Portsmouth fan group's three questions to Michael Eisner ahead of Fratton Park protest against Exeter

Newly-formed PFC Coalition have organised a peaceful protest at Saturday’s Fratton Park encounter with Exeter.

And, ahead of the event, they have this morning issued a statement posing three questions they want Michael Eisner and the Pompey board to answer.

The statement, which can be found in full via Twitter at @SHOWAMBITIONPFC, reads as follows…

PFC Coalition is calling on Tornante to provide supporters with explicit, unambiguous details (activities, timescales, milestones etc.) regarding:

1) The club’s plan to increase capacity at Fratton Park (including the final capacity the club is

planning to deliver, and the planned increase each year to reach the final capacity.)

2) The club’s plan to make the Academy fundamental to the club’s success.

3) The club’s plan for providing a sustainable playing budget that enables promotion from League One; and the club’s plan for providing a sustainable playing budget in the Championship that will empower the team to compete for promotion to the Premier League.

We have outlined below why we are asking Tornante to do this.

We would like to make it clear that this statement addresses long-term, strategic matters which do not relate to the team manager/head coach, the playing squad, or employees of PFC. Everyone working hard for the club has our support.

The 2022-2023 season is Tornante’s sixth season at the helm of PFC. It is also the club’s sixth consecutive season playing in League One.

During Tornante’s ownership Pompey has finished in the following league positions: 8th, 4th, 5th, 8th, and 10th. At the time of writing Pompey are 15th in League One, and on current form the team is on-track to finish outside the play-off positions for a third successive season.

PFC Coalition’s collective view is that the objectives articulated by Tornante in 2017 are still relevant, but how and when they will be achieved is unclear.

The goalposts have been significantly moved without any scrutiny on how this impacts their plans to grow the club sustainably.

That is why PFC Coalition is asking for Tornante to detail its coherent strategy for Fratton Park, the Academy, and building revenues to generate a playing budget sustainably to achieve their stated goals.

1) The club’s plan to increase capacity at Fratton Park

It is no secret that Fratton Park has needed significant improvement works for many years. In a pre-takeover interview with the BBC, Michael Eisner characterised Fratton Park as an ‘antique’ that required a ‘daunting’ level of investment. Around the same time, the club issued a statement confirming the estimated cost just to achieve stadium compliance was circa £5 million.

In October 2017, PFC board member Andy Redman re-confirmed Tornante’s intent to address health and safety issues and significantly expand capacity at Fratton Park.

Increasing capacity was considered fundamental to the club progressing: We will want the ability to expand to at least 30,000. Simply because, if you think about our ambition, you don’t want to be a small club at the point where you are successful.

Tornante did not commit to firm timescales for improvement works, although Andy Redman did comment: It won’t take us four years to do the first work at the stadium.

In August 2020 the club announced that planning permission had been granted for phase one of the proposed development of Fratton Park and redevelopment works subsequently commenced in June 2021.

Former Pompey CEO Mark Catlin referred to redevelopment works as being part of a Fratton Park ‘masterplan’, but in January 2022 current CEO Andy Cullen referred to longer-term capacity increases as being ‘visions’ rather than plans.

A few months later Andy Redman stated that Pompey would need to be in the Premier League before a new North Stand can be delivered.

In summary, we do not understand what the long-term vision or masterplan is for Fratton Park, and we believe the timescale for delivering significant capacity increases is unclear. We acknowledge the works that have been carried out to date, but we view them as incremental. If the club’s ambition is to generate the self-sustaining revenue needed to get to the Championship and beyond then transformational change is required.

The very thing to generate this revenue has now been moved to “when we reach the premier league” without any clear plan on how we achieve this sustainably in its place.

It is for these reasons that we are calling on Tornante to provide a clear plan for increasing

capacity at Fratton Park.

2)The club’s plan to make the Academy fundamental to the club’s success.

Prior to taking control of the club, Tornante made it clear that a cornerstone of their sustainable ownership model was a successful Academy system. Pompey fans will recall Michael Eisner drawing parallels between Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club and developing our own footballing talent; with the goal being to produce players that the club has options on rather than paying high transfer fees and wages.

Tornante have only recently been honest in their assessment of Academy progress during their tenure. Last year Andy Redman stated that there had been little improvement thus far, and Eric Eisner revealed an Academy strategy was still being developed.

Andy Cullen subsequently said: ‘The Academy are operating out of seven sites – and that’s not great. We’re spending a lot of money, a significant six-figure sum every year, on holding facilities for training or whatever.’

This openness from the club is welcome and appreciated, but we believe the pace of change needs to be far greater if the Academy is going to be a fundamental element of the sustainable ownership model.

If the Academy is unable to produce talent for the first team, and young stars that can be sold at a profit, coupled with the lack of stadium plans, we do not see how Tornante’s current ownership model is viable for anything else other than a lower league club.

It is for these reasons that we are calling for clarity on the club’s plan to make the Academy fundamental to the club’s success.

3)The club’s plan for providing a sustainable playing budget

Although Michael Eisner once alluded to a 10-year plan to return Pompey to the Premier League and make the team appreciated around the world, it would be unreasonable to expect owners of any football club to guarantee promotion.

What the owners of a football club can do is facilitate promotion by setting appropriate targets and providing the necessary resources.

Tornante have always been clear that they will not spend their way to success – an approach that former CEO Mark Catlin once described as: ‘we eat what we kill.’

There has been much debate this season about PFC’s playing budget, with some reports suggesting it is around the 12th highest in League One.

In response, Andy Cullen recently re-iterated that the club’s owners want to compete for promotion to the Premier League; they want to be competitive but sustainable; and the current playing budget enables the team to be around the League One play-offs.

In an interview with Radio Solent on New Year’s Day, Andy Cullen said: ‘Our target has always been for us to compete for a play-off spot, that’s where the owners expect us to be.’ Had significant progress been made with regard to the Academy and increased capacity at Fratton Park, we would be able to understand the relationship between a sustainable ownership model and increased playing budgets.

However, without these means to sustainably generate a vast increase in revenue, we believe there is a divergence between the club’s stated ambition and what it is currently

doing to realise it.

We are particularly concerned about the timeline for improvements at Fratton Park. When Tornante purchased the club the ground’s capacity was circa 18,500 (almost 18,000 attended the final game of the 2016/2017 season.

When the current stadium works are completed the capacity will be between 20,000 and 21,000 - an increase of around 2000 in the six years Tornante has owned PFC.

While work was needed to stop capacity falling back the work has not taken the capacity forward enough to be even close to what the club needs to be sustainably challenging as promised.

Put simply, if additional revenue is not going to come from having options on Academy talent or a substantial capacity increase at Fratton Park, then where is the money going to come from to facilitate promotion to the Championship and to challenge for promotion to the Premier League?

We would like Tornante to respond to each of the questions asked in this statement and provide Pompey supporters with detailed plans regarding the Academy, Fratton Park, and the playing budget.

As Michael Eisner said in 2017, PFC did not need Tornante if its ambition was to stay in League One, slowly fix Fratton Park, and slightly improve the Academy. And yet, in 2023, Pompey is still in League One; Fratton Park is slowly being fixed; and the Academy has been slightly improved.

We are certain that many former PST shareholders are asking themselves: is this what we expected when we voted to sell the club?

We therefore call on Tornante to clarify their ambition and show us their plan for achieving it. Until then we say: EISNERS: NO AMBITION – NO PLAN.

For more information contact [email protected] or @SHOWAMBITIONPFC