Why is doesn't take a financial genuis to figure out why the PST will always be doomed to failure

I can tell you the day that I first fell in love with Pompey; it was Saturday the 25^th of October 1986. We were playing at home at Fratton Park to West Bromwich Albion and we beat them 2-1 in front of a crowd of a paltry 11,698 fans. It must have been one of the rare seasons I was a lucky omen to Pompey because of the hundreds of games I’ve seen us play since that day the win rate versus the loss rate isn’t in my favour at all. I’d hate to statistically work it out because it wouldn’t be good. That first day however I was hooked as I still am to this very day over a quarter of a century later and at the end of the season we had gained promotion to Division One as was known back then. Pompey had resurfaced into to upper echelons of the football league once more.

Rewind back to the day I entered the world on April 15^th 1978; A Saturday afternoon I was born shortly before the start of the second half of a game away being played in Division Three away to Hereford United which Pompey won 2-0. My father is a son of Portsmouth like his father before him. I however and until the time I had children remained the only person of a vast family stretching the globe from the south of Ireland, to Portsmouth, Essex, America and beyond to have been born in Suffolk. I had been born a Tractor Boy and by all rights I should have supported my closest team which would is Ipswich Town. I was a mere month old when I was photographed in an Ipswich scarf crying my eyes out the day they won the FA Cup final. OK so I didn’t know then at a month old that I never wanted to be photographed with anything connected with Ipswich Town but having on numerous occasions been to Portman Road over the years I do know there is a club I’d really not be connected to in terms of geography and locality to my place of birth.

On my mother’s side there is a long standing connection to West Ham be it family or personal connections. The links are strong enough to have seen the younger me follow in my families footsteps when I first got interested in football. In later years it transpired my mother dated the brother of the World Cup hero Martin Peters before he so tragically committed suicide unable to cope with living in the shadows of his now world renowned brother having scored the vital goals to secure England’s one and only World Cup victory.

I take myself back to the primary school days before uniform when Frank McAvennie and Tony Cottee where my heroes. Being the fattest kid in school when the other kids would sing to me “McAvennie aint worth a penny tra la la la la, la la la la.” I still have never seen that advert and I maintain it was made up. I could, as always be very wrong. I was still proud to wear the shirt of West Ham. This is where things start to mould as a youngster and the values that will always take hold as a true football fan start to gain impedance. My father had never forced Pompey upon me as a kid. He had taken me to my first ever game which was Ipswich vs Manchester City in the same year as my first Pompey game which ended up a dog shit affair of a game with the score 0-0. By that I mean it would take you a good 90 minutes to clear all the shit from your brain of just how dire a game of football it really was. Even now I’m still scraping. So once more I am a month old wrapped in a town scarf and still crying.

All I can really remember from my first visit to Fratton Park is being amazed by the atmosphere. That’s a crowd of less than 12,000 imparting more on a young boy’s soul and heart than a larger crowd at Portman Road ever did. I was hooked.

I was the fattest kid in school who got bullied for saying he followed West Ham and then fell in love with Pompey with mixed feelings. If you’re going to be confused do it in style. I don’t remember being ecstatic about the day Pompey got promoted back to the First Division. All I can remember is being hooked on the atmosphere having come away from Fratton Park that very first time. I’m equally sure I was probably following West Hams results more than I was Pompey’s at that time but by the time I’d been given my first Pompey shirt there wasn’t any more doubt.

There is a serious point to this blog by the way and not me just walking down memory lane so do bear with me for a while.

The day of my birth we had played away in front of a crowd of 3,893. League Cup first and second round attendances aside and god forbid the Anglo-Italian Cup attendances, it shows just how far a football club that was once Champions of England can fall when financial discrepancies take hold. 51,385 is the recorded record attendance for a home game held at Fratton Park. The highest attendance that season at Fratton Park was against Cambridge United with an attendance of 13,152.

It’s only when you look at the figures first hand that you start to dispel the myths of what you have been lead to believe through all the stories down the years;  About this amazing support home and away. How as fans we will always follow our club through thick and thin. Remember that day we played x either home or away and we exaggerated the size of our penis to impress the girls and we never quite pulled but said we did anyway….

This is where I’m a sad bastard and I know more history about the club than any son born out of Pompey who doesn’t wear an anorak. The largest recorded attendance for any Pompey match is over 200,000. I’m not going to reveal the details but if you’ve read about the history of our fine club then you will know when it happened and occurred. It’s one of those great statistics alongside which English club has held onto the FA Cup for the longest period of time; So OK it might have got a bit dented during the War in the pubs of Pompey. That’s just the romance of the cup and nothing to do with alcohol consumption during the days of war time spirit and guarding the FA Cup in the pubs of Pompey. Seriously did the FA not expect a little bit of damage in the home of the Royal Navy at that time?

I do promise there is a point to all this.

After my first game in 1986, the final game of the season saw a crowd of 28,004 saw us lose to Sheffield United 2-1. Promotion back to the big time had occurred; the procurement of players like Paul Mariner who at the time was the highest paid player in England on wages of £2,000K a week. That season we were the highest spenders in England having gained promotion back to where we belonged. I’m sure I can find the exact figures if I tried but we were the highest spenders in the First Division that season. From memory the figure was around £1.6 million. That sounds like peanuts now but when you outspend all the established names in a bid to take on all who surround you and you get relegated at the first attempt. That’s a financial recipe for disaster. Any of this sound familiar?

