I'm Appy To See A New Dawn - If Not A New Club

Last updated : 21 March 2012 By Jim Bonner

I’ve always been sceptical about the concept of starting again with a brand new grass-roots football team and calling it Son of Pompey (or whatever the latest trendy title may be).

My personal feeling is that a freshly created team with none of the playing or coaching personnel of the existing one is just a new team. Not the old one reincarnated.

It’s just a personal view and is not to knock the admirable groundwork evidently being put in by the Pompey Trust and other fans desperate to see a continuation of competitive football in the city.

But if ever there was a reminder of what we have to lose it has been Pompey’s recent form.

I’m not pretending they’ve been playing like world-beaters – and they certainly haven’t been raining goals (Tuesday night excepted).

But much of their performances against Brighton, Bristol City and Birmingham in the space of just 10 days has given me more satisfaction than I have felt about football for years – and in its own way comparable with Pompey’s outstanding ascendancy into an established and (for a while) respected Premier League side during the first decade of this millennium.

And the reason? The incredible achievements of manager Michael Appleton in such exceptionally difficult circumstances.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t been the first Pompey boss to face a thankless task in recent years: Tony Adams ushered in the age of offloading at Fratton after so many years of buying top-notch players (though his challenge paled compared with that of any of his successors).

 

Then Paul Hart, Avram Grant and Steve Cotterill have all had to cope with running a professional football club with at least one arm figuratively tied behind their backs.

They’ve all appeared to throw themselves into it with admirable application and pragmatism, albeit with differing results – and styles.

But to me, Appleton has proved himself to be an outstanding leader of the team.

He has acted with dignity, as have – in my view – his immediate predecessors.

Another level

Grant and Cotterill undoubtedly instilled an ethos of togetherness and loyalty that took them a long way in extenuating circumstances.

But already Appleton seems to have taken the team that step further.

Denuded almost weekly of yet another key player, and with limited bargaining power to sign replacements, he has lifted the style of play to another level – adding sophistication and flexibility to commitment and endeavour.

I realise such praise may seem strange when the team had gone so long without a win and struggled so much to score goals.

And no, it has been by no means perfect.

But the mitigation is immense: already having to shed players – who might in any case prefer to join a club where their wages were guaranteed – he was faced with the immense psychological blow of watching the team tumble from a position of relative safety to the eye of a relegation battle through a points deduction – something that must surely have contributed to the consequent decline in results.

During that run there have been some miserable performances – sometimes whole games; more often first halves (a curse that ironically beset Pompey’s previous manager, too).

But in some of those games I detected hope – not, perhaps, of survival (I believe Pompey were effectively relegated the day they went into administration).

But hope for the future. Certainly a future under Michael Appleton.

Most of us, I’m sure, could argue with some of his tactics, team selections and substitutions. But football was ever thus.

He has handled his limited resources admirably, eking some impressive performances out of individuals and moulding a pragmatic team capable of switching formations and tactics to match their resources at a given time.

And by the way, no, I have not been seduced by the cracking result against Birmingham. I had written much of this before that game.

While I still believe Joel Ward has yet to justify the praise heaped on him by so many supporters and pundits – and he has still put in some disappointing shifts – his skill level and awareness (not to mention his ability finally to win the ball in the air) have risen in direct proportion to the number of weeks Appy has been at the club.

The defence has generally looked sounder – if not unbeatable.

And Marko Futacs has largely flourished, justifying Appleton’s faith in the Hungarian striker, which ironically appeared not to be shared by the man who actually brought him to the club.

It’s not been perfect – I believe his decision to drop Tal Ben-Haim – arguably Pompey’s outstanding player in a mediocre season – was influenced too much by the very first half of his tenure when the defender was – for once – tormented in the left-back role.

The Israeli, for all the financial baggage that comes with him, is an intelligent and instinctively attacking footballer, who has shown admirable commitment in every game he has played, even if his Premier League contract has contributed to Pompey’s awful off-the-field predicament.

But where Appleton has really impressed me has been in his awareness of other players – those not considered good enough or ready for their respective first teams who have come in to replace established pros, such as Liam Lawrence, or young players who had been proving their worth to the club, such as Stephen Henderson and Erik Huseklepp.

Whereas Cotterill brought in the likes of Ibrahima Sonko, Carl Dickinson and Jonathan Hogg, Appy has recruited the promising George Thorne and the outstanding Scott Allan and Chris Maguire.

Among the characteristics the latter two share is pace – speed of action and of thought – something that has been missing during recent incarnations of the team.

I realise those players will not feature in any Pompey side that might be performing in next season’s League One, but they give me the confidence that in Michael Appleton Pompey have a young manager who really could carry us through to a new dawn.

I’m not sure anyone is going to want to buy Pompey, with its dire and embarrassing recent history, but if they do, Michael Appleton is going to be one of the main reasons.

If Pompey can survive their current financial crisis – one born partly of their own making – and they can persuade Appy to see it through, I believe a stable, conservative Portsmouth Football Club could before too long be giving the incredible Pompey faithful something magnificent to behold once again.