The summer period is here and no sooner have we wrapped up our trophy celebrations than I’m back in the office tapping away at my keyboard. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that we’re now on our longest undefeated streak of all time. I would have thought it would have been during our invincible season last year. Long may it continue!
The next message I receive is that long-time transfer target Sebastian Barnes — inexplicably unused (not even in the squad) by the Ghana boss during WC qualifications — did not receive his work permit. We’ve still got four incoming summer transfers arranged…if I decide to keep them all.
We’ve currently got 24 players (that I care about). I like the numbers, I’m just not sure if the personnel will change prior to next season. We’ve got six players the wrong side of 30 but Raeside is the oldest at 32. Fingers crossed for no retirements.
That’s not entirely true. Fingers crossed for one retirement with Vandensteen being the only “player” under contract in the reserve side not scheduled for a summer exit by either Bosman or transfer. He’s not great with youth though none of the interested/EU ones around are anywhere close to Freddie’s other attributes.
It’s painful to basically sit out of summer transfer dealings as we’ve exhausted our Dutch options. Every single day someone is making a play for someone on our shortlist and while I have sent my scouts to scour various locales, 99% of the time they either bring back non-Dutch players, repeat suggestions or absolute dross.
As expected at the annual FA end-of-season gala, I win my 4th yearly managerial award and Hose adds a second round of goal-scoring/PotY awards to his personal trophy cabinet, repeating last year’s Ports haul. I assume he’ll get the Supporters award for the trifecta next month.
The European competitions wrap up and it’s a good time for Italy. Roma go back-to-back with a Champions Cup victory over AC Milan while Inter offs Ajax for the UEFA Cup.
Our first of our summer deals goes off without a hitch as Nijkamp heads to Greece — Panionios specifically — for £130k. We don’t really need the money as we’re sitting on £7.7M but he wasn’t going to play for us and our facilities don’t seem good enough to improve our younger players without first team minutes.
As we head in to June, I realise I’ve made a massive mistake. Or more accurately, a £325k mistake. JCVD’s contract extension also dropped his release clause from £1M to a paltry £675k and bids are arriving. Bids around £500k are also arriving for van der Kruis but his release clause remains at double that.
June’s arrival also means some Bosmans are gone. Ciaran Donaghy had about six months of usefulness back in 2002–03, Peter Hawkins was a 2001–02 winter purchase and was a key defender for three years, Richard Clarke (the last of the players I inherited, I believe) was massive for three full seasons and Stuart Beevor was a starter for my first two seasons. They all played their parts and left for too little money — especially Clarke, whose scheduled £375k departure in the winter fell through — but we’ve upgraded in all cases and moved on.
Four players out, two in. But I’d fancy these two in a 2v4 match with the ones that just left! Quansah will be a super-sub for us as he’s not QUITE level skill-wise with Hose and JKA but he’ll feature for us an awful lot in the upcoming season, I’m sure. And Lennartsson might feature less, but he’s our best passer as it stands. They’re both still leaps and bounds better than the rest of the domestic competition we’ll face…
We immediately trim the squad back down again with the prearranged sale of van Driel to Haarlem. It’s only £22k up front but we’ll pocket another £75k once he’s played twenty matches. That should be quick as he’s Haarlem’s best defender by a fair margin. He played a baker’s dozen matches for us over two seasons and did…fine. Not a real candidate for the Ports Hall of Fame.
JCVD follows him out the door later that day. It’s usually a good thing to pocket £675k but it’s bittersweet in this case. Totally not part of the plan. He was our #1 for two seasons (and projected starter for this upcoming season) and he’s left for less than he’s worth due to my bone-headed contract oversight.
The official end/start of the season comes and our last bits of business are concluded. First up — as expected by anyone who watched any Portadown football last season — Mr Brutil Hose wins the Supporters PotY award for a second successive season. What a star he was. Ten more goal contributions than matches played and an EASY triple-double of goals/assists/MotMs.
Secondly, the Board announce the completion of “Good” facilities. It costs us £525k but as one of our youth keepers from last season may well be a first-teamer this coming season, I’m all for it.
That money (and then some) is immediately recouped via the sale of van der Kruis. He’s a promising youngster but he was sixth in the pecking order for three DM spots and I actually intentionally negotiated that £1M fee release clause of his. Best of luck, Micky.
Oh, and I forgot to mention…
- The Board want us to “mount a serious Championship challenge” in the upcoming season. That may well be possible after winning four consecutive titles.
- We’ve been “drawn” into the exact same League Cup group as every other year. Armagh, Nerwy, Dungannon and Glenavon.