I’m not going to sit and work out the average attendance season by season at that point. All I will suggest is that until the mid point where promotion was on the cards just doing basic math in my head, before the Shrewsbury game on December 29^th 1986 where the attendance was 15,006 we were averaging well below 10,000 a week. I can do the math over and under in my head with no problems to know that figure was well under 10,000 on average.

So the club got promoted in the days when it didn’t cost you a mortgage to take your family to the game and perhaps your marriage if you did. Three games into the season and we play Southampton at home to our so called biggest rivals in the days before all seater stadia and restricted capacity. The attendance that day was 20,161. Compare that to the visit of Liverpool at home in a 2-0 loss which drew a crowd of 28,117 - way over 8,000 more than our so called biggest rivals. Either they didn’t turn up or we didn’t simply care. Our first season back in the big time since we were once the crowned champions of England, not once but twice in succession.

How can you go from having a record attendance of over 50,000 to not even being able to get above 21,000 to your so called closest rivals? How is it that our record attendance for any game is over 200,000 people yet so much is played out about the derby game in which we couldn’t even have a sell out this season? In fairness the record attendance was played out thousands of miles away from home when the English league was king of the football world. In reality the so called derby has been hyped up through the era of hooliganism during its peak in the 70s and 80s. Portsmouth vs. Southampton had before then always been a non event. The Cup Final winning team of 1939 paraded the trophy to the Saints fans to a standing applause.  Surely that’s when football was football? I can’t see our fans applauding the current Saints squad parading the Championship Trophy at Fratton Park this season to the same applause the team of 1939 received. Oh no – they choked its fine. It didn’t happen.

For the second time in the history of our fine club after the debacle of the 1970s and financial ruin promotion and relegation had taught us nothing during the late 80s. The following is a set of figures that shows the average attendance for our club at home that was available from sources on the net.

1989–90 8,861

 1990–91 9,681

1991–92 11,745

1992–93 13,695

1993–94 11,622

1994–95 8,269

1995–96 9,407

1996–97 8,723

1997–98 11,149

1998–99 11,956

1999–00 13,906

2000–01 13,707

2001–02 15,121

2002–03 18,933

 So how did we ever achieve a home record attendance in any competition of over 50,000? Why are so many people aghast that around 250,000 people could attend an FA Cup Celebration win and not want to contribute to the financial future of Pompey?

Well the figures stand up for themselves. Forgive me if I’m wrong but the average attendance shows that at no time even during the Cup run that ended up in defeat to Liverpool on penalties or the subsequent miss fortune to lose out on Promotion to West Ham on automatic goal difference did at any time capture the emotions of the people of Portsmouth enough to get them through the turnstiles of Fratton Park.

The campaign to Pack the Park didn’t once see Fratton Park full between the start of the campaign and the end of the season and remember that included a so called derby game and a friend’s reunited game where the fans of every other club had been invited to join in our support.

I don’t care what business model the PST proposes the facts speak for themselves laid out for all to see.

The only way the PST will ever take hold of the club given the history of time over my time of supporting the club is if a very rich benefactor walks into town and pledges a large sum of cash.

Why buy into a dream? What are the PST trying to sell you for you for your hard earned money? When the calls came down to pack the park Fratton Park didn’t sell out once and that includes the so called Derby game.  Invest in a future? If you cannot call to Pack the Park and sell out on a so called derby game what does that tell us? If we cannot average over 14,000 for most seasons at best before the EPL where do you think the support will come flooding in? This isn’t fiction, this is fact. If you believe the PST bid will attract the crowds back to Fratton Park then go ahead.

The statistics don’t lie. The financial breakeven point last season was well documented. We didn’t pack the park. Far from it. Since the heady days of attendances of 50K, where has that so called support gone? It was never there! Those figures came from those stationed in the area in the Royal Navy when football was a sport and not a business.

The PST are in dream land. We couldn’t fill a stadium for the so called derby. Even in the 90s our attendances were shocking when football wasn’t overpriced. During the cup run and the season after when we missed out on promotion what were our average attendances? Off the top of my head we had something like 19 consecutive seasons in Division Two without promotion. Thats old school talk, to you youngsters lets call it the Chamoionship.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

There is no business plan that the PST can project to the FA that would suggest any change can 

happen.

The bid is dead.

It was always a non starter.

The debts are too high. As an outsider looking in. What more do I need to say?  Do I need to state the obvious?

Crystal Palace somehow managed to exit a CVA for around a penny in the pound.

Mr Birch has taken the stance of not letting investors see the club accounts unless they pay a sum of x into y to see the club books.

I won’t divulge the true figures. All I will say is that he has humoured the PST into a bid. There isn’t a hope in hell that the math of the PST will stand up coming in front of the FA.

We have sold Pearce and about to sell Ward two of the lowest wage earners at the club.

