Super Pompey Playing Up and We'll Win the FA Cup!

G'day Everyone, I am a happy man this morning for two reasons. First off Pompey defeated the Pompey B side to advance to the FA Cup final. Secondly I finally have regular access to the Internet.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch the FA Cup semi, but the accounts that I have read said that David James was the hero, along with our goalscorers. Of course the pitch wasn't in great condition at the end of the match and Dawson slipped when attempting a clearance, then Piquionne was in the right place and converted the glorious opportunity. You didn't need to watch a season of Pompey footy to know that didn't happen regularly. I feel that the players are much more up for the Cup than the season, especially since we were relegated earlier this week. But I feel that this has been the case for awhile now. Winning the Cup is an attainable goal, whereas survival in the league has looked dubious ever since we found out Al Fahim was broke. It has also been a rallying point for fans, this FA Cup campaign has been the one thing that we could cheer about throughout the season. So it is a little distressing that there are stories about the lineup that we will be able to field for the final. This is because of the bonus clauses in some of the players' contracts. Luckily Richard Hughes came out and said that the bonuses could be differed until there is a new owner. As a fan I would prefer to see the players waive their bonuses to help the club, but they have certainly earned them. It is key that we are able to field a top side in the Final. Now onto the question of Europe.

In case you haven't heard Pompey are not currently in line for the Europa League place that goes to the FA Cup winner or finalist if the winner is in the Champions League. This is because we did not apply for a UEFA license because we were broke. Our club Administrator is currently looking at ways to fix this as the prospect of a Europa League campaign will certainly make Pompey more attractive to a potential buyer. I think that the chance of an appeal working is quite slim. Platini wants to be tough on debt, and rightly so, I don't think that other clubs' fans should have to endure what Portsmouth have endured this year. Don't get me wrong to be in Europe again would be amazing, the match at Fratton against Milan is probably my favourite Pompey match. If we are able to find an owner there may be a silver lining to not being in Europe. That would be that we play fewer matches. When the new owner does arrive they are going to have their hands full rebuilding a club, and the manager will have their hands full finding players. There are going to be a few sales, plus all of the players that we have on loan will return to their other clubs. Basically at the start of the next season I expect Pompey to have a small squad, at the moment I would say it is unlikely that we will bounce straight back up to the Premier League, in fact I am more worried about us being in another relegation fight. That is why fewer matches could be a good thing, especially at the start of the season.

Another Day Another Owner

Pompey now have their 4th owner of the season, which must be a premier league record. If you haven't already heard Hong Kong based businessman Balram Chainrai has taken over the club using a clause in a contract he made when loaning Ali Al Faraj money. Chainrai is not in it for the long term, and already looking for the 5th owner this season. As far as I can tell this is great news for the club. The transfer window just closed so there is no chance of a fire sale that would affect the team for the remainder of this season. Also with the club facing a windup order (essentially the end of the club altogether) hopefully the new owner will be able to pay off the debt enough to avoid the club being wound up. Also if the players are able to get paid, they may have a little optimism return to their lives. This is key to survival as right now they seem a lock for the drop as they are suffering from Newcastleitis, which is the condition of not caring about the play on the pitch.

Moving on, I think that the key thing is the search for the 5th owner of the season. This owner has the chance to easily build a strong relationship with the club and the fans. Add to the fact that the club could likely be acquired for a nominal fee plus covering the debt of about $125M makes buying a premier league team more affordable than most North American sports teams, hell it is only 3 times what the MLS wants as an expansion fee.

Let's have a look at what you get if you buy Portsmouth
1. 60M pounds in debt (perhaps 45M pounds after the transfer window)
2. A Soccer Specific Stadium, but in need of expansion or a rebuild
3. A quality manager in Avram Grant
4. The last place club in the premier league only 6 points from safety
5. One of the most loyal and dedicated fan bases in the sport
6. A Clean Slate

For me number 6 is key, if Pompey are relegated this year no one is going to blame the 5th owner, they are going to blame numbers 1-3. That means that owner number 5 will be a hero if this club stays up, getting all of the credit for that achievement and none of the blame if they go down. All the fans, players, and staff at the club are craving is some stability so if the owner brings that then they will be loved by the fans, which is key to running a successful club.

So who should be the 5th owner of Pompey? I think that it would be a perfect fit for MLSE to break into the premier league market. Avram Grant could be their Mo. I think it would be a good fit for everyone. I know that MLSE are far from perfect, but I challenge any of their critics to show how they would be worse than the gong show that Pompey fans, players, and staff have had to endure already this season.

It is going to be a long season

We played a well and didn't deserve to lose. This phrase could easily become Portsmouth's new motto. Five matches played, five matches lost. In four of those matches we played well, in all of them we have been unlucky.

