I often find myself wondering how the course of history might have changed if Pompey had ever stuck with Tony Pulis as manager.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and of course had history not changed as it did then the 2003 Championship side, the 2008 FA Cup winners and all the players involved between these two would have all remained mere pipedreams.
Similarly what might have happened in its place will never be known.
Who back in 2000 would have predicted that Pulis would be one of the most sought after managers to the point where he could sit back and take his choice of numerous top jobs. Certainly not me when I sat with him in the team hotel having a drink prior to a match at Preston early doors in his second season at the club.
He was speaking of the frustrations that he was at that time encountering at Pompey and was very honest as if he were speaking to his closest ally.
I had sat down originally more intent in talking to one of my heroes and his assistant David Kemp who I had never had a conversation with since his heroics in a Pompey shirt almost 25 years previously. But honesty is what you got with Tony and I was quickly transfixed. He didn’t mind who it got back to and quickly struck me as the kind of bloke that wouldn’t say anything behind someone’s back that he wasn’t prepared to say to their face.
Nor did he say anything with any malice, it was said in a matter of fact way that if things were done his way then he had the capability to take Pompey back to the top. And given what we know now who is to say that this wouldn’t have eventually been the case. But even though his departure was a month in the future he spoke with the resignation of a man who already knew he was heading for the exit.
Not many fans choose to remember that when Pulis came in he quickly moulded a losing side into one that lost just twice in eleven games winning six of those.
I vividly remember an outstanding 1-0 win at Ipswich early on in his reign as do I an enterprising 3-1 win at Crewe a few weeks later followed by a 2-0 win over Gary Megson’s West Brom. Even before he came to Pompey he had taken unfashionable Gillingham from the bottom of the football league to the brink of the first division for the first time in their history.
Our chat at Preston came just after the transfer deadline when he had desperately wanted to sign a striker and the man targeted had been Jason Roberts who I encountered with of all people Cyril Regis his advisor in the ally-way which leads from the one time car park into Frogmore Road.
Anyone who has walked through that alleyway will know the difficulties should you happen to meet someone coming in the opposite direction-even if you are both of slender proportion. So two hulks coming the other way meant I took the only wise option in giving way and retreating. Roberts spent almost the entire day at Fratton Park amidst frantic negotiations but no deal was done and though Tony then broke the transfer record for Lee Mills I think he was bitterly disappointed to lose Roberts.
In the same month as our chat West Brom visited Fratton Park and there was almost an air of inevitability that the winner would come from their recent signing-one Jason Roberts. That could only heighten his dissatisfaction over what might have been and little more than a month after our chat at Preston he was gone following a 1-1 draw at Stockport in which the home side had scored a last gasp goal. Along with Kemp and his other assistant Lindsay Parsons the trio departed in a car without even going to the customary post-match discussion with the Chairman, who I’d sat directly behind and it was pretty clear that the writing was on the wall. He was put on gardening leave the week after consigned to become part of Pompey history and move on elsewhere.
It wasn’t a parting of the ways that caused the sort of controversy Steve Claridge’s would a few months down the line.
Results had been patchy and the perceived brand of football was hardly popular with fans nor did he have the worthy reputation he has since earned. But I’m pretty sure that the parting meeting in the Fratton Park boardroom would not have been for faint hearts and Pulis would have given no inch in appeasement.
We saw how principled he was recently at Crystal Palace where he looked at it, didn’t like what he saw and departed on the eve of a new season.
I don’t think Milan had really encountered stubborn managers to any great degree and I think it was a definite culture shock for him. Harry Redknapp was another who fell into that category and these sort of managers were certainly not puppets on a string.
Perhaps it is something to do with having the self-confidence to believe in doing the job if you are given the tools you think you need to do it. I once witnessed a heated argument between Harry and Milan in the boardroom after Pompey had ironically beaten Tony’s Stoke City 3-0 to go top of the Championship which they would eventually romp to. They were both coming to a supporters’ club dinner that very evening and as I entered the boardroom to collect them I was aware of raised heated voices.
Pompey might have gone to the top of the league with a convincing win but Harry was far from happy bemoaning the quality of the team intimating they wouldn’t stay there unless more players were brought in. It was something Milan was obviously totally unprepared for and shocked by. At this time I had not got even half way up the boardroom and had hastily retreated with a U-turn tiptoe back out. Neither made the supporters’ evening as Harry stormed off in one direction and Fred Dinenage drove a shell shocked Milan home in the other. Even back in his time at Pompey it was self-evident that Pulis had extreme self-confidence in his methods and style even if his popular label was ‘long ball merchant.’
Casting my mind back I had occasion to be thankful to him when on the Friday night before the London Supporters AGM we were as normal struggling to get some players to go along.
Contrary to popular belief this wasn’t just a problem that Pompey suddenly had when the likes of Sol Campbell, Sean Davis and Pedro Mendes and the Premier League circus rolled into town.
And more managers I have been associated with than not have been very lax about their players attending such things as supporter functions. Harry was one that strongly believed players were there to fulfil one function and that was to play on a Saturday. Of course there is a lot of truth in that but he wouldn’t risk upsetting anyone by telling them they had to go here or there socially.
But as soon as I and then Secretary Paul Weld relayed the problem to Tony in his office he immediately got on the phone spoke to of all people Andy Awford and made it clear he wanted three players in London the following evening. Hey Presto so it came to pass and that’s how easy it was and should always be.
Even when he left Pompey it was not uncommon to see Pulis standing in some obscure corner of Westleigh Park with peaked cap pulled down taking in a Pompey reserve game.
Only a couple of years back I went through the Stoke City press officer to get some words from him for the Linvoy Primus testimonial programme. When they weren’t forthcoming I managed to get through to his secretary explaining the deadline when he happened by chance to be standing close by.
Despite the fact he was just going out for a training session he didn’t hesitate to come to the phone for a chat and to give me some quotes regarding the player he of course had brought to Fratton Park.
I have sat with him at both the Millennium Stadium and Wembley in the past and he always came and had a chat in the Stoke v Pompey encounters over the years since. Despite his acrimonious departure he never has had anything but good to say about Pompey and I know personally that he was shocked by the club’s financial crisis and spoke out publicly in defence of them and against those that had brought it to the brink.
Personally I wouldn’t have traded in the 2003 Championship winning side, the FA Cup final triumph and a sniff in Europe for anything.
But I sometimes wonder given the achievements of Tony Pulis what might have transpired had history taken another fork.