How do you suggest we find buyers for the two top wage earners at the club? Do you think Mokoena on £32K a week is going to move if the PST was lucky enough to convince creditors to agree to a CVA? Fuck me tip of the iceberg. No way he’s going to give up his contract. TBH? Move for less money?

Unless the club is liquidated and all the player registrations are given to the PFA give me one answer how the PST bid can succeed?

How will your first escrow account donation of £100 make a difference if the club survives another CVA?

If you can’t get Mokoena and TBH off the books how quickly will your money go? Say the PST get support for a million? The law is in favour of the players.

Lets state fact for fact. If you’re stupid enough to believe the PST can ever gain access to the club without Chanrai riding in on a white horse then more fool you. It won’t ever happen period.

The Modern game needs to look at Rome and Arsene to secure it's long term future

There’s a famous expression that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Rewind back nearly three decades to 1984 and Apple under Steve Jobs launch the first Apple Macintosh. In 1985 Apple released Jobs from his position and by 1997 the company was looking at the real possibility of going bankrupt. Fast forward back to the present day and Apple are now valued at more than 600 billion dollars a staggering turn around in fortunes masterminded largely off the back of the vision of one man. The rise in fortunes isn’t alone to the technology industry either. Back in 1984 kicking a ball around a field for 90 minutes didn’t bring the players the same riches that we see today. Before the formation and the days when the top league was known as Division One, the average wage of a top flight footballer was just £480. Wayne Rooney’s current contract at Manchester United see’s him collect an annual salary of £8 million a figure just shy of £154,000 a week. Whilst today’s players aren’t all earning multimillions per year in the top flight, the average wage in the Premiership by the 2009-10 season has risen to £22,353 per week, close to nearly 47 times the amount players were earning 25 years previously. Looking at this on an annual basis this means the average annual salary will be £1,162,356 per season, not bad work if you’re fortunate enough to get it.

Football like the world of technology has changed beyond belief over the past three decades with the money inside the top flight of the English game beyond the wildest dreams of the Chairman of any owner back in 1984 could have ever imagined. Manchester City, today crowned Premier League Champions for the first time today have since 2008 spent a total of £930.4 million. Of that total just £365.3 million of that money came from revenues generated by the club with the rest coming from the pockets of billionaire Sheikh Mansour to the tune of £565.1 million. Whilst figures like these might not be a problem to a billionaire benefactor like Mansour, other clubs are now finding that chasing the dreams and living beyond their means can only last for so long before the bubble bursts and the problems begin to mount. Portsmouth found themselves the first club to have ever gone into administration in the English Premier League. A successive round of financial problems has been well documented to be joined by the names of Glasgow Ranger north of the border fighting for their very survival. With so much money flooding into the game it’s hard to believe that any top flight club could manage to get themselves into a financial mess but it’s a sad reality of the changing face of English football.

Whilst the blue half of Manchester will be celebrating their first title win since 1968 today, just over ten miles down the road at neighbours Bolton Wanderers fans will be commiserating after their relegation to the Championship with debts estimated to be in the region of £100 million and no rich billionaire benefactor to bail them out. Owen Coyle’s Wanderer’s will see a total of 14 players either out of contract in the summer of loan players returning to their parent club. Captain Kevin Davis, influential playmaker and winger Martin Petrov and top goal scorer Ivan Klasnic are just three names who will be out of contract in the summer. Whilst West Ham and Blackpool are both in with a chance of regaining their place in next season’s Premier League, Birmingham City have failed to go up at the first time of asking of the three teams that were last relegated and ultimately only one of those three will find themselves back in the top flight after the end of this season. Bolton will be looking very closely at Birmingham City’s plight and the challenge ahead as they try to balance their books, consolidate their debts and attempt to jump back into the top flight of football at the first time of asking.

The cost to Birmingham City of failing to be promoted will most likely be administration. Birmingham will have all but run out of money by June. The club’s owner Carson Yeung is absent facing fraud charges in Hong Kong relating to £59.7 million is a case of alleged money laundering. The banks have withdrawn a £7 million overdraft facility and the club cannot raise much needed revenue by remortgaging St Andrew’s as HSBC hold the deeds to the ground as security on an outstanding loan. The club are subject to a transfer embargo imposed by the football league, manager Chris Hughton is largely believed to be heading out of the door to join neighbours West Bromwich Albion after Roy Hogson’s departure to take over the reins at England and the clubs wages to income ratio remains hovering very close to the 100% mark. The parachute payments received by the midlands club are nowhere near large enough to offset the huge wages of star players retained on the clubs books like striker Nikola Zigic earns a reported £2.5 million a year alone. Birmingham City in the next month are set to follow in the footsteps of Portsmouth and fall victims for chasing the dream with too much vigour and financial recklessness.

