A Portsmouth Players’ Perspective

Posted on | May 21, 2009 | No Comments

In a week when Glen Johnson made club history by picking up all nine Portsmouth FC Player of the Year trophies on offer, it seems appropriate to pause and look at the season from the players’ point of view.

Johnson played well enough last season but has really kicked on this term, becoming an England regular and indisputably the club’s best performer. Tellingly, he has continued his early season form through the departure of Harry Redknapp (that cracker against Hull comes to mind), suggesting that it is regular first team action rather than the identity of the manager that has been the primary motivating factor. He recently gave an interview to PFC TV in which he seemed genuinely touched and pointed out how much he has enjoyed his time at Fratton Park. Worryingly, this type of interview appears to be spreading.

The caveat regarding the identity of the manager is unfortunately Tony Adams’ tenure, when the players didn’t appear to know what they were supposed to be doing. I was willing Tony to succeed and Pompey undoubtedly produced some fantastic football under his regime, none more so than the stuff they produced to play AC Milan off the Fratton Park pitch. It wasn’t the football that was the problem though, it was the continuous late goal theme that brought confidence to breaking point. I genuinely wish Tony Adams future success at the highest level. His record so far suggests it will be difficult.

Peter Crouch has been another stalwart, especially during the Defoe-less second half of the season, and it is to his credit that he is still in the top five or six league scorers. But again, his exit for Linvoy Primus on Monday was, perhaps significantly, a bit more drawn out that it should have been.

Other players also deserve a mention. Hermann Hreidarsson has taken advantage of Nadir Belhadj’s apparent inability to defend, and become an imposing presence in the first team once again, fighting for the cause from the front. David Nugent has worked hard out of position on the right, although his chance of a long term Pompey career may recently have finally passed him by. Even the twin targets of some vilification, Hayden Mullins and Richard Hughes, deserve credit for getting on with the job and doing their best. It was the manager who picked them. 

What I’m getting at here is that the players can be victims too. Late night club incidents and driving offences acknowledged, we can’t tar everyone with the same brush. With Pompey reportedly under pressure from their South African bank, and in more trouble than we thought, Crouch may be forced to once again re-start his career elsewhere. Johnson will probably have to do the same thing. They won’t lose sleep over leaving Pompey for Liverpool, Everton, or whoever it may be. But, had things off the pitch been even reasonable, I believe they would have been happy to stay. I hope things can be stabilised enough to allow that to happen, but I fear that these valuable commodities will have to be sold.

Everyone knows the real problem in all this is the way the Premier League is financed by TV companies. This is what has caused there to be such an obscene amount of money in the game, to the extent that the amount of money required for Portsmouth to win the FA Cup combined with the effects of the recession, have left the club in its current predicament. The recession has prodded away at a few clubs in the Premier League bubble, but subscription football into your living room is the real evil, creating that bubble in the first place.

We are all aware of the clubs currently in trouble, but Stockport County are perhaps the most low profile. Their administrators recently had to make their entire coaching staff redundant, and the club is in real danger. Yet we have heard nothing about it. Instead we have been subjected to endless analysis of Darren Fletcher’s bid to make the Champions League final. I’m sorry for the guy, it wasn’t a foul. But I’m more sorry for the Stockport fans who may soon not have a club. Something is very wrong with our game.

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