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HALL RIGHT NOW: Money can't buy you Pompey fans' love...
HALL RIGHT NOW: Money can't buy you Pompey fans' love...
Friday, 23rd Mar 2012 11:50 by Micah Hall

Before Pompey used a couple of lucky breaks to thrash the Brummies, I remarked to a friend that I couldn't really remember feeling so bleak about Pompey's future. During the slide down the divisions in the 70's I was too young to understand the wider context, and anyway, we had a big ground and were a sleeping giant. It was just a matter of time before we were back in the top flight.

Whilst we are still the last undeveloped big club in England, the distance we have fallen behind other clubs means that a fall into the lower divisions becomes that much harder to reverse. For Pompey it has always been a question of infrastructure and management or, to be honest, the lack of it. We have to hope Michael Appleton can produce the required miracle. He has the world on his shoulders but unlike mighty Atlas of legend, he has the unquestioning support of thousands behind him to help bear the load.

However, there was one time when it looked like we might finally break the cycle of despair and failure, and that was during the period when Milan Mandaric strode into Pompey and lifted the whole place up by it's bootstraps. Mandaric is a complex man, but he knew the way to the hearts of the fans and he knew what he wanted; success. Under his leadership we hired and fired a whole bunch of managers and chief executives, we signed legions of players and shed them just as quickly. You can call it a lot of things, but the best way to judge it is by results; It was a remorseless pursuit of success and it worked.

Milan bought Pompey for £5m in 1998, a team with a crumbling stadium and a pitiful squad of footballing pensioners. He left us in the Champions League places. In our first season in the Premier League we turned a profit and finished 13th. We beat Liverpool, Villa, Spurs, Man City and Saints. We held Arsenal's Invincible's twice. Some said Milan was lucky but football is a game where luck regularly offers itself and few take advantage. On Tuesday night, Pompey had some luck but made the most of it. Mandaric took advantage of circumstances, hired the best man for the job and gave him the tools. It worked – and that isn't luck, it's judgement.

The vanishingly small band of Mandaric critics would no doubt point to the stadium issue, with reason, but a deeper look at the facts reveals the true picture. Under Mandaric Pompey acquired the land for a new stadium, acquired planning permission for TWO stadia and planning permission for an associated development. He created a development opportunity of impressive scope. He made it feasible. Of course the vision wasn't realised, but you have to remember the circumstances of the time; Pompey had won promotion to the Premier League. Fratton Park was full every week but it was still a struggle to compete. Investors confidence in property development declined and the Pompey Village couldn't find a taker. Meanwhile, every penny was being spent in an effort to keep Pompey in the Premier League. Given time and the incredible gift of the Portsmouth City Council development brief for Fratton Park we now have, I am willing to bet we would now be sitting in that stadium had Milan remained at the helm of the HMS Pompey.

When Milan left Pompey it was for one reason and one reason only; he had found someone who he felt had the money to take Pompey forward. He bowed out gracefully for the good of the club. He left it in the best shape it has been in most people's lifetimes. All that was needed was the final push to finish the job. Investment for the long term to support a reasoned business plan. Instead, the money was thrown at people who spent it like it was going out of fashion. Take the example of donating £800,000 to Pini Zahavi to do 'scouting', as revealed in David Conn's seminal examination of Pini and Pompey, here. You could employ a dozen full time scouts for £800k, without the need to pay a man who makes his living from selling people footballers. If he has a footballer to sell you, you don't need to pay an agent to turn up and do it. You can't keep them away.

So the chance slipped away from Pompey like a high cross through Pavel Srnicek's fingers. The passage of time always lends perspective and I feel that Mandaric's legacy is a useful prism within which to view the recent past.

We have been relegated from the Premier League and are odds on to go down again. The club makes heavy losses. The development land has been lost to the club. The stadium is another six years older and shabbier. The squad doesn't contain the bedrock of talented, classy and reliable players that characterised the end of the Mandaric era. If you look at the side that thrashed Middlesbrough on the final day of 2003/04 to seal 13th place in the Premier League it is illuminating; Hislop, Pasanen, Stefanovic, De Zeeuw, Taylor, Berkovic, Smertin, Quashie, Stone, LuaLua and Yakubu. Not one big fee among them, but abundant talent and class.

Mandaric was unquestionably the best owner we have had in my lifetime. Even without the indisputable achievements there is one other quality that sets him apart from the rest; he loves Pompey and cares. Until recently, (in fact it could still be there), there was a banner above a shop in Kingston Road that said “There's only one Milan”. When he returned with Leicester last season he was greeted with the sort of adulation that he must really miss with the apparently far less grateful folk of Leicester and Sheffield, to whom I have always felt he is only on loan.

I've written before about my one and only encounter with Milan, following our Good Friday 3-0 thrashing at Ipswich when John Westwood did his Chuck Berry impression on the roof of the away section. We walked into a motorway service station and there he was, having a cup of tea. Seeing me and my (then) two kids in Pompey shirts he rose from his seat, came round the table and shook hands with the kids and gave them a heartfelt hug. He connected with us. He felt the pain of that defeat every bit as much as I did. He felt the joy and exhilaration of the Championship celebrations the following week. He held his “Move over Saints” banner and then sat with a quiet smile of satisfaction two years later as he watched his Proud Pompey team demolish Harry Redknapp's abject Saints and send them hurtling into the oblivion from which they came.

Oh how times change. The legacy and success he built was so heedlessly squandered. Milan recently said that he had enjoyed a love affair with football in Portsmouth. Milan was perfect for Pompey, and we were perfect for him. Of all the people who have slunk through the corridors of Pompey in recent times, few if any have been fit to lace his boots, let alone receive the same sort of heartfelt adulation he enjoyed from us.

He earned the chants, he earned the praise. When he came to Pompey he asked us to trust him, and he didn't let us down. How I wish I could look up to the director's box, and see his face smiling, his hand raised to receive the salute of the Fratton End. How I wish we had an owner we could trust to look after the club and not themselves. How I wish we had an owner who genuinely loved the club. However much money someone has, money can't buy you love. We've learnt that lesson the hard way since.

The views of Mike Hall are his own and don't necessarily reflect the editorial view of pompey-fans.com

Photo: Action Images



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