Failure to publish their accounts on time for the second season running means the level of debt Birmingham City is actually carrying isn’t being reported. Contrast that to fellow relegated side Blackpool and we see a totally different picture. Despite only staying up for one season, they sit one game away from a personal first time return against Sam Allardyce’s West Ham United, another club carrying significant levels of debt from their time in the EPL. Blackpool’s promotion saw their income levels rise by a staggering 450% to £51.7 million. During their season in the EPL their net cost on transfers was £3.5 million but that brought in ten players, losing only two in comparison. The wage bill only rose by less than £600,000 or roughly 4.5% year on year. Majority shareholder Owen Oyston paid off all the clubs external debt as cash balances at the bank rose from £2.8 million to £8.1 million.  Blackpool’s finances for the following Championship season will make very interesting reading indeed having seen stars like Charlie Adams depart in the summer to Liverpool, the inclusion of wage reductions for players and staff following relegation and the addition of parachute payments being received. I’m sure if Blackpool were to win promotion via the play offs again, Blackpool would start the season fully believing they would potentially be able to stay up this time around as all three of last season’s promoted clubs have managed to do this time around. Whilst QPR only managed to survive on the last day of the season, in comparison Norwich City and Swansea City have been able to breathe easy and stop watching over their shoulders for some time and finish the season in 11^th and 12th places respectively both finishing on 47 points, 11 ahead of newly relegated Bolton Wanderers. They both managed to do so on reality meagre budgets in comparison and all three sides will be hoping to consolidate and build on this season when the season restarts in earnest this coming August.

The gulf in football from the EPL to League Two is vast and we see the average League Two player earns £747 per week, some £21,606 behind their top league counterparts. The significance of winning promotion to the EPL or remaining in the league has never been higher with so many clubs carrying such high levels of debt without the backing of billionaire owners at their disposal. Whilst this true of many clubs, Wolverhampton Wanderers have continued to buck this trend and despite being the first club to be relegated this season, remain debt free. Their main struggle this summer will be trying to keep hold of their main players rather than a worry about balancing the books.

The annual PKF survey published in regards to the state of English and Scottish football brought about some interesting revelations into the views on football finance in the game and the way clubs are structuring and using finance on offer to them or will potentially be doing within their business models in the forthcoming season. In 2011 10% of English Championship clubs increased their banking facilities a figure very similar to the previous season though most banks remain reluctant lenders to the sector and are unlikely to commit further facilities. 40% of Championship clubs envisage having to use 90% of more of the total banking facilities presently made available to them during the coming season a sign that borrowing will remain a significant part of trying to gain promotion or avoiding relegation will be done raising levels of debt within the national game. Whilst 50% of clubs said they didn’t envisage using the facilities the other 10% stated they were unsure whether they would have to take advantage of the facilities or not. A further 30% of clubs admitted that they were having problems sourcing finance for the season a figure of nearly 1 in 3, a worrying sign and trend for the forthcoming months and years in football indeed.

10% of clubs admitted to being late with payments due to the HMRC and a further 10% wouldn’t commit to admitting whether or not they had made late payments. Of that 10% not one club had done so with the agreement of the HMRC itself. Another worrying statistic is 20% of Championship clubs have admitted they are worried that a sizable challenge by the HMRC on the use of image rights in player’s contracts would likely to cause them an issue. We’ve seen the issue north of the border with Glasgow Rangers and it would be hugely naïve to believe the potential problem doesn’t exist in the EPL.

44% of EPL clubs have player’s contracts in place whereby player’s wages will decrease if they are relegated from the top flight. Impressively that figure increases to 90% of Championship clubs who it seems are way ahead of their EPL counterparts in now beginning to see the financial impact potential relegation can bring.

Whilst looking at the clubs who’ve recently been relegated or promoted, it would be hard to forget the last of this season’s EPL clubs to have been relegated who haven’t already been mentioned so far, so step forward Blackburn Rovers. Until today Rovers were one of only four clubs to have lifted the EPL championship alongside Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United. This season has been a turbulent one on and off the pitch for the Lancashire club which has seen the fury of fans vented at the owners the Venkys and manager Steve Kean with calls for both to go. Fans have begun to boycott home games, the club shop and fail to renew season tickets in a bid to bolster the chances of removing Kean and ultimately the Venky’s themselves. When the Venkys took over at Blackburn Rovers they promised the fans they would deliver European football within five years and the signing of Ronaldinho. What they actually delivered was Championship football and David Goodwillie who last month narrowly avoided a prison sentence after being guilty of his second assault within a year. Perhaps someone should take the Venkys aside and remind them that despite the money of the EPL, it’s the fans who remain at the heart of any club and not the finance. Whilst the owners deny any attempts to sell the club it wouldn’t come as any surprise after the mistakes they’ve made during their tenure see’s Kean removed from his job or the Venky’s try and sell on the club. The next twelve months promises to be an even more turbulent time for Rovers if not.

I’ll end this the same way that I started it. I mentioned how Rome Wasn’t built in a day. It’s best to remember the cornerstones of Roman civilisation stood for hundreds of years and to this day we still have Rome although in a different form to its earliest times obviously. The way the English Premier League is currently operating, unless serious changes are made at the bass roots of the industry the debts carried in the game are going to be a burden that some clubs will no longer be able to potentially trade. Birmingham City are likely to go into administration next month, Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers both remain in administration already as do Port Vale. If Bolton Wanderers fail to bounce back in their first season of asking will they be left facing administration? With debts of £100 million relegation will pose very serious questions of the Wanderers board and how levels of debt were allowed to build up to such levels in the first place, questions the game should have been asking itself a long time ago now.

