With Adams gone, Portsmouth are back

There was only one Premier League match this weekend but what an important one it could have turned out to be for Portsmouth.

Alarming

Their alarming slide down the table with just two wins in sixteen under Tony Adams, had seen them head towards the drop zone with a very real prospect of sliding out of the top flight.

That would have been disastrous for the club who have financial difficulties and a small ground. It would have been disastrous for a team that had established itself as a top half team capable of challenging for Europe and winning the FA Cup. It would have been disastrous for a set of fans who are as loud and passionate as any in the land.

Clueless

I had asked several times in this column why Pompey had changed from being a decent outfit under Harry Redknapp into a clueless outfit under Tony Adams. OK, Defoe and Diarra had gone, but the team was basically the same and the performance level dropped considerably.

Surely it couldn’t all be down to the manager could it? Well, the first game in the post Adams era saw Pompey keep a clean sheet, score twice and win comfortably at home in the manner they did so often under Redknapp.

In charge of the team were Paul Hart and Brian Kidd. These are two great football men and I’m sure they are great to work for but their record’s show they are not tactical geniuses or managerial wizards! Just ask the fans at Nottingham Forest or Blackburn.

Bad under Adams

So, I still don’t understand why the team are good under Redknapp, bad under Adams and good again under Hart and Kidd.

Maybe part of the answer came from David James, the veteran England keeper who set a Premier League appearances record yesterday and added to his Premier League clean sheets record. The game was his 536th Premier League appearance and he was rightly proud of his record,

“I’d like to extend the record. It’s about playing in the best league in the world and enjoying it. To have a longevity record in the best league in the world is a big plus.”

James went on to say that the team played yesterday more like they had done in the past. About the Adams era, he said,

“We seemed to lack a lot of the basic stuff. We were a side last season that did not expect to score a lot of goals so we knew we had to keep clean sheets – and when we did score we knew we had to hold on to it. But we lost that earlier in the season and it is difficult to get back into things.”

I still don’t really understand what this means though. Surely Tony Adams didn’t tell his players to defend badly or not keep their shape or allow the opposition to turn and shoot in the box? What does ‘not having the basics’ mean?

Rediscovered

Whatever it does mean, the obviously rediscovered them yesterday in their 2-0 win against the increasingly frustrating Manchester City side. The goals came from Glen Johnson and Hermann Hreidarsson and the lead was kept intact by one stunning save from the record breaking David James.

After the game caretaker boss Paul Hart said,

“At the moment clean sheets are the order of the day. I am really pleased for the club and the players, who worked their socks off and kept to the game plan. They were very disciplined. There are good players here and on the back of results confidence grows and you see a lot more from the team.”

With no other Premier League games being played, the win took Pompey up to fifteenth place and moved them four points clear of the dreaded relegation zone. More importantly, it reminded the players that they are a decent side and should be in the top half of the table and not struggling at the bottom. This was a fact that the players had quite clearly lost sight of when Tony Adams was at the helm.

Incredible

I would love to know what Adams was doing wrong but I suppose we will have to wait until one of the players writes a book to find out what was really happening. It is incredible that a manager can have such a huge influence on the performances and results of a team. It makes you realise just how good the really successful ones are.