Pompey have had the great misfortune to have a succession of very dubious owners over the last 40 years while we have had our very own period when the infighting and squabbling at Board level nearly destroyed our club. I donât know about you but I could do nothing about Askham, Lowe, Wild et al except to stand at the sidelines and just get very angry at what they were doing. I stopped spending any money at the club other than on my season ticket and I went to the games and cheered on our team never once booing. You could say that I could have stopped going altogether but I like my football and I love my team. So let us get down to the nitty gritty. If you were a Pompey fan instead of a Saints fan what would you have done over the last few years that would have been any different to what your regular Pompey fan would have done? Please donât say you would have been ashamed of your club because that is what many of the Pompey fans have already said. So before you utter another word of criticism against the Pompey fans tell us what you would have done that would have been so very different.
When you become a football supporter, like it or not you are then intrinsically linked to whatever your team or club does (good or bad). If your team loses, gets relegated, goes into administration or one of the players breaks the law is it the fans fault and could they have done something about it? Of course not, but the law of football rivalry dictates that the supporters of that club take the stick. I've never gone along with the phrase often quoted on this forum "It's the genuine/real Pompey fans I feel sorry for", whatever that's supposed to mean. They are all League 1 Pompey fans and as such the law of football rivalry applies. Their team is in the crap and they as fans have to take it. Any Premier League Saints fan worth their salt would be sticking the knife in a bit deeper, empathy is for wimps.
If this thread has only had two views how come 6 people have voted? The data on this site is about as dodgy as Pompey's book-keeping.
I think both of those options have some merit. No, indeed you can't blame the fans for owners making errors [I assume that's what option 2 means], but to allow the mistakes to carry on without some form of protest being made, before your club disappears, is what you can blame fans for, in my opinion. In effect, fans get the club they deserve. Although by the time bloody Guy Askham had sold his soul, made his pile and just sided with Lowe & Co all the time, slowly dragging SFC closer to the mire, I was no longer a season ticket holder, simply because I lived in the middle of Wealden Kent, but I still had attended as often as possible. When I moved back to Southampton I went to many more matches. I then joined the protest against Lowe and stopped going because I believed that was the only way Lowe would get the message. I was one of those idiotic few apparently. Well Rupert, I didn't do things like appoint Steve Wigley or not renew Nigel Pearson's contract, instead employing Jan Poortvliet. So now who's the bloody idiot..? Looks like it was Rupert because, in the end, he still didn't get the message. But at least the message got him.
I don't understand this.How can fans affect what the owners do to their club?Pompey fans have protested a lot and they are trying to gain power of the club,but it's much more difficult that one would think. Fans don't know what their respective owners/chairman's are doing behind the scenes and also they can't select which owners they want.I find it ridiculous that the amount of power the fans have is very miniscule...buying tickets and merchandise and that's pretty much it.They have no say about the way the clubs run and they control 0% of the club. Even when fans protest,like the Blackburn fans have done all season,nothing happens and unless they physically throw the Venky's out they will be there for as long as they want. Clubs need to adopt a new strategy where the main shareholders are the fans.
In the sense that fans can protest to the point wheree teh club owners have to change their ideas and methods. I have no doubt that many Pompey supporters have protested. All I'm saying is, they need to find a protest that is effective, that is, it mmaes the owners listen. Saints supporters realised that the only way Askham, Lowe & Co woulld listen was to hit him in their own pockets. It was a do or die protest, but such was the feeling against that Boardroom.
It's all very well protesting with your feet & trying to hurt the owners in the pockets, but Portsmouth face the perfect storm of bad owners and administration. The club need them to show up to survive.
The owners of football clubs are well aware of the fans love and loyalty to their clubs and strangely i know i felt compelled to support the club fiercely when times were bad very often fending off the taunts and mocking from our blue rivals in a way as a fan you are defending the shirt not the powers that be. .I dont think owners listen to fans they usually wait till the bomb goes off and their position becomes untenable In Pompeys case given they had a few trips to Wembley the fans chose to bury their heads in the sand and enjoy the ride they are paying for that now as the rest of us had to ask how they could employ such a high calibre player at a club with no infastructure .In our case the club was passed around like a fizzing bomb untill lucky for us Nicola and Marcus stepped and defused it and it seems we are in safe hands.But ultimately business people do business wherever they see opportunity and loyal and true fans support the club its in our dna
So I'm a wimp am I? How long have you supported Saints? I have supported them 65 years!!! I have also served my country been involved in and seen horrors, you can only dream about. Yet You call me a wimp for my view on Pompey fans? You are talking out of your back side.............
Without empathy and altruism society is doomed. Today a lot of educators are talking about emotional intelligence being as important for a successful and happy life as intellectual intelligence. Rather sadly Thatcher has driven altruism and empathy out of the hearts and minds of our young people such that many young people are selfish and uncaring and they think that this in some way this makes them great competitors. I watched the Apprentice once and it epitomised everything I have just said. I would not have given a single one of them a job. Thank goodness that the Americans see a manager more as a coach who seeks to get the best out of people and is charged with aiding their development rather than the me, me, me culture we have allowed to destructively influence British culture.
A third of the voters in this poll say the fans are partly to blame and I would be interested to know how they worked that out. I suspect that they see the fans as being compliant in the mismangement as they continued to support their club. If that is so then I was compliant in the demise of Saints and their subsequent fall into administration.
I've always felt sorry for pompey fans. Now I despair for them. It's bad enough living in a dump and watching football in a rusty shack, but now it seems they might not even be able to do that. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at their plight, but any decent football fan will also feel some compassion.
I suspect that had you put up a poll asking whether Pompey fans were partially responsible for global warming you might have got a similar result. The unforgivable thing which Pompey fans did for those voting yes to your proposition was to enjoy Pompey being more successful than Saints for a few years and winning a major trophy. I don't suppose that those fans would blame the supporters the other clubs who have gone into administration. I am also intrigued by the suggestion that Pompey fans should have protested more effectively. How do you do that? I certainly didn't see any major difference between the protests at Saints and Pompey. Some stayed away, fewer shirts were purchased and a few songs and chants were made. What should we have done to make Lowe take heed? Picketed the stadium? Organise a mass sit-in on the pitch after the final whistle? Raise a petition perhaps? When you remove the red-tinted specs, Pompey fans are not so very different from us.
You have to consider one other very important fact. With Saints they had shareholders to consider. These shareholders had shares that were listed on the stock exchange. As such we were in a better position to get Lowe off the board let alone chairman. With Pompey it is a totally different aspect, initially they only had 1 interested party later it went to more than 1. All the demonstrating in the world could not have removed these guys. They did not even have public meetings until they were in trouble and then it was only their representatives. Where as our lot had to have share holders meetings at the very least. So you do have to have some sympathy for the Pompey lot as they could not directly deal with their owners. Definitely worth a thought............
The problem with the protests this time round is that, the people who are in charge of the club and running it into the ground aren't here. CSI left the country immediatly when they went bankrupt. The fake Sheiks aren't here. Chanrai is in China, Lampitts gone, Storrie's gone, Gaydamaks gone. Who do we protest against? Last time in early 2010 there was a few pitch invasions, protests that got national coverage but that was when the people in charge were present. I did here that when representatives of Chanrai came to Fratton for the creditors meeting there was about 50 Pompey fans waiting outside for them. Aside from staying in the ground for ages after most of the home games (and some away games) after we went into admin and the Blackpool Poznan, there isn't anything we can do., except fly to China or the middle east. Or we could hire a hitman.