I will leave you with my favourite bit of research from this entire piece which surrounds Mr Arsenal aka Arsene Wenger, the man who revolutionised the Premier League more than any other manager in my opinion. Since Arsene Wenger arrived at Arsenal the top sides in the country have continued to spend lavish sums on players backed largely be either billionaire owners in the cases of Manchester City and Chelsea or be leveraging large amounts of debt in the case of Manchester United. The following shows the overall spend on player purchases since Arsene Wenger’s arrival in the English game of some of the clubs around them in the same time and more interestingly after transfer monies received what their net spend was.

Manchester United:

Overall Spend: £534.05m
Overall Received: £283.975m
Net Spend: £250.075m

Manchester City:

Overall Spend: £628.1m
Overall Received: £155.543m
Net Spend: £472.557m

Chelsea:

Overall Spend: £720.83m
Overall Received: £216.185m
Net Spend: £504.645m

Liverpool:

Overall Spend: £523.33m
Overall Received: £318.87m
Net Spend: £204.46m

Tottenham:

Overall Spend: £392.55m
Overall Received: £217.93m
Net Spend: £174.62m

Now compare this to Arsene Wenger’s record at Arsenal where their overall spend is less than all other five clubs, the transfer income was only bettered by one club in the shape of Liverpool and the last figure in comparison is astonishing and none of the other biggest clubs in the country even come close. Read it and marvel at it folks.

Arsenal:

Overall Spend: £314.75m
Overall Received: £310.514m
Net Spend: £4.236m

Remember under Arsene Wenger Arsenal have never failed to qualify for a Champions League slot. If there’s a starting point for other teams to base themselves upon then all roads lead to Arsenal.

You back the PST we're coming for you

It’s amazing what turning a blind eye can do to a person’s soul and everyday life when the rest of the Pompey world is stressing day to day. Do I miss it? Do I miss all the attention? Do I miss knowing what’s going on behind the scenes? No I don’t. The bliss of not knowing is amazing. Hand on heart I don’t miss it for a second. That’s not to say I don’t get fed information from time to time but hand on heart I can honestly say I walked away at the right time. To say things are in a pickle is to suggest we should be sponsored by Branston’s. How would that be for a little irony in life?

I guess anything I write will be two months out of date and if I criticise anyone in this blog there will be hell to pay. Well guess what? My life is a lot calmer through walking away and quite frankly through what I know and have learnt from a lot of trust worthy sources I’m glad I am not involved in the day to day business of Portsmouth FC anymore.

I’m going to write this blog blind with no inside knowledge that I was once party to. I know what I know through trusted sources. I chose to walk away from Pompey about two months ago and from public life about a month ago and I haven’t looked back. I haven’t had the stress I previously experienced from having an insider’s knowledge. I calmly walked away yet the arguments remain.

So let’s put a simple spin on things.

You can sue me for all you like. I do not have a bean to my name. So go ahead. I shall intersperse with the word allegedly with every connotation… this means everyone trying to sue me for the following will have a hard time trying to sue me for money I don’t actually have under English law.

So having not bothered to follow anything involving the ins and outs what can I ascertain as a fan of over half a century is going on? More over what did I Know before I went quiet?

I have screen shots from conversations taken with Vince Wolanin behind the scenes; I have the same from conversations taking place with Steve Claridge from his time as manager at Portsmouth. We all have our own view. Did I ever think when we started the PBA that I or we would ever get this close to people trying to buy the club or who have managed and played for the club? Never ever in my wildest dreams. This is isn’t a figment of my imagination. There is a reason I walked away from it all and that’s because I couldn’t handle knowing the truth and being the biggest mouth on the PBA I couldn’t say a word of what I had learned.

What does it take to buy a club? Well when you are Trevor Birch from what I know it seems a great deal of time, money and effort. Look back in a time line and know what the word escrow means. To see the club accounts you will have to deposit a rather large sum into an account. This means to TB you are serious. Because as we all know TB is out to save Pompey. Well if this was true then why would the likes of TB and David Lampitt go behind the best wishes and intentions of potential investment allegedly? Why not open the books publically?

If behind the scenes you let your CEO be sacked then why would you allegedly employ him to go to Genoa to sort out the finances behind the monies owed from the Kevin Prince Boeteng deal allegedly?

Same reason I would allege that you keep Peter Storrie on with an alleged consultancy retainer fee.

How does Tanya Robbins keep her job considering the cuts made allegedly?

Surely the cloth has to be cut accordingly? This is alleged. The PBA has no money or legal representation. Knowing what I allegedly know and don’t know. Would I encourage you to spend a penny of your hard earned money towards the PST? No I wouldn’t. They can spend all they like of your hard earned money to try sue me. I don’t have a penny. Do not invest your hard earned cash in the PST.

The PST can try to discredit me all you like but I walked away for a reason. If the PST chooses to attack me or the PBA then I will happily come out of retirement and put into the public domain the information that has been put at my disposal as the head of council of the PBA. Whilst this has will remain alleged at this given time I feel duty bound to discredit any attempts by the PST to draw on support of members of the PBA financially.

