These days, the end of each Pompey season always brings the threat (or promise, whichever way you look at it) that this could be the final Bone Idle Gossip. So it may be with this one.
But if you were hoping for an upbeat end to another season of ramblings, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you.
As much as I’m mightily proud of what Pompey have done this season, I have to say I’m disappointed with what it appears is going to happen over the next couple of weeks.
If the reaction to last Thursday night’s Guildhall meeting is anything to go by, those with a vote seem almost certain to approve Michael Eisner’s takeover.
It’s a democratic process and I’m delighted we’re in a position where fans — well, a section of fans (shareholders) — are able to decide the future of the club.
But I’ve not deviated from the view I formed as soon as I discovered that Mr Eisner wanted 100-per-cent control — and that view is: We do NOT need to sell OUR club lock, stock and barrel this soon into OUR fan-owned adventure.
I’m not anti-investment, not at all. We need it, of course we do.
But could we not, for the good of football as well as our own ability to control the club’s destiny, have given the fan-owned dream a little longer to thrive, as it has up to now?
It depresses me so many apparently see the need for us to have an owner who (they think) can plough silly money in when we get to the Championship. Just because others do it, do we have to?
Why not test the water? See how we get on in League One with a gently-increasing budget, see how a plea for another round of fundraising to sort out Fratton Park's problems is received.
If we'd been languishing around the lower reaches of League Two for four years, I'd have a lot of symapthy with the view we need to take a different path. But the scenes we saw last weekend didn't look to me like a club languishing in any way,;rather, they showed one firmly on the up.
We’re the biggest fan-owned club around. We could be pioneers and help change the game for the better. But it doesn’t look like we’re brave enough.
STEVE BONE @stevebone1 on Twitter
* A version of this article first appeared in the Sports Mail on Sunday, May 7. Read Bone Idle Gossip in Sports Mail every week during the season.
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