I may well have been in the minority when Steve Cotterill left Portsmouth FC last weekend to join Nottingham Forest: I was disappointed.
Granted he wasn't everyone's cup-of-tea and negative sentiment had built up amongst the fans following a slow start to this season.
A combination of inconsistent and poor performances, frustrating tactics, poor on-pitch discipline and disappointing results will always irk even diehard fans. Throw the dwindling attendances at Fratton Park in to the mix and it didn't take long for the negative spiral to pick up momentum.
Two wins out of three games since Cotterill's departure do nothing to strengthen my minority position either!
So why the disappointment? Well, I look back to the start of the 2010-11 season and Pompey's opening game of the season away to Coventry City. There can be no doubt the Club was in dire straights at that point.
Just relegated from the Premier League, Portsmouth was still in administration, the heart of the FA Cup Final team in May had been ripped out and playing resources were painfully thin.
Pompey lost at Coventry in a performance of utter mediocrity and started the season looking a good bet to be relegated to League One. But as we know, that didn't happen.
If I reflect on what's happened in the 14 months since then and compare it with the situation today it's clear that the Club has come a long way under trying circumstances but there is still so much to do.
Cotterill was the man who steered the Club through those difficult times, safely securing Championship status with games to spare. He galvanized the Club through a period of uncertainty and adversity.
The playing highs for me were the two seven match unbeaten runs: the first from September 24th to October 30th 2010 and the second from February 5th to March 5th 2011. The latter included six wins on the trot without a goal being conceded (a post-War record of 636 minutes of play without conceding a goal was set).
However, at the end of the season the team, heavily endowed with loans, disbanded and Cotterill was effectively back at square one facing his second re-building job in less than a year. And therein lies the disappointment for me: we never saw Cotterill operating under anything other than difficult circumstances.
His second year at Pompey barely saw the team get from 'forming' to 'storming' before the call came from Nottingham Forest and now we'll never know how things might have turned out. Seeing things through, taking the longer term path to see where it leads, is something that rarely happens in football these days.
In some quarters the outcome will be viewed as favourable to all parties: Forest got their man, Pompey received compensation and Cotterill didn't face the ignominy of the sack.
But now there will always be the unanswered 'what if' question and what will really irk and disappoint is if history repeats itself and Steve Cotterill achieves at The City Ground what Tony Pullis has done at The Brittania.
It'll be interesting to see how much time he gets at Nottingham Forest. I for one wish him luck and more importantly thank him for what he did at Portsmouth to stabilize the Club in the Championship.
Today as we enter the P-C Era, many Pompey fans will tell you that they're glad to see the back of Steve Cotterill. I believe the history books will view his tenure as manager in a slightly more positive light.
BlueThruAndThru