Even in retirement the PST will not get the backing of the PBA. Try the support of Fratton Faithfull who got too close to CSI when we called them out. If you would like to take anything I’ve said personally then feel free to do so. The PBA has a fucking list as long as your arm ready to fire into the public domain. Back the PST? …………… I’m going to allege you don’t fucking bother. Hire a minibus instead. Who was the driver? Warning shots fired. Let’s see what your arguments are. If you wish to attack the PBA let it known that the minibus comment is the first. The PBA will sink the PST very fucking quickly….that’s alleged btw. I’m going to stick my last £2.43 in the hat on behalf of the PST.

Sue me for it. You are going to need it.  PUP

Sexism in football. Why we should place more faith in women but also recognise that sexism isnt a one way street Part II

So if you read part one of my blog and wonder where the story goes next I’ve now decided to make the tentative steps into entering a world which is a field entirely dominated by women and being a man taking these steps the level of pressure I felt was immense not only from within but from society as a whole. Not only was I making the choice to quit my career at the peak of its success to go and look after my children I was now training to become a child minder. Once again I was to be the only man surrounded by women but so far I had always managed to more than hold my own but could I go one step further and take on a female dominated profession at their own game? Time would tell.

I started writing this blog as homage to women and the women in my life that have made an impact on how I’ve handled my working career. Without them I wouldn’t have been the success that I have been down the years. As a Portsmouth fan since 1986 and off the back of last week’s programme about Sexism in football, I firmly believe hand on heart that from experience if our club would have had a female CEO in place instead of Peter Storrie that we wouldn’t have ended up in the financial trouble that we did. My first ever manager knew how to handle men in the business world. She knew every approach in the book on how to handle members of staff and she was an absolute gem and I owe her so much its untrue. She would have been able to handle Mario Balotelli better than Mancini does at Manchester City. I state this as a fact because I was a bigger pain in her arse to her than his high profile on and off the field antics for Manchester City this season. Sadly as you’ve learned I was never on the same money and have never been or will ever be close.

I could and should have been fired on many occasions during my apprenticeship. The first words I ever uttered to our Managing Director was that I would have his job one day. The irony being that several years later he would turn to me and say do you remember what your first words to me were. I cringed. He told me hand on heart that he fully believed that if I stayed in the industry that I would indeed have his job one day. I’ve had no higher words of praise from a man I learned to have the uppermost respect for in business and in life. He knew everything that went on within our company and when he was in charge the entire company pulled together. He could tell you what time you farted and what you’d had for dinner the previous evening. Honestly nothing got past the man he was a total genius at what he did. He was an outstanding leader and I’ve never come across the likes of him in business again and doubt I ever will. If I am half the boss he is then I feel I will be doing well towards the staff I currently lead.

The impact of women on my working ethos has always been huge. Apart from my first MD I haven’t met a male boss in the top echelons who I have thought has done an outstanding job yet I have encountered so many female managers that have done an amazing job that never seems to be recognised alongside their male counterparts. Far too many organisations have taken an old boy network approach as to who gets fast tracked. I have worked under and alongside women who are far more capable than men at their job yet haven’t been given the chance to fast track their careers in the same way and I fully believe that businesses are missing out in the long term by hiring the wrong people. I cannot imagine a female CEO at Pompey who would have signed her name to some of the utterly ridiculous contracts under written by Peter Storrie. They were JK Rowling esque in the utterly ridiculous notions of what he promised players and the sums of money involved could never be sustained. The average stay at home mum working on a limited shopping budget every week would have quickly flagged that if you had fifty pound to spend on your weekly shopping that when your first two entries on your shopping list are Moet and Truffles that the budget isn’t going to have stretched by the time you get to Tampax and Spaghetti hoops. It’s an absolute no brainer and to write yourself a win bonus when you’re a fat man in a suit making bad calculations really does take the biscuit as far as I’m concerned. I re-iterate the point most strongly that a female CEO at Pompey would not have allowed the same situation to have arisen at Pompey and I stand by that statement 110%.

Sod it make it 120% just for good measure.

So I’m now spending my weekends learning about being a Child Minder and working towards the necessary qualifications. During the week I’m working on the house getting everything up to scratch and working on every angle to make the business a success but there’s a big arrow above my head whilst this is going on and it says the word male. I cannot hide the fact that I am a man training to look after children and I’m looking after my infant children at the same time.

I qualify from my course and I’m now an Ofsted Registered Child Minder and I can advertise the fact. The question remains having done all the ground work and I’m now advertising my services would I manage to persuade any parent to entrust the care of their children to me – a man in what has always been a totally female dominated world. I was and I’m being honest here – totally gob smacked when I got my first phone call within a week of being qualified from a lady asking if she could come and talk terms about looking after her son. She was totally honest with me and said that she had gone through three child minders in the space of four months who couldn’t deal with her son and was hoping that I could look after him pre and after school and during the half term. I asked her if she minded if I spent a little time with her boy and had a chat with him and she had no objections. I wanted to make my own opinion up about the lad and not listen to anything that had gone on in the previous few months with other child minders. I wanted to judge the lad on his merits. So off we went and we started bouncing outside on the trampoline. I asked him about his interests and his hobbies. From just a few bounces I ascertained that he was a compulsive liar but not in a harmful way. It was attention seeking stuff and that like all boys he was just trying to make his mark in the world. He certainly needed a lot of help but I was more than willing to take him on. He was a good kid at heart if not a little wayward and needed some guidance. His mother also identified that he was dyslexic and had certain learning problems. I stood by my claim that like a finger print no two children are ever the same and that I would tailor my care towards his needs on a daily basis. Both parties happy I had my first child to look after. I had set out on my own in business and I was also a stay at home Dad. Anyone who’s had an email from my Daddy Day Care email address and has ever wondered where it came from, you’ll probably now be thinking this makes sense all of a sudden.

