“Steve, would you mind going to the pub on your way to the Pompey game on Saturday?” As demands from the newsdesk went, it was one of more pleasant ones I had in my 17 years at The News.
The reason for the request was that Pompey chairman Milan Mandaric had announced he would visit the Newcome Arms in Fratton before a home game against QPR towards the back end of a disappointing 2000-01 season, and the desk wanted me to go along and see how it went. So I did.
I was not on the sports desk at the time but was doing a lot of the ‘fan view’ material that was becoming an increasing part of the PFC coverage back then, so I was given the tough job of having a pint bought for me by the Fratton supremo while chatting to him and some of the others he met, and writing a piece about it.
I seem to remember it was all very convivial. Pompey fans were used to having the likes of John Deacon, Jim Gregory and Martin Gregory as chairmen – and while it’s quite possible any or all of that trio liked a drink now and then, it was not a pastime they chose to share with the Fratton faithful.
Milan would have had quite a lot of explaining to do to fans that day. He was on his fourth Pompey manager in a shade under two years at the helm – Graham Rix having replaced Steve Claridge six weeks or so earlier – and Pompey were in a fight to stay up.
It was a fight they won, courtesy of a final-day victory over Barnsley a few weeks after Milan’s Newcome Arms stop, and gradually, they were starting to go in the right direction.
That was my first encounter with Milan, but after I moved on to The News sports desk in 2002, there were plenty more to come. My five years on the desk coincided with a golden era for Pompey, and most of it had Milan in the chairman’s chair. And – most of the time – we could not have wished for a more open or approachable person to speak to when we needed to hear from the top.
I was not one of the main Pompey reporters – that honour fell to Mark Storey and Jordan Cross (and you will hopefully already have read Jordan’s memories of that time) – but I tended to fill in whenever one of them was off.
In June 2003 I headed off to Caffe Uno in Port Solent for an hour-long sit down with Milan to reflect on the Division 1 title, clinched a few weeks earlier, and look ahead to the challenges of the Premiership ahead of the club.
He answered everything and gave us some great material – though I do remember being ribbed by colleagues later when one of Steve Reid’s photos of him chatting to me did look like he was about to fall asleep at my line of questioning. I was probably on to telling him who my favourite players were in the 1982-83 season, by that stage...
I also remember going to see Milan at Fratton just after the end of the 2003-04 season, about four days after his very public and bitter fall-out with Harry Redknapp that marred the end of that campaign.
It was the first sign all was not well between the two and six months later, Harry left. Though on the May day when I chatted to him, he was keen to find out what I thought of it all and was hopeful it would all blow over – which for a while it did.
Then in the summer of 2004 Milan gave me an exclusive – Pompey had agreed to sign Michael Carrick from West Ham. He was happy to be quoted as saying so and the story was written, ready to go in the next day’s paper. But first thing the next morning, he was back on to me – ‘hold that story, there’s been other interest’.
From memory, Arsenal had expressed an interest in signing Carrick, and that’s what stopped the deal being finalised, though as it turned out he went to Spurs. A player who slipped through the net – and a story that never saw the light of day. Such is football.
Then on the final day of the 04-05 season, on the way back from covering Pompey’s loss at West Brom, which had of course relegated that lot up the road, I remember Mark Storey phoning him and him purring over how Pompey were ‘kings of the south coast’ – his phrase, which I think gave us the next day’s back page headline.
My own final direct contact with Milan came in the week in which he said his Pompey goodbyes as he handed total control to Sacha Gaydamak in September 2006. Milan’s final game was a Monday night clash at home to Bolton and he was given a great Blues send-off.
That game came a week after my sister, a huge Pompey fan, had died; in fact the match was the night before the funeral. Milan didn’t know my sister but knew of her through his contact with me and, amid his Pompey exit, Milan made time to call me and pass on his condolences.
Now, as we mourn the passing of the man himself, we reflect on someone who changed the course of Pompey’s history.
Without his arrival at a time of need in 1999, would we have gone on to reach the Premier League? That would have depended on who else – if anyone – had ridden to the rescue of the club at that time, but there was not a queue of rich suitors.
So it’s also reasonable to conclude we’d not have won the FA Cup and tasted a UEFA Cup campaign (and that OTHER Milan meeting...) were it not for Milan’s intervention, and for that we will be forever grateful.
It’s worth saying that Milan was far from faultless. He got decisions wrong – the appointments of Pulis and Rix, and later Zajec and Perrin, did not cover him in glory, and I do think sometime he was too fast to pull the trigger. Steve Claridge’s all-too-short reign was one that might just have worked out okay had he been given longer.
The other side of that coin is his initial appointment of Redknapp and then his ability to tempt him back late in 2005 when all looked lost for our top-flight status. Master-strokes, both.
Some, I am sure, will tell you of a man who could be volatile, perhaps difficult to work for, and a man whose desire to be loved by the fans sometimes meant his heart ruled his head. And there will be those that say he should not have sold the club to Gaydamak – though how the issues that started to affect us in 2008 should have been visible to him in 2005-06, I don’t know.
But what you can’t deny is that in the long list of those who have been at the very helm of Portsmouth Football Club, Milan is unique, a true one-off.
As has been said by plenty since last week’s sad news emerged, how many chairmen get their own song from an adoring fan-base? And how many businessmen can chair three different football clubs end up being admired by supporters of all three?
Thanks for the memories, Milan, and thanks again for that pint.