And now with the philosophy that everybody connected with Portsmouth needed to hear as the club enters its new life.
Guy Whittingham may or may not prove to be a good manager.
He may not always be at Pompey.
But he will always be Pompey.