Not long after I signed another two lads up to holiday care and things had started for me. They weren’t flying in comparison to other child minders in the village but I had started and that was the main thing. Then came the inspection from Ofsted a little under three months into starting. Any teachers reading this will share the anxiety I had at that point but worse for me was the fact I was a male taking work that has always been considered a female’s job and on the day of inspection I was about to be judged on my handling of a young boy who’d gone through child minders like hot dinners.

The female inspector came early on in the afternoon. We chatted as I amused two small children and she went through my paperwork and did various checks on safety around the house. She stayed in her car outside the house whilst I went on the school run and returned with my two and said boy in toe. The previous day he couldn’t understand something in his lesson and I had promised him faithfully that I would get my computer out and show him what he had missed. I sat with two wriggling toddlers vying for his attention as well as his and somehow managed to hopefully demonstrate that I was capable of looking after children for a living. After his collection and my partner at the time had returned and had taken the children off for dinner I was sat down with the inspector and praying I’d done enough to be considered that I could do this for a living not only to the basic standards but to a good or better standard.

I will never forget the words she said to me. One of the basic premises you have to outline as a Child Minder is all the aspects of care that you will undertake for the child when they are with you. She told me that in over twenty years of being an inspector that my handout to parents was the best and most detailed she had ever seen. Her last words to me were that I was an example to men everywhere and she hoped that more would follow my lead and start to join the profession – We need more men like you. At the end of the visit she said I didn’t need another inspection for two years and she was rating me as Good on the score chart and that she fully expected me to be on the outstanding list when she made her next visit. Once again I had no idea how I’d managed it but I felt I’d arrived and certainly managed to stick two fingers up at the rest of the profession.  Mostly though I was heavily relieved.

My competition in the village consisted of two main people both of whom were women. One didn’t have the best of reputations but I wasn’t worried about her. The one woman to dislodge was like competing against Ghandi or Mother Theresa. My partner’s eldest two children had been under her care and she was considered by even my partner to be the bee’s knees. I can state quite categorically now looking back and now she’s retired that an involvement with the local girl guides and brownies associations on top of being a child minder doesn’t actually qualify you as being a good child minder. Every child I was privileged to look after had their own programme based on their needs. After I left the profession both my two were looked after by the aforementioned woman and I can hand on heart say they never received anywhere near the level of care and attention that I provided for all the boys and girls that I looked after in my time as a Child Minder. I wonder now what I was worried about when I first set up. Whilst the children I cared for came from circumstance like broken homes and no male role model, I can look back and know I’d made a difference in all their lives and a real positive contribution. The first lad who was seen as the trouble maker actually had a problem with expressing himself and making himself understood. We changed basic things to the way he phrased certain things for example he would take things in a literal sense. Say to him have a good weekend and he would reply I will. Knowing him as I did I knew how he’d processed the information and replied to it. We worked and practised on him changing positive sentences towards him being ended with two simple words – you to. I’ll never forget the look on his teachers face as she wished him a good weekend and he smiled back and said to her “You to,” I thought she was going to melt.

I stuck my neck on the line for the lad and had said to his teacher that she needed to give him time to fathom out his answers in his head to questions rather than punish him for saying the first thing that came into his head which would often lead him into trouble and him being sent out of class even if it meant saying to him she’d ask his answer in a minute and get him to put his hand down. Under my guidance he flourished and on his last day of primary school the Head Mistress took me to one side and candidly admitted that the school had gotten things wrong with how they’d dealt with the lad and what an absolute pleasure he’d been since he’d come under my wing. She said I’d done wonders for the lad and that the school had learned a lot at the same time at how children should be educated. These words meant more than you can ever imagine.

Another lad that came into my care was as smart as smart can be yet his parents couldn’t handle him at all. To them he was the child from hell and they would apologise for his behaviour when they picked him up and wouldn’t ever accept that he’d been an angel for me. I never once had an ounce of trouble from the lad and quickly ascertained that he was just very, very bright and needed challenging at a level above his peers. I taught him a memory trick to do with words whereby he had to remember a sequence of twenty words in a correct hour. I managed to get him up to the level where he could easily remember 100 words in a sequence like he was reading them off a list in front of him. He blew me away. He’s now hoping to study to be a Doctor and is still using the same techniques.

