The sun is shining at Portsmouth after several dark days. Gone are those who sucked this club dry and left it to rebuild from the brink of oblivion. Gone are the agonising days in court when supporters hung on words from the latest administrator. And gone are the club’s debts, the last vestiges of a period when excess and reckless ownership were the norm.
The Pompey chimes rang out around Fratton Park on Saturday with renewed optimism. They have reverberated through this old stadium throughout the uncertainty and despair of recent years but this, a well-earned point following a combative 1-1 draw in League Two, represented something of a new dawn for a club reborn.
Portsmouth announced last week they are now debt free, a remarkable achievement given that £8m of legacy liabilities have been wiped out since their supporter-led takeover in April 2013. Six years have passed since Harry Redknapp led them to the FA Cup with a team that included Sol Campbell, David James, Sulley Muntari and Nwankwo Kanu. From Milan to Mansfield, Pompey have gone full circle and live to fight another day, with the future brighter than it has been for some time.
A year and a half ago the club was on its knees. Liquidation was an imminent threat until the Pompey Supporters’ Trust struck a late deal with the former owner Balram Chanrai regarding the valuation of Fratton Park. Chanrai was just one member of an extended cast of foreign owners who came and went from the South Coast in swift fashion – the names Sacha Gaydamak, Sulaiman Al-Fahim and Vladimir Antonov are likely to provoke similar anguish if mentioned in these parts.
However, Portsmouth are back in the black and intent on staying that way. It has been some job, the result of tireless work by the trust and a number of local financial backers – the club “presidents” – who have strengthened links to the community and injected significant money.
Iain McInnes, the Portsmouth chairman, wrote in the matchday programme: “Our monkey has most definitely been sent packing with a one-way ticket to the zoo. We will not be travelling that path again … period.” Colin Farmery, spokesman for the PST, added: “It’s now about looking forward. We can draw a line in the sand on the past and right now we are in an enviable position for a number of clubs. We are debt free, we own our ground outright and not many people believed we could do this.”
The only thing to fix now is the football. With the drama off the pitch slowly fading, it remains to be seen whether Pompey can drag themselves up to a level supporters believe the club deserve.
It will not be easy but, on this evidence, the manager Andy Awford has a team full of spirit. Mansfield took the lead within seconds of the second half starting through Simon Heslop, yet Portsmouth responded with a period of sustained pressure and were rewarded when Paul Robinson finished from close range in the 70th minute. They could have secured three points, but lacked a cutting edge.
The Portsmouth chief executive, Mark Catlin, told the Observer: “Now comes the expectation. There has been an uplift in expectations but we are not flush with cash. Football is not an exact science. There are things out of our control but we will be doing our best to get back up the leagues.
“We inherited a club that still had a lot of excess expenditure. It was just trying to get the controls in place without losing staff and people who had been loyal to the club over a number of years. That was important. We didn’t have a training ground, the club didn’t have a lot of assets. Now we’ve cleared the legacy debts. All the creditors have been paid off.”
The staff here say they have crammed five years’ worth of work into the past 12 months. Yet there were only smiles on show on Saturday.
Whatever their fate this season, Portsmouth can look to a future in their own hands. It has been a long time coming.
