Jones Likely To Be Cotterill's Successor

Last updated : 16 October 2011 By Jim Bonner

Dave Jones may well be announced as the next Portsmouth manager as early as tomorrow.

The bookies have slashed his odds from 5/2 last night to 1/4 which suggests that the former Cardiff City boss is set to replace Steve Cotterill at Fratton Park.

There are also rumours that Jones is the man CSI want and will employ him tomorrow so he has time to take training and assess the squad before Tuesday's trip to Ipswich.

If the speculation is true, then I would welcome Jones' appointment. He is the strongest candidate out of the all the names touted for the job and has proven Championship pedigree.

There will be a few idiots (who could be heard in the Fratton End yesterday) who will be against his appointment because he is a "paedo Scummer" and they should be ignored for two reasons.

Firstly, the child abuse allegations were ridiculous and thrown out of court with the judge stating that the cases against him should never even have made it to the trial stage.

And secondly, his tenure at Southampton was over ten years ago now and fans shouldn't spurn anyone simply because they were once employed by the Saints. In fact, given how poor their team was back then it's safe to say he did a good job there before being unfairly dismissed following the false allegations against him.

Jones has had success at Championship level when he got Wolves promoted in the same season Pompey went up as champions. He also had a good record at Cardiff, taking them to the FA Cup Final in 2008 when they were obviously beaten by our own team.

The only criticisms that can be aimed at Jones is that he failed to get a team containing players like Craig Bellamy, Michael Chopra and Peter Whittingham promoted last season and he also has to seemingly spend a fair bit of money to see success.

But he is a manager who knows what he is doing on the pitch and is a dignified man off the pitch. I think it's safe to say he'd be welcomed to Fratton Park by the majority of Pompey fans - he's certainly an improvement on Cotterill.

Of course, there is no guarantee that Jones will be unveiled as the manager just yet, but I wouldn't bet against it...