My most challenging work involved three young lads whose mum was in a coma fighting for their lives. They were the grand children of an ex work colleague and they had grown up in London and never really visited the countryside. They were with me for three weeks and all aged under ten they had no understanding of how ill their mother actually was and that she was fighting for her life. The boys had an absolute blast as did me and the kids during their stay with me. Their grandmother bless her heart has exclaimed that when I die I should be listed as a Saint. As a Pompey fan that’s always the biggest no, no in my book but I didn’t take issue with it under the circumstance. She wasn’t worried about the cost of childcare during those three weeks she was watching her daughter fight for her life. I didn’t worry about child care costs either at the end of the three weeks. How could I have taken a penny under such circumstances? The boys were an absolute pleasure to look after and how can you take any money in those circumstances to profit from someone else’s pain? I couldn’t take a penny, just knowing I’d been able to help during their time of need was enough for me.

During all this my first born had been diagnosed with having cerebral palsy which unlike most parents who would have been knocked for six, I took it all in my stride. She had been born seven and a half weeks premature and had spent her first night on life support fighting for her life with none of her vital organs showing any signs of kicking into gear. I had been told to expect the worst and that she wouldn’t make it through the night. I spent her first hours darting between her and her mother who was high on morphine tying to look after both of them and encourage her mum to come down onto the ward and visit the child she thought she had so desperately failed at this juncture. I lied through my teeth and kept telling her how our new born baby daughter was fine fearing that if she were to die she would never have seen her. She kept asking me if I was telling the truth. I was lying through my teeth. With my then partner totally out of it high as a kite of pain killers, I spent the rest of the night with my hand through the incubator stroking my new born daughters back and talking to her telling her how much I loved her and anything else that would come into my head as the nurses and Doctors watched on checking all her vital signs as she fought for her life. All through the complicated pregnancy I’d spent hours talking to a bump about football and how my day had been and how I couldn’t wait for her to be born. Here we were now hoping that a miracle would occur and that she would live beyond her first night on earth. I have no idea looking back that first night how I didn’t shed a tear. Something came over me and the will and determination to make sure my little girl survived just kicked in.

It was a week later when I was given the honour of first holding out daughter in my arms covered in wires still fighting for her life. I have a picture of us at that moment which always reminds me of how small she actually was and how close we came to losing her in her early days. I can remember the doctors diagnosing her with cerebral palsy, I can remember them telling us how she’s most likely never speak, how she’d never walk. Well I can tell you aged eight her mouth is truly like her daddy’s and she’s an opinionated so and so and although she may sometimes need to use a wheel chair and relies on her walking frame in school to get around, she is more than capable of walking when she puts her mind to it and it’s very rare she feels any different to any other child. Her daddy made sure of that  in the time that he looked after her when she was knee high and I pushed her and pushed her to ensure she had the best physio I could provide day in and day out. It wasn’t easy but life never is and there is no way I was going to let her grow up feeling any different to any other child just because she has a disability. Wisely aged 8 now she’s decided she wants to support Arsenal rather than follow in her Daddy’s footsteps and be a Pompey fan and I don’t blame her quite frankly but she did make me smile on Saturday morning when she said to me if Pompey lose to the scum this afternoon I will be well annoyed Dad. I must have done something right with her.

Things didn’t work out between me and the kids mum for whatever reason and I found myself back in the real world working for one of the largest companies in the world which at that point were turning over 8.5 billion Euro’s a year. The interview lasted two days and at one point you had to undertake a NASA test I kid you not. For the first time in my career I had entered a totally male dominated environment. We were working with builders and carpenters as clients and whilst we had female reps on the road it’s safe to say that the team ethos was built behind a lads philosophy. One of our main rivals had employed a female rep on one of my colleague’s patches to try and take the business away from us. These were the heady days before the recession hit where deals were brokered on a daily basis that wouldn’t happen now. Our clients would phone the rep up in question and get her down on site just to eye her up and had no intention of swapping their business from our company. The sad thing is she ended up sleeping with the rep on my patch just before he left under a murky cloud and she left with my price book on every price that my new clients were paying for their goods. Had she gone in with half a brain and blown me out of the water on prices I’d have lost even more clients than the previous rep had managed to alienate. Luckily she had tried to undercut me by pennies rather than pounds and using what I’d been taught by successful business women I re-cemented the business. Then the recession hit home and it hit hard and unemployment followed which was hell on earth for me and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.

As I write I’m back in full time employment running a wines department. Always breaking the mould as always. The conclusion to this blog is to highlight the role that both men and women can bring to differing jobs in businesses were one sex is the most dominant. I took women on at their own game and I succeeded. I never totally broke down the barriers and I’m sure no man ever will manage it, but it’s not to suggest that had I been able to carry on in my career that I wouldn’t have. I split up with my ex and I no longer had a house to operate from as a child minder. Career over – Null and void and such is life I will never know. But what I do know is that the women who have shaped my career I believe could and should have been given the chance to replace some of the men I’ve had the misfortune to work under.

I’m going to leave it to a man far more talented than I will ever be, Mr Sam Cooke – A Change gonna come. Whether it happens in my lifetime I’m sceptical, but one day women will rightfully earn their places in the top echelons of businesses including football on their own merits.

Just remember though there are men more than capable of challenging women at their own game. Perhaps one day we’ll all meet in the middle and find a level of acceptance. I doubt it will ever be in my lifetime though sadly.