Portsmouth's next boss

Now that Portsmouth have been bought by Dr. Sulaiman Al Fahim, a billionaire businessman from Abu Dhabi, there is no shortage of managers being linked with the vacant post.

The first candidate is current interim boss Paul Hart. The players responded to him and he led us away from the relegation zone. However the results weren't spectacular and the team seemed unable to score, it was however an improvement over Tony Adams. So far both Kanu & Distin have said that they would like him to stay on. I think that the most likely scenario is that Paul Hart will return to being in charge of the youth players as Dr. Sulaiman Al Fahim has an interest in developing the academy.

The second candidate is former Lazio, England, Man City, & Mexico boss Sven-Goran Eriksson. Eriksson has been a solid club manager and in my opinion was unlucky to be dumped out of Manchester City at the end of last season. That said he is currently looking for work since being fired by Mexico after it started to look like El Tri could miss the World Cup.

The third candidate is current Croatian boss Slaven Bilić. Bilić is young and came to managerial fame by leading Croatia to Euro 2008 at the expense of England. That said I was unimpressed by his choice of playing Niko Kranjcar as a striker to accommodate Luka Modric in the midfield during the Euros. It is always a risk to appoint a manager without any club experience. Hopefully, if he gets the job, he will be like Mark Hughes or Gianfranco Zola who both made successful club management debuts in the Premier League.

I was surprised to see that a fourth candidate might be Harry Redknapp! This move would be a disaster. Harry quit us and moved to Southampton and then we brought him back. I thought it was a bad idea and it took a long time to get used to the idea of him being our manager again. Then Harry quit us again for Spurs, if we brought him back again it would make a mockery of all of us as fans. If Pompey are foolish enough to offer him the job I hope that he has enough sense not to come back.

A fifth candidate has now emerged, the former Fiorentina & Inter Milan boss Roberto Mancini. He has wealth of club experience and trophies to his name. He was sacked by Inter after winning a third straight Serie A title because of his failure to win the Champions League. I think that he would be an excellent hire.

I imagine that Portsmouth will announce who will be charge sometime in the next few weeks and I have no idea who it will be but I would guess that it would be either Mancini, Eriksson or Bilić. Though as we have seen with Harry moving to Spurs and Bruce moving to Sunderland it really could be anyone.