Alan Biley: I fell in love with Portsmouth and then Alan Ball forced me out - it still hurts

Yet the circumstances behind his departure still hurt – 35 years later.

It was manager Alan Ball who oversaw Biley’s controversial departure for Brighton in March 1985, a decision many supporters struggled to comprehend.

In a 2015 interview for Played Up Pompey, Biley pinpointed a night out in Puerto Banus as the beginning of his demise, during a holiday at the end of the 1983-84 campaign.

Ultimately it led to a painful separation from a club he adored.‘We were in Sinatra Bar beside the marina in the Costa del Sol one night and, as ever, I was one of the last ones left, along with the caretaker boss and in-coming manager Alan Ball,’ he told Played Up Pompey.

‘Bless him, he was not very good in drink, often quite retrospective, very dour and a bit sad – or he could get quite aggressive. On that occasion he was the latter.

‘Ball walked over to me and said “I’ve never rated you, never liked you, you couldn’t lace my boots”.

‘Only a week earlier I had netted a hat-trick in a final-day 5-0 win against Swansea City in his first match in temporary charge following the dismissal of Bobby Campbell. It took my season’s tally to 18 goals in 43 games.

‘My response was something like “I think you are one of the best one-touch footballers I have seen in my life, you were a fantastic pro, you are a great coach, but a useless manager”.

‘Nobody has any reason to believe me about that conversation, but his actions backed that up the following season.

‘Pompey was a three-year box in time and if I could possibly open that box again and recover moments, a day even, then I would die happy.

‘They were ultra-special days, week after week I couldn’t wait to play. I fell in love with the club and it has never gone away.

‘Then Ball made me leave in March 1985 – and it hurts to think about it even now.

‘There is footage of me scoring in that famous Santa game and the commentator, Martin Tyler, saying “There’s no way surely that Alan Biley will be allowed to leave Portsmouth now,” but the manager had no intention of keeping me.

‘I left for Brighton two-and-a-half months later and the final insult was he was prepared to let me go for £50,000. It was a case of getting rid of me at whatever the cost. In all honesty, I probably would have gone anywhere.

‘It was a combination of things which Alan Ball did to me. He isolated me, he pulled me aside and said things, and at training was continually on my back. He did it either to get a reaction or make it clear to other people I was not going to be there much longer.

‘Blowing my own trumpet, I am the easiest person to get on with, I am open, friendly and have no big-time Charlie about me at all. I have kept friends who are Pompey supporters and send them Christmas cards to this day.

‘Ball had a dislike of me. Whether it was me as a person which tainted his opinion of me as a footballer or whether me as a footballer had tainted his opinion of me as a character, I don’t know. Perhaps it was both together.

‘Everything came to a head one day when training at Fratton Park. While playing a bit of keep ball across the pitch he picked on me and picked on me and picked on me.

‘In the end the ball came to me, I picked it up, drop kicked it over the Fratton end and shouted “Stick your ball up your backside” before walking off and leaving training. He was after a bite and got it.

‘The previous summer he had brought in Scott McGarvey for £85,000 from Manchester United. Whether he came in to replace Mark Hateley, who had left 48 hours earlier for AC Milan, or myself, it worked out he was playing instead of me.

‘Now I really liked Scott, he came and lived at my house in Bishop’s Waltham when he first arrived, he’s a great lad, but you could see he was struggling.

‘If you had been a striker at Pompey for the past three years with 50 goals in 100 games and thought you had done reasonably well wouldn’t you wonder why you were being dropped for somebody who couldn’t hit a barn door?

‘The reason was Ball wanted me out – and I can only assume he didn’t like the fact I was popular.

‘Eventually I put in a transfer request, we had gone a few weeks down the road, I was a substitute and could see the future. The supporters were saying it as well, nobody could understand it.

‘This despite having scored 13 times in 26 games that campaign, I had even netted the winner in Ball’s first match as manager that season, an 87th-minute goal against Middlesbrough in August 1984.

‘I don’t want to speak harshly of Ball because I really want to remember him as the great player he was and a fantastic, energetic, knowledgeable coach.

‘However, I have to be honest. If I can say really good things about him then I have to balance it out and say he was an awful man-manager.

‘He might have been a fantastic man-manager to someone else, I accept that. After all, some players may say Bobby Campbell was a dreadful manager, but he was perfect for me.’

Alan Biley made 120 Pompey appearances and scored 57 goals from August 1982 until March 1985.

Played Up Pompey Too, released in 2017, is still available from Amazon. While Played Up Pompey Three, which contains more of your favourite Blues players, is out in September.

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