In our season opener we lost 1-0 on a deflected Clint Dempsey shot that went off the back back of Bobby Zamora. In our next match away to Birmingham we were set to record a draw until there was a penalty call in injury time. The commentary that I have read is pretty evenly split but whether it was actually a penalty or not. Both the Fulham match & the Birmingham match were otherwise pretty even affairs.

We then travelled to Arsenal, this is the match that I would say we didn't play well. I wasn't able to watch all of this match (I was with the other four) and in the part that I watched we were giving Arsenal too much space and inviting them on to us. In other words a recipe for disaster. However this match wasn't without it's talking points as well. The main one being John Utaka either being brought down down by William Gallas or tripping over his own feet. If he was brought down by Gallas then Gallas should have been red carded. At the time the score was 2-1 for Arsenal, so a sending off would have changed the complexion of the match, especially since Gallas scored the 3rd goal. Unfortunately I haven't been able to see the incident so I can't offer my opinion, only to say form the parts of the match I was able to watch we didn't deserve anything from it.

The Premier League's first Abu Derby was our next match as we hosted Manchester City. Much like the first two matches this was quite an even contest. However we fell asleep on a corner and let Adebayor head home the winner. This one we can't have any complaints about, we played well and didn't deserve to lose, but the result didn't go our way.

After the International break we hosted Bolton in a match between the only teams with 0 points. This was quite an exciting match. Our defense looked shaky at times , allowing Bolton to get behind which resulted in their first goal. Pompey then came roaring back and equalised through Kaboul. Kaboul & Piquionne both missed great opportunities a few minutes later. It looked like it would go to the half 1-1, with Pompey regretting missed chances. Then Bolton got in behind and if not for a last ditch tackle from Ben Haim would have had a scoring opportunity. Oh wait referee Chris Foy somehow missed seeing the ball go sideways after Ben Haim's tackle and decided to award Bolton a penalty. Former Pompey player (and still fan favourite) clinically struck it to give Bolton an undeserved half time lead. Over the half time break I was telling myself if we want to get anything from this we are going to need to overcome bad calls like the penalty. So I was pleased to see us come out roaring again after the break. Debutant Kevin Prince Boateng netting the tieing goal in the 63rd minute. Pompey had a few more chances that we should have converted, but looked on course for the draw. That is until Bolton got a long throw that was headed on to Cahill who scored. Of course the linesman chose not to raise his flag even though Bolton players ran from offside positions to contest the header. So Pompey played well and didn't deserve to lose or even draw really.

The match this morning against Bolton was the match that I enjoyed watching the most and also the most crushing defeat. There is nothing we can do now except wait for the inevitable apology from Keith Hackett and smile when Chris Foy & his crew are demoted to the lower leagues. Oh and hope that Paul Hart doesn't get suspended for saying how poor the ref was.

Looking ahead to the upcoming matches we are away to Villa and home to Everton. Both are going to be tough matches, it would be great to nick a draw at Villa Park but I wouldn't be surprised if we came back from the Midlands with six played and six lost. We need to get something from the Everton match, hopefully we can continue last year's form as we did the double over the Toffees last season.

But you get the idea it is going to be a long season, we are going to be involved in the relegation battle. I don't think that we will take the drop, but we need to start getting some points before the media starts to get in the minds of the fans and the players. Play Up Pompey!

Julian de Guzman to Portsmouth could it really happen?

As soon as Lassana Diarra was sold to Real Madrid I told anyone that would listen "We have a JDG sized hole in our midfield." JDG is of course Julian de Guzman, star Canadian midfielder who was seeing out his contract at Deportivo La Coruña in the top flight of Spanish football. Sadly he spent most of last season on the bench at Depor after privately and later publicly complaining about the €800,000 in unpaid bonuses he had earned. In the 2007/2008 season he was the club's player of the year as well as the Gold Cup MVP. To claim the honour from Deportivo La Coruña he led the club to European football. The Gold Cup MVP is also considerable seeing as how Canada only reached the semi final. Now that you have some back story, we can go back to January 2009 when JDG was sitting on the bench in Spain and refused to sign a new contract with the club until they paid the bonus money. That is why I thought it would be an ideal time for Portsmouth to use some of the £20M that we received for "Lass" to buy JDG. I thought that rather then let him leave for free at the end of the season La Coruña would be open to an offer. Disappointingly no offer came from Portsmouth and surprisingly no other clubs bid for his services either.

