Avram Grant says he feels let down by the new owners of Portsmouth. He claims promises have been broken, deals have been done behind his back. He feels very disappointed.
Poor dear: but what did he expect? Did he think he got the job because Portsmouth was being run by men of their word, salt of the earth guys who would no longer look a manager in the eye, while preparing to knife him in the back, as happened to his predecessor Paul Hart? Did he think Portsmouth had conducted a fire sale of every decent player that had passed through the place in five years because it was being restored to a sound footing financially? Did he think an owner who has never set foot in the place — and whose failure to appear in public has some adopting an agnostic approach to his existence — actually cared?
Grant got the job by default. He got it the same way he did at Chelsea, by being appointed Director of Football and then suddenly spreading his wings. The jury is out on his management capabilities in English football but he must be some operator, politically. If he could do for Jose Mourinho at Chelsea, think how easy it must have been to muscle in on Hart. And who is Grant’s director of football at Portsmouth now? Nobody. It was a specious role, a ludicrous extravagance at a club that often does not have the money to pay essential staff members, let alone frivolous ones. And, besides, Grant is no fool. He knows what happened to the last manager at Fratton Park who had a director of football peering over his shoulder.
All of which makes it hard to have sympathy when he complains that important players such as Younes Kaboul and Asmir Begovic were sold, and funds were not made available to strengthen the squad, as pledged. Grant keenly courted a return to Premier League football, and now he has it, but not on his terms. That was always going to be his problem. He was over-promoted at Chelsea because of his friendship with Roman Abramovich, the owner, and his desperation to keep riding that one lucky break made him easy prey for a regime whose Premier League credentials were similarly baseless. That is why Portsmouth and Grant were a match: two sets of people who, by rights, should not be there.
Grant managed in a Champions League final and came perilously close to winning the league because he inherited a Chelsea team that as good as ran itself after three years with Mourinho. He has a decent record in Israel but without Abramovich and his acolytes as pals, he would never have made it to the Premier League. He ended up back at Portsmouth because the owners treated Hart dismally and needed a patsy to put in his place. They wanted a manager with credibility, but one whose desire to work in the Premier League was so great it would drive him to overlook Portsmouth’s parlous state. They found him in Grant, whose plight proves the adage about being careful what you wish for because you might just get it: unless it’s a new striker, of course.