- Northern Ireland’s European combatants for this season are Portadown (that’s us) in the Champions Cup, Glentoran and Newry (UEFA Cup) and Linfield (Inter-Toto).
- Last season’s Northern Ireland UEFA coefficient was 10.43 and we sat 31st overall. Of our European entrants, Coleraine lost to Bohemians and Linfield lost to Salzburg in the UEFA Cup qualifying round while Newry were beaten by Sigma Olomouc in the Inter-Toto First Round. Not a win (in any match, let alone a round) of any kind amongst them. It must solely have been our run to the UEFA 3rd Round that has bumped Northern Ireland’s coefficient to 15.85. That’s good for 26th overall and now we’re just 3.3 points behind Ireland for 23rd and an extra UEFA Cup berth.
We’ve missed out on a few Dutch (or Dutch-adjacent) players during the free agent period. Frank de Boer — recently out of contract after a spell at Sunderland — heads back to Spain in lieu of playing/coaching us. It seems the pulls of the weather and 21 times more money than we could offer were too much to ignore. Marquinho (Dutch second nationality after 5+ seasons there) has headed back to his native Brazil to play for Bahia for 16 times what we could pay…and the weather too, I’d imagine.
The Champions Cup draw for the first and second qualifying rounds take place and for the first time ever, we get a bye! We’re drawn straight into the Second Qualifying Phase and face a lovely draw of either FC Slavia Mozyr (Belarus) or Ararat (Armenia).
There’s another player departure as Martin Kox is minimum fee released by Salernitana. I’m not so upset about him leaving, I’m upset that I only got £600k for him after very little interest when I listed him for half a million. Now he’s “worth” £2.2M and the likes of Monaco, Montpelier, PAOK, Genk and Twente are all sniffing around…
I bail on signing Roy Carroll as I remember offering him FAR too much signing-on fee (like, seven digits) but we go through with this deal. Mr. Mikael Forssell has left Chelsea for Portadown and the fans are enraptured. He actually played against us a couple of seasons back as they knocked us out of the UEFA Cup. Probably the best player we (or even the Northern Irish Prem) has ever seen.
We then add another young Dutch defender, though he won’t be a big factor for us. We don’t owe anything for him, unless he plays thirty matches for Holland. Then we’d owe Sunderland £1M. I’m not exactly worried.
It’s another incredibly pleasant draw for us in the Champions Cup, as the third round is drawn before the 2nd round is played. If we get past FC Slavia Mozyr (who knocked off Ararat in the first qualifying round), we’ll face a former opponent of ours. At the same stage of this competition in August of 2002, we knocked them into the UEFA Cup with a 4–2 aggregate victory. And I’d wager that three seasons later, we’re a much better squad.
Finally, match #1 of the season is upon us. FC Slavia Mozyr have made their way to Northern Ireland from Mozyr, Belarus. They’ve got a capped Georgian keeper, a capped Armenian centre-back and a very good capped Belorussian striker, but not that one. Stripeikis is actually one star better by comparison than PSG’s two-time French League Under-23 PotY Maxim Tsigalko.
We’re not fully fit just yet, but we’re close. I field the fittest of the bunch — rather than the best — so new boy Mercimek starts while Forssell only makes the bench.
We go behind early to the aforementioned Stripeikis and the stats at the break show that it’s been a very even match to that point (three shots each, even possession and action zones). At the break, I let the lads know that those 45 minutes were their warm-up for the season and it’s time to start performing. The second half is completely one-sided. We pelt their goal with shots with an equaliser coming from Tokene before we get a late winner from — other than our keeper — the unlikeliest of sources. Debutante centre back Mercimek strikes a free kick from distance that nestles itself in the back of the Slavia Mozyr net just as the fourth official is indicating the added time. We’ll head to Belarus in a week with a slender advantage…and hopefully a fitter team.
It’s a long trip to get to Mozyr but we’re fitter and readier for the challenge this time around. A draw would see us through, though I’m not sure my blood pressure needs that type of stress. Just pick things up where we left off in the second half of last game, would you fellas?
Two of our star players from last season combine for an early goal, as Tokene finds Hose who finishes with aplomb. It’s a slender lead on the day but the lads don’t allow a single shot on target for the remainder of the match. We progress to our date with Sturm Graz after a relatively comfortable 3–1 aggregate victory.
Just 72 hours later — and after an arduous trip back from Belarus — we’re due in Newry to kick off the domestic season as we try to add another Charity Shield to our trophy cabinet. My scouts got there ahead of us and told me they’ve got a reasonable team and that Barry Smith is an important part of their defence. He’s not played a competitive match in 4+ seasons, so hopefully he’s rusty.