When the transfer window opened at the start of the summer, I wasn't sure of where Julian would end up and who would be in charge at Portsmouth. Julian came home to Toronto ahead of joining up with the National side for the Gold Cup. He did interviews where he talked about his desire to stay in Europe and said that now was not the time for him to join Toronto FC. Just a note here Toronto's director Mo Johnston has always described Julian as the ideal designated player for Toronto FC. Then before the Gold Cup got underway there were rumours that TFC had offered him a contract. That of course was not the surprise, it was the fact that he was considering it that got the attention of the blogosphere and the media as a whole. Eventually it came out that the deal offered was $10M over 3 years (about £30,000/week) and what was more it was nearly done. This combined with the fact that The Score's Kristian Jack wrote an article that had two key points. First that the deal with TFC was 90% complete. This news worried a lot of Canadian supporters, as it would not have been good for our best player to return to the MLS in the prime of his career. Don't get me wrong, it would have been a great signing for TFC, but bad for Canada and bad for Julian. The second point KJ made was that Julian had tried to drum up interest from Celtic, Spurs, & Pompey. His attempts weren't greeted with much enthusiasm from the clubs. This set off a flare in me, JDG wanted to play for Pompey and we weren't interested? Looking back I hope now that the lack of interest was because we didn't have an owner or a manager in place. It was a similar situation with Celtic not having a boss either. Spurs were linked with JDG in January but perhaps had filled the role that JDG was going to play in. What ever the reasons were, I did take some spirit from the fact that JDG had considered Pompey a possible destination.

I then set upon the task of letting other Pompey fans know that JDG is interested in playing for us. I started by writing to the club and urging them to sign JDG (I had done this in January as well and I have yet to hear a response from either message). Then it was on to the forums I made posts that we should sign Julian and over the course of July it started to gain support, there were other Pompey fans that had seen him play and thought he would be a good signing. It was starting to gain momentum then I sent a question to Pompey Talk from the News (the News is a Portsmouth based newspaper) which they read out and then discussed Julian for about a minute. Most of them hadn't heard of him, but they were going to look into it and mention it to Paul Hart when they saw him. I can only hope that this happens.

The facts remain the same Julian needs to find a club, and Pompey need players. Given that we are offering trials to 25 year old midfielders from the French League, I am a little baffled that we haven't made a move Julian yet. As the topic continues to spread I hope that Julian is given a look. A possible bonus is that Portugal are now training in North Portugal about 300km from where Julian played in Spain, hopefully some casual enquiries would bring Hart more encouragement to sign JDG. We play Fulham in a little over a fortnight and I know I am not alone in wanting to see Julian de Guzman in our starting lineup at Fratton Park on August 15th.

Portsmouth have a new owner!

It is official now. Suliaman Al Fahim is the new owner of Portsmouth Football Club. This is fantastic news for all Pompey fans.

Of course the takeover has been wrought with difficulties, changing expectations, and rumours galore. That hasn't changed, the first piece of news out of Fratton was that Paul Hart officially had his interim tag removed and he is now the manager of Portsmouth. To say I was a little surprised when I saw this is a bit of an understatement. Now don't get me wrong, Paul Hart is a decent manager and all the players love him, but I think he may be a tad overrated since he got to follow Tony Adams. Hart led us to safety and at the end of last season I wouldn't have been surprised to see him named full time boss, until I heard about the takeover.

As soon as Suliaman Al Fahim was linked with Portsmouth so were, Slaven Bilić, Roberto Mancini, and Sven Goran-Eriksson. You may recall that I even wrote a post about it. As I have already mentioned I think that Hart is a decent manager, but he is not in the same class as any of the other managers that I just mentioned. I fully admit to thinking that Mancini would be the next Pompey boss. The one thing that I am worried about is that to succeed in the Premier League you need to be more than a decent manager.

The other hiccup that fans have noticed is that the buying power that we were rumoured to have with the new owner doesn't seem to have materialised. The rumour is that there were other investors who did not want to be subjected to the Fit & Proper Persons test (a requirement for anyone owning more than 10% of a Premier League Club). This means that Pompey are still looking for transfer bargains.

I know that all Canadians will agree with me that there is not a better bargain out there than Julian de Guzman, who is available on a free transfer after parting ways with Deportivo La Coruña. With some of the selling that we have done, we need help in all positions. At least with Hart in place we can start to bring in new players as we now have someone in charge. Given that the preseason is already underway I hope that we start signing people quickly.

Peter Storrie has mentioned that Portsmouth have 3 or 4 players lined up who could be signed quickly plus another 3 or 4 that they are looking at. I am looking forward to figuring out who these players are. As it happens, Pompey are playing their first preseason match tonight against Havant & Waterlooville (you may remember their FA Cup run). There are few players with us on trial plus a bunch of players that I have never heard of.

Hopefully by the time that the season starts we will have a better idea what the squad looks like, and the sort of year that we can expect. I am interested to here your thoughts, so vote in my poll and let me know where you think that Pompey will end up next May.

Play Up Pompey! Pompey Play Up!